In Austria, novice teachers face significant challenges due to staff shortages, diversity in classrooms, and structural issues within schools. This study explores how personality traits and professional beliefs of 785 novice teachers vary based on gender, school type and professional context. The Big Five personality traits (extraversion, openness, agreeableness, conscientiousness and emotional stability) and teaching/learning beliefs are key factors in the development of professional identity and instructional practices.
Personality traits and professional beliefs play a crucial role in how novice teachers navigate their entry into the profession, affecting their self-concept, motivation, teaching methods and student outcomes. Traits such as extraversion, openness and agreeableness positively influence teachers’ self-assessment of competencies and work-life balance, while emotional instability can increase stress. In addition, professional beliefs shape how teachers manage classrooms, perceive educational content and design lessons, making these beliefs central to the quality of teaching and professional development. Teachers with constructivist beliefs, emphasizing active, student-centered learning, whereas those with transmissive beliefs focus more on direct transmission of knowledge.
The study reveals gender and school-type differences in personality traits. Female teachers score significantly higher on four out of five Big Five dimensions (extraversion, openness, agreeableness, conscientiousness), while male teachers exhibit significantly greater emotional stability. Primary school teachers score higher in conscientiousness and openness, while secondary school teachers show more emotional stability. Career changers show greater emotional stability than regular entrants.
Regarding teaching beliefs, novice teachers generally favour constructivist approaches, which emphasize active learning and student-centered methods, over transmissive (receptive) approaches. Primary school teachers and women lean more towards constructivist beliefs. There is a positive correlation between constructivist beliefs and traits such as extraversion, agreeableness, and openness, while transmissive beliefs are more linked to conscientiousness.
The study underscores the importance of personality traits and professional beliefs in shaping professional self-concept and teaching competencies. It highlights the need for teacher education programs to foster reflective practice, encourage self-assessment, and support the development of individual strengths. Institutional measures such as practice-based training, coaching, and continuous professional development are essential to promote sustained changes in teaching practices and beliefs.
In conclusion, the study emphasizes the importance of understanding the interplay between personality traits, beliefs and teaching effectiveness, and suggests further research to explore the long-term impact of these factors on teaching practice and student outcomes.

In this quantitative empirical study, a questionnaire was used to collect data from graduates of teacher education programs at all 14 universities of teacher education in Austria. The analyzed data, based on the responses received (n=785), provide insights into personality traits and teaching beliefs using the BFI-10 and selected items from the BilWiss study. The Big Five Inventory (BFI) is a psychometric tool designed to measure the five major personality dimensions identified in the 1930s, known as the Big Five: Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Emotional Stability (also referred to as Neuroticism in its negative form), and Openness to Experience (John & Srivastava, 1999). In this study, the BFI-10 was used, a shorter version of the full-scale BFI, developed to efficiently and reliably assess these personality traits while maintaining validity (Rammstedt, 2007). It consists of 10 items, with each of the five personality traits represented by two opposingly paired items. These bipolar items capture both the positive and negative poles of a trait. Additionally, six items from the BilWiss study (Kunter et al., 2016) were used to measure beliefs about learning. These items assess two perspectives: constructivist views (student-centered learning) and transmissive (receptive) views (teacher-centered learning). Constructivist items include statements such as, "Students should be allowed to come up with their own ways of solving tasks before the teacher demonstrates how they should be done." On the other hand, transmissive teaching beliefs are represented in the questionnaire as follows: “Students learn best through the demonstration of example tasks.”, or “Students learn best from presentations and explanations given by their teacher.” The responses of the surveyed novice teachers regarding personality traits were subjected to a rotated component matrix using Varimax with Kaiser normalization. To determine whether there is a difference in the expression of individual personality traits depending on the type of career entry, a one-way ANOVA was conducted. Similarily, the responses of the surveyed novice teachers regarding beliefs about learning were first subjected to a factor analysis using a rotated component matrix with Varimax rotation and Kaiser normalization. Here, too, a one-way ANOVA was conducted to examine whether there is a difference in the expression of individual beliefs about learning depending on the type of career entry.

Conclusions can be drawn about the significance and development of attitudes, convictions, values and personality traits in the different groups of people entering the profession. This may subsequently play a central role in the discourse on professionalization, professional self-image and professional identity of teachers. The data opens up an exciting field of possible interventions for teacher training, but also for professional training of teachers. However, the aim of using the BFI-10 inventory in the context of teacher training programs cannot be to select suitable candidates. Rather, the deeper knowledge and reflection of one's own personality can help to draw attention to individual strengths and also the potential to develop and pursue suitable strategies with regard to one's own professional actions in order to prepare for one's own work in the teaching profession during the course of study.

Bühl, M. & Beck, J. S. (2015). The relationship between teachers’ beliefs and teachers’ practices. In H. Fives & M. G. Gill (Eds.), International Handbook of Research on Teachers’ Beliefs, 87-105. Routledge. Kunter, M., Baumert, J., Leutner, D., Terhart, E., Seidel, T., Dicke, T., Holzberger, D., Kunina-Habenicht, O., Linninger, C., Lohse-Bossenz, H., Schulze-Stocker, F., & Stürmer, K. (2016). Dokumentation der Erhebungsinstrumente der Projektphasen des BilWiss-Forschungsprogramms von 2009 bis 2016: Bildungswissenschaftliches Wissen und der Erwerb professioneller Kompetenz in der Lehramtsausbildung (BilWiss). Die Bedeutung des bildungswissenschaftlichen Hochschulwissens für den Berufseinstieg von Lehrkräften (BilWiss-Beruf). Goethe Universität Frankfurt am Main. https://publikationen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/opus4/frontdoor/deliver/index/docId/42800/file/BilWiss_Skalenhandbuch.pdf Rammstedt, B. (2007). The 10-Item Big Five Inventory (BFI-10): Norm Values and Investigation of Sociodemographic Effects Based on German Population Representative Sample. European Journal of Psychological Assessment, 23(3), 193-201. https://doi.org/10.1027/1015-5759.23.3.193 Roberts, B. W., Luo, J., Briley, D. A., Chow, P. I., Su, R., & Hill, P. L. (2017). A systematic review of personality trait change through intervention. Psychological Bulletin, 143(2), 117-141. https://doi.org/10.1037/bul0000088 Voss, T. & Kunter, M. (2020). “Reality Shock” of Beginning Teachers? Changes in Teacher Candidates’ Emotional Exhaustion and Constructivist-Oriented Beliefs. Journal of Teacher Education, 71(3), 292-306. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022487119839700