Satisfaction, Enthusiasm, and Well-Being of Student Teachers: A Question of Appreciation?

The systematic review by Schneider & Preckel (2017) indicates that lecturers’ respect and friendliness, i.e. appreciative behaviors, towards the students are one key factor for student achievement, with an average effect of d = .47 across the studies reviewed. At German universities, subject and teacher training students attend joint courses. Since these groups differ in terms of study structures and aims, it happens that they are assessed differently in terms of their competence (Ihme & Möller, 2015) and the latter group might feel devalued by the lecturers (Erdmann & Ratzlaff, 2017). In addition to achievement, lecturers’ appreciation of students might also be associated with other criteria of academic success, such as satisfaction and enthusiasm in the subjects studied, the intention to quit as well as psychological well-being, as findings in occupational contexts and for in-service teachers suggest (e.g. Gavish & Friedman, 2010; Sirlopú & Renger, 2020). The current study focuses on perceived appreciation by lecturers in order to extend the findings for the population of teacher training students. We are interested in how this group feels appreciated in comparison to subject students and examine contextual and individual predictors of perceived appreciation. Further, we examine the effect of perceived appreciation on well-being and criteria of academic success.

Preregistration for: Carstensen, B., Lindner, C., & Klusmann, U. (2021). Wahrgenommene Wertschätzung im Lehramtsstudium. Zeitschrift für Pädagogische Psychologie. Hogrefe. https://doi.org/10.1024/1010-0652/a000337