Ein Blick in die Black-Box: Wie der Zusammenhang von Unterrichtsenthusiasmus und Unterrichtshandeln bei angehenden Lehrkräften erklärt werden kann

While previous research has confirmed that teachers' intrinsic motivational orientations are linked to beneficial outcome variables (e.g., instructional quality and student motivation), the underlying mechanisms that mediate these relationships are less clear. Based on theoretical considerations concerning motivation and deliberate practice, this paper investigates a possible mediating effect by hypothesizing that teacher candidates with high levels of enthusiasm for teaching invest more effort and benefit more from teaching-oriented learning opportunities, which in turn leads to more beneficial instructional behavior. In all, 362 German teacher candidates in their first year of a 2-year induction phase reported their levels of enthusiasm for teaching, their effort spent on work tasks, their use of learning opportunities, and rated their own instructional behavior. Latent mediation analyses were partially confirmed with a mediator effect of effort on instructional and emotional aspects of instructional behavior. The results provide some initial indications as to why teachers with high enthusiasm for teaching show more beneficial instructional behavior.