Differenzielle Strukturen wahrgenommener beruflicher Anforderungen in den ersten Berufsjahren von Lehrpersonen aus der Perspektive der Beanspruchung

In research and practice the field of teachers’ professional demands is described as being comprehensive and complex. In engaging and dealing with these demands, further professionalization is possible. However, energy and resources are needed to engage and deal with the demands. Thereby, professional tasks are characterized by cognitive, emotional, and motivational requirements which determine the intensity of experienced strain. According to previous research with teachers in the first years of their career, the field of professional demands is structured into four areas. These areas are characterized as developmental tasks which concern teachers’ perception of their professional role, their capacity to teach and meet students’ specific learning needs, to effectively manage the classroom, and to cooperate with other professionals within the school. Two factors are assumed to be the underlying momentum which affects this structure. These are the perceived synergy in dealing with these demands, which reduces complexity, and the common content of the strain. As research also shows, teachers significantly differ in the intensity of strain caused by dealing with the demands. However, from this subjective perspective of strain there is a lack of research concerning the question of the extent to which the field of professional demands is structured differently from one individual to another. In the empirical part of the present study, this question was investigated for teachers in the first years of their career. It was investigated 1) to what extent the latent structure of professional demands as well as the intensity of strain in dealing with these demands were specific to this professional phase, and (2) to what extent they varied across these teachers. The empirical data originated from the binational research project «Beanspruchung und Kompetenzentwicklung in der Lösung von Entwicklungsaufgaben im Berufseinstieg von Lehrerinnen und Lehrern» (KomBest). The sample consisted of 949 teachers with one to six years of professional experience who, at the time of the survey, were teaching at primary school or at high school. Using the structure-detecting method of factor mixture analysis, three types of teachers are identified who differ regarding both directions of analysis, i.e., the latent structure of the field of professional demands as well as the strain intensity in dealing with these demands. For the type of teachers with low strain, the latent structure emerges as the set of four distinct yet interconnected developmental tasks specified for this professional phase. For the type of teachers with moderate strain, some of the demands are not, or only loosely, correlated with each other. This is mainly the case within the developmental tasks of teaching and of cooperation within school. For the type of teachers with moderate to rather high strain, most of the demands are closely interconnected and the field of demands is hardly differentiated into distinct areas. Across all types, the strongest correlations emerge between the teaching demands of individualization and internal differentiation, the demands of classroom management and, in part, the demands of role development. Cooperation within the school proves to be a developmental task of rather low strain. Moreover, this developmental task is rather independent of the other areas. It is thus possible to describe qualitative differences in the perception of the field of professional demands and of the strain that is revealed in dealing with these demands. Further research is needed to determine the meaning of these results in terms of professionalism and further professionalization.