In Germany, mathematics teaching is considered as out-of-field if the corresponding teachers teach mathematics without the so-called ‘Lehrbefähigung’. This formal qualification is usually gained by studying mathematics at university and by attending subject-specific preparation courses. Research shows that in grade 9 up to 36.4% of the mathematics teachers teach without such a qualification (Richter, Kuhl, Haag & Pant, 2013). Richter et al. (2013) claim that out-of-field teaching has negative impact on students’ achievement in mathematics. These findings are in a line with previous research results (Goldhaber & Brewer, 2000). In order to understand why a formal qualification seems to matter, the conditions of out-of-field teaching have to be scrutinized. In our opinion, analysing teachers’ shortcomings in the fields of content knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge are not enough if we want to understand the practice of out-of-field teaching (Bosse & Törner, 2014). To get a holistic view of the phenomenon, we want to examine the character of these teachers’ subject-related teacher identities. A preliminary study suggests that these teachers have a specific relationship towards mathematics and mathematics education (Bosse & Törner, 2013) as they have usually never been confronted with mathematics beyond school. We want to get a deeper understanding of this relationship by studying the implications on the degree of professionalism of these teachers’ subject-related teacher identities. Therefore, we conducted 21 semi-structured, qualitative interviews with respect to identity related aspects in terms of Beauchamp and Thomas (2009). The interview guideline contains items concerning the teachers’ subject-related biography, their mathematical world views, their beliefs towards mathematics education, their affects related to mathematics, their motivations for teaching mathematics, and aspects of their teaching profession. The process of analysing the transcriptions is ongoing and completed systematic results can be expected in the middle of the year.

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