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Humanities
- ISSN: 2155-7993
- Journal of Modern Education Review
Studying = Students Dying!? Students’ Wellbeing and Strains in Initial Teacher Education
Köffler Nadja Maria
(Department of Teacher Education and School Research, School of Education, University of Innsbruck, Austria)
Abstract: Teachers’ wellbeing has for several years now been hotly debated. Teacher students as well as acting teachers have attained significantly worse average values in various national and international surveys on their (mental) wellbeing than students of other disciplines of study (particularly those of economics and languages) or other professional groups (e.g., civil servants, policemen, nurses) (HIS, 2010; Dür & Griebler, 2007; Schaarschmidt, 2004). Furthermore, a high percentage of teachers retire about ten years prior to the mandatory retiring age (Hillert & Schmitz, 2004), a lot earlier than other professional groups do. Considering those alarming results on teachers’ job satisfaction (with no improvement recorded over the last ten years; Rothland, 2013) and the need for resilient and engaged teachers due to their major responsibility, interventions are required. This paper explores study-specific factors that influence and modulate teacher students’ wellbeing during their time at university. The gained findings indicate a high level of (emotional and mental) stress, which teacher students linked to overall unsatisfactory study conditions (e.g., exam stress, organization of studies, final diploma thesis). Almost all of the respondents suffered from mood swings, frustration and loss of motivation at least once during their studies. The findings ought to enhance a better understanding of health affecting strains and challenges in teacher education and are supposed to promote the adaption or also extension of educational and curricular contents enhancing teachers’ resilience.
Key words: teacher students’ wellbeing, health affecting strains and resources in initial teacher education, resilience
