Teacher shortage in Germany has reached an alarmingly high level. In total, estimations point out a gap of 30.000 qualified teachers in August 2022 (Stephanowitz, 2022). In order to define the rather complex phenomenon (in Germany) more precisely, a differentiation between several determinants like federal state, region, school type, and subject seems to be adequate. For instance, primary schools, special needs schools, and vocational schools are strongly affected as well as the subjects mathematics, chemistry, physics, and music (KMK, 2022). The impact of the imbalance is manifold: classes are cancelled, some subjects are deleted from the timetable, teachers work overtime, or not fully qualified staff—often university students—is hired. As a consequence, job satisfaction suffers and sickness rates rise. Several causes of teacher shortage can be identified: for example, miscalculations, demographic developments such as rising birth rates and migration, and also an unpredictable number of dropouts at university or in teacher training. Moreover, there is an aging teacher population. Accordingly, many teachers will soon reach retirement age (Eurydice, 2021). In addition, the number of study places does not match the demand of teachers, especially as the educational planners assume that on the one hand every student enters the labor market and on the other hand after a standard period. Reality looks different: Studying often takes much longer than expected (Kreienbaum, 2008) or students drop out. Not all of those who complete their exams become teachers. The short-, medium- and long-term measures to counteract the shortage are as varied as its causes: some schools re-activate retirees. Those working part-time are asked to switch to full-time. In some federal states, academics from other professions are trained as teachers in special programs. In order to gain a better understanding of the complex phenomenon, interviews with experts in the field of Educational Science were carried out (Kreienbaum & Wüllner, 2023). Their views on the problem as well as their ideas to overcome the crisis will be presented and discussed. We aim at structuring our results with the help of the methodological model created by the WATS up team (Blanco et al., 2023).

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