Teacher Education in Austria is currently undergoing a crucial phase of transformation, as the Austrian Federal Ministry for Education, the Arts and Culture (BMUKK) and the Federal Ministry of Science and Research (BMWF) are aiming for a nationwide reformation of pedagogical studies. Within the scope of this reformation process the professionalization of (university) teacher education and the reconception and reframing of its curricular standards are intended. Due to the present overemphasized output-orientation (e.g. PISA) concerning institutional learning, the significance of subject-oriented approaches to learning and teaching are to be stressed more intensively (cf. Rothe 2009, Trumann 2012). Particularly the highly relevant question on how to promote quality in learning and in this respect how to enhance „self-determined“ (cf. Combe/Gebhard 2007, Neuß 2009) and „expansive“ learning processes (cf. Holzkamp 1995, Rihm 2010) needs to be discussed. Following the concerns of the PHD Graduate School „Bildungsgangforschung“ and Hahn’s (2004) concept of subjective developmental tasks this project intends to stress the student’s perspective and takes their individual learning needs as a starting point for conceptional changes in the course of this forthcoming reformation process. Therefore it aims at identifying teacher education students' (TES) subjective developmental tasks during academic teacher education and seeks to evaluate which of these seem to be of high importance for their professional development and occupational well-being. Developmental tasks are defined as a midway between an individual need and a societal demand (cf. Havighurst 1953). In Hahn’s view (cf. 2004) developmental tasks are only adjusted and influenced by those societal demands which seem to be of high relevance for the learner. Essential and relevant societal demands can therefore just be made visible after being processed by the learner. Developmental tasks in his approach have therefore a strong subjective element, which can be somehow compared to Holzkamp’s concept of “intentional learning” (cf. 1995, p. 105), learning due to subjective intentions or motifs.

Rudimentary research concerning developmental in teacher education has been done on young in-service teachers (cf. Hericks 2006). Developmental tasks for TES although haven’t been formulated so far, which underlines the potential of this study.

Overall this research project aims at approaching the concerns of personalized education, where learners are seen as active and autonomous and where identified learning needs are integrated to adapt educational standards (curriculum) (cf. Kraler & Köffler 2013). The gained results focusing Austrian teacher education may therefore also be of international relevance, as they might give hints on how to improve and possibly modify international approaches in teacher education, especially those which seek for improvement and so far have failed to integrate the learners’ perspectives in the process of the conception of curricular standards. This project might also give answers to the important questions on how learning contents could be modulated to be perceived as meaningful and reasonable by its learners – a concern of institutionalized educational environments all over Europe.

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