This contribution investigates the social support that teacher educators provide to novice teachers during teacher induction. The term “teacher induction” is generally understood to refer to a support program for new entrants to the teaching profession providing structured guidance and learning opportunities.

A central component of many international as well as European induction programs is the support provided by experienced teachers (teacher educators or mentors), see Wang et al. (2025). Their task is to advise early career teachers (novice teachers) and promote their professional development (e.g., LoCasale-Crouch, 2012). Mentoring can be conceptualized as a kind of social support (e.g., Richter et al., 2011). Three facets of social support are distinguished: Informational (giving advice), emotional (help in the form of comfort and closeness) and instrumental support (provision of goods and materials) (Dunkel-Schetter et al., 1992). Novice teachers whose supervisors provided such social support showed an increase in teachers’ self-efficacy beliefs and a decrease in their emotional exhaustion (Richter et al., 2011).

Even though there is a wide base suggesting that support through mentors is beneficial for early career teachers (e.g., Thomas et al., 2016), the question of what facets of competence are most important for effective mentoring is relatively new, see Wang et al. (2025) for a review. The present study investigates how teacher educators respond when challenges arise and how they support their mentees.

Two motivational concepts in explaining supportive educator-learner interactions that are relevant for the present work relate to the questions “What do educators believe causes learners’ failure?” (Attribution Theory; Weiner, 1986) and “To what extend do they believe they can successfully accomplish the task of mentoring another teacher?” (Self-efficacy Theory; Bandura, 1995).

The first question refers to a person's belief about the cause that led to a negative event, e.g. a mentee, who experiences a challenging teaching situation. Weiner (1986) identified three dimensions of such causal attributions: Internality (cause in or outside the actor), stability (constant or changing over time) and controllability (volitional influenceable or not). Each dimension is associated with distinct psychological outcomes and has been linked to helping behavior (Graham, 2020). When an individual perceives another as responsible for their own needs they are more likely to withhold support. Emotion anger is believed to be a central motor for this behavior, which follows the causal attribution and promotes not supporting (Graham, 2020; Weiner, 1980). In the present context controllability and internality are of greatest importance. An ascription to the novice teachers’ own mismanagement is controllable and located within the actor.

Thus, we assume that the more controllable a situation is perceived to be, the more anger will be elicited, leading to the withholding of support. These relationships should be stronger when internality is rated high.

Similarly, it is hypothesized that internality serves as a predictor of anger, which in turn predicts the withholding of support. Given that an individual is not held accountable for all internal factors, such as low ability, we assume that stability plays an important role. Internality should therefore predict withholding of support more strongly when the cause is perceived as changing over time, indicating high responsibility.

The second question is about self-efficacy expectations. These are pre-action beliefs about how competent people think they are in dealing with a situation.

We hypothesize that teacher educators with high levels of efficacy might believe that they could control novice teachers’ achievement. Thus, we assume that mentors with high mentoring self-efficacy are more likely to assist their mentee.

Measures Teacher educators’ attributions were measured using an adaptation of the Attributional Style Questionnaire (Steinsmeier et al., 1985). We presented each participant with one out of three short vignettes describing a challenging classroom disruption experienced by one of their mentees during a lesson visit, e.g.: “The lesson is very restless. A student is talking to his neighbor, making funny noises and making his classmates laugh. Finally, the novice teacher loses patience and asks him to sit down at a free table, but the student makes no effort to stand up.” Participants were asked to imagine the situation presented, to write down the major cause and to give their rating for each of the dimensions suggested by Weiner (1986): Internality, stability, and controllability, e.g.: “Is the cause of the disruption more likely to be due to other people or circumstances or rather due to the novice teacher him/herself?” (Internality). Teacher educators’ affective experience of anger was measured with one item from the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (Breyer & Bluemke, 2016). To measure Social Support, participants were asked to imagine the process of reflecting on the given lesson visit together with their mentee. The Items were developed aligning with Richter et al. (2011), Schulz and Schwarzer (2003) and our theoretical understanding of social support. Since instrumental support showed insufficient construct validity, we can only distinguish between emotional and informational support. Both scales showed acceptable reliability: Informational support (4 items; e.g., “I would make suggestions on how things could be done better.”; α = .75) and emotional support (4 items; e.g., “I would show sympathy for the situation.”; α = .74). Self-efficacy was measured using a self-translated version of the Teacher Mentoring Self-Efficacy Scale (Tickel & Klassen, 2024). The used questionnaire comprises two subscales: Pedagogical Practices (8 items; e.g., “Provide constructive and meaningful feedback on your mentee’s progress and performance, helping them to identify their next steps?”) and Professional Relationships (5 items; e.g., “Adopt a non-judgemental approach to mentee development?”). Both scales showed acceptable reliability: Pedagogical Practices (α = .78) and Professional Relationships (α = .76). Sample and Statistical Analysis A total of 176 teacher educators in Germany (55% female; age: M = 49.83 years, SD = 7.97, range = 33–65) participated in an online survey. To test our hypothesis, we specified a structural equation model separately for each facet of social support to avoid multicollinearity and suppression effects. The level of significance was set to α = 0.05.

Opposing our expectation, perceived controllability did not predict informational support (β = -.028, p = .692) nor emotional support, β = .162, p = .261. Regarding internality, in contrast to our hypothesis, teacher educators who perceived the situation as internally caused indicated that they would provide even more informational support, β = .266, p < .05. Contrary to Weiner’s Attribution Theory this effect was weaker, less support, when the situation was perceived to be more stable, β = -.144, p < .05. Internality did not predict emotional support, β = -.035, p = .529. In terms of the emotional reaction, contrary to our assumption, teacher educators reported less anger when the situation was perceived as controllable, β = -.132, p < .05. As expected, this relationship was weaker, more anger, when the situation was perceived as being caused internal, β = -.094, p < .05. Generally, perceiving the situation as being caused by the novice teacher him- or herself was associated with more anger (internality; β = .058, p < .05). We did not find any mediating effects of anger. We hypothesized that educators with high mentoring self-efficacy are more likely to assist their mentee. In line with this hypothesis the factor ‘Pedagogical Practices’ positively predicted informational support (β = .270, p < .05), but not emotional support, β = -.021, p = .705. Teacher educators with high levels on the factor ‘Professional Relationships’ on the other hand reported the provision of more emotional support (β = .534, p < .05), but less informational support, β = -.116, p < .05. Preliminary analysis suggest that the provision of informational but not emotional support depends on teacher educators' attributional beliefs. Emotional support seems to be more due to competence beliefs. We would be happy to discuss and expand these findings at the conference.

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