Perceived Apprecation in University Teacher Education: Subject Differences and Effects on Well-Being and Intention to Quit

Abstract

Perceived appreciation is an important social resource for academic performance, engagement and well-being in both work and higher education contexts. Students who feel valued by their lecturers learn more successfully and tend to drop out of college less often. Research has already shown that teacher candidates feel less valued by their lecturers compared to students in other subject areas. However, these studies did not control for intra-individual differences between subjects. Against this background, we examined how N = 1255 teacher candidates feel appreciated with regard to their competencies by the lecturers in their two subjects of study. Moreover, we investigated which personal and subject-specific factors affect this perception of appreciation. Multi-level analyses showed that the perceived appreciation varies mainly at the subject level, with teacher candidates in STEM subjects feeling less valued. On the basis of a longitudinal subsample (N = 436) we further investigated how the teacher candidates' perceived appreciation is associated with indicators of well-being, intention to drop out of college, and changes in these outcomes over the course of one year. According to the results, students who felt more appreciated by their lecturers were also more satisfied with their studies and courses, reported more subject enthusiasm, were less exhausted and were less inclined to drop out of college. In addition, students who felt appreciated developed more favorably with regard to these outcomes. We discuss our findings in the light of practice-related problem areas such as teacher shortage.