Vorwissen und Lernvoraussetzungen von Seiteneinsteiger:innen und Lehramtsstudierenden. Befunde aus der berufsbegleitenden Qualifizierung von Lehrkräften in Sachsen

In Germany, lateral entrants are widely used to cover the demand for teachers. The design of such alternative career paths is not uniform across the country. However, what the lateral entry programs have in common, is that they are aimed at people whose educational and professional biographies differ significantly from those of the addressees of undergraduate teacher training. In Saxony, the on-the-job qualification of lateral entrants usually only begins after up to two years in the teaching profession and leads through a sequence of several qualification steps to equivalence with undergraduate-qualified teachers. The equivalence of the qualification level achieved goes hand in hand with a sequence of steps in the professionalization process that differs greatly from undergraduate teacher training. This article describes the extent to which lateral entrants in Saxony differ in their personal dispositions and learning prerequisites at the beginning of a part-time university qualification from first-year students and raises the question of the necessity of target group-specific qualification programs. The comparison is based on standardized surveys of 272 lateral entrants to the elementary school teaching profession from the 2017 to 2022 qualification cohorts and 96 first-year elementary school teachers in the 2013/14 winter semester.