Late Dropout from Teacher Training as a Biographic Educational Decision

• Applicants: Professor Dr. Thorsten Fuchs; Professorin Dr. Svenja Mareike Schmid-Kühn
• Subject Area: Educational Research on Socialization, Welfare and Professionalism
• Term: since 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 535162559

With regard to the discussion of potential measures to mitigate teacher shortage in the German school system, the phase of teacher training represents one possible focus point – besides measures to recruit future teachers, the reduction of dropout rates during teacher training is of particular interest. Dropouts in the first phase of university training – whether in connection to leaving teacher training entirely or in connection to taking on a course of study that is not related to the teaching profession – have already been and are investigated. Yet, there is hardly any research concerning dropout from teacher training after the completion of university training or during pre-service training respectively. Since this comparatively late dropout is linked to high societal costs (e.g., in the form of false investments, lower tax incomes, teacher shortage) as well as high individual (psychological, social, financial and/or temporal) costs, exploring the causes for dropout is a crucial task for educational research. Hence, the objective of the proposal at hand is to reconstruct on an empirical basis of biographical narratives the genesis of the educational decision to leave teacher training at a relatively late point in time, i.e., after the completion of university training or during pre-service training, and to develop a typology, which illustrates the complexity of causes, biographical processes and configurations for the conditions of dropouts. In this context, specific processes of educational decision-making as well as similarities and contrasts in and between both groups are elucidated. For this purpose, the study includes a qualitative-reconstructive design based on biographical-narrative interviews with two groups of people. Graduates, who leave teacher training after the completion of university training and take on alternative professional and life paths beyond the pre-service teacher training phase, plus former pre-service teachers, who have left pre-service teacher training before final examination, are directly interviewed after the decision of leaving teacher training. The findings allow essential statements with regard to the multicausality, processuality and biographical character of late dropout from teacher training. Eventually, the study provides a basis for inferences concerning the reduction of teacher shortage.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants