The rationale for requiring a research-based dissertation is that teachers are expected to be able to have a holistic view of teaching and learning process, and be able to engage in continuous professional development in their career as a teacher. Traditional teacher-preparation programmes too often treat good pedagogy as generic, assuming that good questioning skills, for example, are equally applicable to all subjects. Because teacher education in Finland is a shared responsibility between the teacher education faculty and the academic subject faculty, there is substantial attention to subject-specific pedagogy for prospective primary as well as upper-grade teachers.