The teaching profession is considered to be potentially extremely stressful, especially in the critical phase of entering the profession after teacher training (Dicke et al. 2015; Voss & Kunter 2020). The amount of stress caused by working as a teacher depends on both the working conditions and the way teachers individually perceive and respond to their situation. Based on this, the proposed contribution investigates various individual and occupational factors that affect the well-being of beginning teachers in Germany.

The German teacher education is separated in two phases. The first phase covers the study program at university with mostly theoretical contents. The second phase, the so-called „preparatory service“, contains mostly practical training (see Klusmann et al. 2008a and Dicke et al. 2015). The preparatory service aims to facilitate the transition from teacher education to work and is considered to be the “most important formal learning environment” to develop professional teacher competencies (Kunter et al. 2011, p. 60). To what extend the conditions of this preparatory service, for example the interaction with and support by mentors, seminar leaders and fellow trainees, influence the well-being of (prospective) teachers will be the first part of this proposed contribution. Despite the intensive research on the occupational stress of teachers, hardly any reliable studies on the influence of this learning environment on the emotional state of (prospective) teachers are available. The few existing studies on the topic are limited to single federal states of Germany (e. g., Nübling et al. 2012; Drüge et al. 2014) or subjects taught by the teachers (e. g., Klusmann et al. 2008b).

In addition to these external characteristics of the second phase of teacher training, we employ an occupational self-regulation scale that reflects the individual stress and coping behavior. Occupational self-regulation is defined as the ability to effectively manage one's resources at work in order to maintain sustained occupational engagement and to recover from stress during leisure time (Kunter et al. 2011).

The theoretical foundation of the investigation is the Conservation of Resources Theory (COR, Hobfoll 1988; Westman et al. 2005; Hobfoll 1991) that is considered a major explanatory model for understanding the stress process at work (Westman et al. 2005). The COR explains the emergence of stress based on the gain and loss of resources, distinguishing between different forms of resources: objects, conditions, personal characteristics and energies (Hobfoll 1991).

According to COR, (prospective) teachers use their available resources, such as their professional competencies and skills acquired through teacher education, to protect themselves from occupational stress. Social support is another relevant resource that, according to Hobfoll (1991), increases the self-esteem and reduces risk of depression. The ability of occupational self-regulation is considered a personal resource of high importance both for the regeneration after resource investments and the re-investment of resources to gain new resources and protect against further resource loss (Hobfoll et al. 1997; Westman et al. 2005). A lack of those important resources leads high stress, which can be reflected in emotional exhaustion and job dissatisfaction (Lauermann & König 2016; Klusmann et al. 2008).

The analyses are based on data from the starting cohort “First-Year Students” of the German National Educational Panel Study (NEPS; doi:10.5157/NEPS:SC5:15.0.0). The analysis sample includes (prospective) teachers who have completed the first part of German teacher training until the year 2016 and have valid data on all relevant constructs (N=467). For the learning environment in preparatory service we include five subdimensions of support from and interaction with different actors in the context of teacher education (Kunter et al 2016; Max Planck Institute for Human Development 2010). Support was measured with three subscales of instrumental support by mentors, seminar leaders and peers (each three items; alpha m = .79; alpha s = .72; alpha p = .80). For the interaction with mentors two subscales are used (constructivist interaction type; four items, alpha = .78; transmissive interaction type; three items, alpha = .73). The measurement time of these items differs, as participants answer these questions once in an telephone interview when they start their second phase of teacher training. To measure occupational self-regulation, a short scale of the Occupational Stress and Coping Inventory (AVEM; Schaarschmidt & Fischer 2001) with 13 items was applied in a web-based survey in 2016. The AVEM short scale comprises two dimensions each for work engagement and resilience to occupational stress. The instrument enables the identification of four patterns of self-regulation (H: healthy-ambitious, U: unambitious, A: excessively ambitious and R: resigned). The patterns are considered to be relatively stable dispositions and relevant predictors for teachers’ well-being, health and quality of teaching (Schaarschmidt & Fischer 2001). Well-being was measured by emotional exhaustion and job satisfaction in two telephone interviews in 2017 and 2019. The scale for emotional exhaustion contains four items from a German translation of the Maslach Burnout Inventory (Maslach et al. 1986; alpha = .80). Job satisfaction was measured by four items from Kunter et al. (2011; alpha = .84). The influence of the learning environment as well as professionale self-regulation on the well-being of prospective teachers is analysed using structural equation modeling (SEM).

The full analysis with all relevant predictors is still pending. However, preliminary analyses were carried out to test the quality of all the latent constructs. The factor structure was verified using confirmatory factor analyses. The internal consistency of the scales is good as shown above. Furthermore, the four patterns of self-regulatory behavior were empirically identified using latent profile analysis. In addition, two separate structural equation models were estimated. The first one revealed significant effects of the characteristics of the learning environment in preparatory service on prospective teachers' emotional exhaustion and job satisfaction (model fit: RMSEA=0.037; CFI=0.964; TLI=0.957; SRMR=0.033). The second analysis came to the conclusion that occupational self-regulation is a significant predictor for emotional exhaustion (reference category for self-regulation: type H (healthy-ambitious); model fit: RMSEA=0.067, CFI=0.938, TLI=0.914, SRMR=0.035). In the presentation, the complete model including contol variables such as gender, big five personality traits and school type will be displayed and discussed.

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