This presentation aims at investigating how newly qualified German teachers develop during their first two years in the profession. The professional development is here understood as “the way a teacher’s evolution occurs during the career” (Kelchtermans & Vanderberghe 1994, p. 45) in a constant tension between teachers’ agency and the influence of the environment (vgl. Day et al., 2005). As a central sign of professional development the presentation concentrates on the ways in which the newly qualified reflect on their experiences in the beginning of their careers (Hericks, 2006). In the aspect, ‚giving a reasoned decision‘, there seems to be a empirical connection to the ability of reflection by (newly qualified) teachers (Fendler, 2003; Reh, 2004; Geerinck et al., 2010). The data comes from a project which focuses on teachers in their first two years in school. In 2013-2016 narrative interviews with six teachers in the German State of Hamburg were collected. In a longitudinal design each person was interviewed four times during these first two years in schools. The participants of this study started their career as teachers in a two-year obligatory induction program during their in-service activity, designed to assist their professional development. Based on analyzes by means of the Documentary Method the results show on the one hand which types of reflection are, however, productive in the professional development processes and on the other hand in what sense two different forms of reflection, namely implicit and explicit reflection (Bohnsack, 2014) are useful regarding to a acquisition of competences and a professional habitus of newly qualified teachers. By enhancing the ability of self-reflection, a more individual and biographic view on the definition and understanding of professionalism can be achieved. During their qualification, teachers continually undergo such processes. It is crucial to distinguish between successful on the one hand and unsuccessful, problematic or potentially threatened in a substantiated way. Moreover, systematic explanations for stagnation or decrease in teachers’ professional development need to be found. With this in mind, concepts for the support and further development of competences under struggling and stressful circumstances can be established.

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