Die Entwicklung beruflicher Selbstregulation in der Berufseingangsphase und ihre Wirkung auf das Wohlbefinden von Lehrkräften

This dissertation explores the occupational self-regulation of (prospective) teachers as a personal strategy for coping with workplace demands. In Baumert and Kunter’s (2006) model of teachers’ professional competence, occupational self-regulation is embedded as a facet of teachers’ professional competencies alongside professional knowledge, beliefs/values, and motivational orientations. The dissertation describes an adaptive form of self-regulation, defined as the capacity to effectively manage one’s own resources in an occupational setting (Klusmann 2015). Accordingly, teachers proficient in occupational self-regulation exhibit the necessary level of professional commitment for successful professional practice while maintaining the ability to detach from work-related matters to conserve their personal resources (Klusmann 2011; Roloff Henoch et al. 2015). This effective resource management is deemed critical for long-term professional success, and thus to both individual teacher careers and in addressing the persistent teacher shortage in Germany (Klusmann 2011). For measuring occupational self-regulation, Baumert and Kunter recommend the use of subdimensions of the Occupational Stress and Coping Inventory (AVEM) developed by Schaarschmidt and Fischer (2001a). This inventory is used both in German-speaking countries (see e.g., Krause 2003b; Schaarschmidt 2005; Hedderich and Hecker 2009; Oesterreich 2015) and internationally (Gençer et al. 2010; Mašková 2023). Employing 66 or 44 items, it allows the cluster analytic distinction of four types or patterns in handling professional demands: healthy-ambitious pattern H, healthy-unambitious pattern U, excessively ambitious risk pattern A, and resigned risk pattern R. This typology is central to this dissertation. The data in the context of this study stems from the student cohort (starting cohort 5) of the German National Educational Panel Study (NEPS, Blossfeld and Roßbach 2019) and the add-on study Panel of Teacher Education Students (LAP, Schaeper et al. 2023). A highly condensed version of the AVEM inventory, tailored for the teacher sample, was employed. The short scale comprises 13 items, covering two sub-dimensions of work engagement and resilience to work-related stress respectively. The short instrument was developed with the support of selected experts and using scale metrics from the COACTIV, COACTIV-R, and BilWiss studies (Baumert et al. 2008; Max Planck Institute for Human Development 2010; Kunter et al. 2016). It was initially considered questionable whether it would be possible to replicate the well-known typology, which has been shown in the past to be predictive of teachers’ job retention, health, and the quality of professional performance (e.g., Schaarschmidt et al. 2000; Schaarschmidt 2005; Klusmann et al. 2008; Roloff Henoch et al. 2015), on the basis of such a limited item set. Thus, the primary goals of this dissertation are to evaluate the psychometric quality of the short scale and to reproduce the known typology (article 1), to test the stability over time of the derived self-regulation typology with focus on the transition from preparatory service to the teaching profession (article 2), and to assess its impacts on teachers’ well-being and health, taking school leadership behavior into consideration (article 3). In the articles, occupational self-regulation is theoretically embedded in various models of research on (teacher) occupational stress, particularly drawing on resource theories to explain workplace stress. The articles shed light on how self-regulation functions as a strategy for stress management and what role it plays in the context of teachers’ health and (occupational) well-being. This dissertation provides significant contributions to both science and practice. By validating a short scale for measuring occupational self-regulation, a new, time-efficient tool is offered for future quantitative studies on teacher stress and coping strategies. Findings indicate many teachers already exhibit risky self-regulation patterns during their preparatory service. This proportion is only slightly reduced with the transition into the profession, indicating a need for specific interventions like resilience and mindfulness trainings. In addition to individual prerequisites, the importance of the work environment during the early career years of teachers is examined. In the third article, the transformational leadership style of school leaders is considered as a central resource for occupational well-being and health. It is shown that the relationship between the leadership style and the outcomes is not significantly influenced by the four self-regulation patterns. It can be concluded that teachers benefit from transformational leadership regardless of their occupational self-regulation, although school leaders are not able to fully compensate for the unfavourable conditions of those whose self-regulation patterns are classified as detrimental. The contributions of this cumulative dissertation confirm the importance of occupational self-regulation for teachers’ well-being and health and recommend the necessity for strengthened health prevention and care. Potential preventive measures could encompass enhancing teachers’ self-regulation and creating a supportive professional environment. School leadership, identified as an invaluable support for teachers, plays a role in sustaining long-term occupational success. Given the persistent teacher shortage in Germany and the vital role teachers play in educating future generations, identifying and testing strategies to enhance the teaching profession’s appeal and ensure the long-term health of practising teachers is critically important.