Even under the more stringent requirements for high school teachers, it's possible for teachers to be certified to teach a course for which they have little course work. For example, teachers can be certified to teach social studies, which can include courses in anthropology, sociology, psychology, U.S. and non-U.S. history, civics and government, geography and economics. There's no way a new teacher can receive adequate course work for all of those subjects. While secondary education majors at UGA receive as many hours in a discipline as their counterparts in the College of Arts and Sciences, Schneider points out that a high school teacher must be able to integrate a subject area with what's being taught by other teachers. In addition, there's the reality of the marketplace.
School districts seek teachers with broad qualifications to provide staffing flexibility.
But for school districts, there are the factors of location, demographics, salary, housing availability. . . . All these things figure into a school district's ability to recruit teachers. On top of that, the increase in the number of sports offered by schools means school districts also need teachers who can coach. Instead, there's this common assumption among the public that teaching doesn't require any special expertise or skills, that teachers are like interchangeable blocks that can be placed in any empty slot regardless of their type of training.