New ZLSB podcast: Global insights into the teacher shortage

Intro

Person 1: For me, reading at university means that I get a lot of information quickly and can deal with topics relatively easily.

Person 2: Acquiring meaningfully structured knowledge and thus learning more about the world.

Person 3: Reading is our main access to new and old information, but also the best way to develop ourselves.

Podcast episode

Ines Röhrborn: Hello and welcome to our ZLSB book podcast entitled "Reading Center" to mark the 20th anniversary of the ZLSB this year. The Reading Center offers employees and ZLSB members the opportunity to present a book that is particularly close to their hearts. The aim is to get people talking about books that move and inspire them.

Today we are certainly doing this justice, as we are discussing a book that was published in 2025 in time for the ZLSB's 20th anniversary and brings together international authors published by the ZLSB. It features insights, problem-solving strategies and new ways to tackle the global phenomenon of teacher shortages. I am Ines Röhrborn, a teacher on secondment in higher education, and I have the pleasure of moderating for you today. I am particularly pleased to welcome my two guests today. I would like to warmly welcome Professor Axel Gehrmann, Managing Director of the ZLSB, and Dr. Peggy Germer, Project Coordinator for the in-service qualification of teachers in Saxony. Both are here today as co-editors of a special anthology: "Teacher Shortage in International Perspectives, Insights and Responses". Nice to have you both here today.

Axel Gehrmann: Good afternoon.

Peggy Germer: Good afternoon.

Ines Röhrborn: The first question on my mind is, of course, how did this idea of the ZLSB's first international anthology in open access format come about?

Axel Gehrmann: There is a shortage of teachers everywhere. In the Free State of Saxony, especially at the ZLSB, we have been dealing with this issue for over 10 years. In-service training has also gradually developed here as a central model to counter the shortage of teachers in the Free State. The model is unique in Germany and is widely respected. With this in mind, we asked ourselves what this shortage actually looks like internationally. How is the shortage of teachers identified? What is being done about it? And we used our stakeholders, who we ourselves had already met in an international context. That was the idea behind it.

Peggy Germer: Exactly, in 2020 we held a conference - the so-called LETE conference, "Lateral Entry Teacher Education", a lateral entry conference on the topic of teacher shortages and the consequences for teacher training. At the time, 120 guests from 16 countries were invited. These included the USA, the Czech Republic and Sweden, from which the stakeholders for the book were drawn. It should also not be forgotten that this conference - in the midst of the great corona wave that began in March - took place in virtual format.

The whole thing was preceded in 2019 by the founding of "IMPRESS" - a project of the ZLSB that deals with internationality through mobility projects, research and corresponding synergies. The first network partners were recruited from this department.

Ines Röhrborn: So the idea really matured slowly and some time ago. [Axel Gehrmann: Yes, the authors in the anthology come from 11 countries, including Australia, the USA, Japan, Sweden, Ireland and others. How did the authors come to be selected and what distinguishes them?

Axel Gehrmann : Peggy Germer has already pointed out that we have a network that has been gradually developing since 2018/2019. The ZLSB has been active internationally since 2014/2015. This is not just about formal encounters and getting to know each other's different education systems, but also gives rise to project ideas. Against this background, there has been an interest in bringing things together for some time. What unites the countries at the moment? It's the shortage of teachers. That's how the project came about.

On the one hand, we could have integrated many more stakeholders because the network is much larger. However, the organization of such a product is challenging. Sometimes there are also countries where the stakeholders decide they don't want to report on it themselves. The conditions in the countries and the freedom of movement of reporting vary greatly. In some countries, it is less open than in Germany, where we can use data to say what the potential teacher shortage looks like. In this respect, we are dealing with high-quality stakeholders from a total of eleven countries. We have always taken care to find people who are working on the topic in a formative way in their country. We will come back to this in a moment. That is why we were also able to include people in the volume who did not take part in the conference itself.

Peggy Germer: For me, it was always important to include not only partners who are renowned worldwide, but also the perspectives of neighboring countries. This is how we were able to recruit partners in the Czech Republic and Poland. In the Czech Republic, for example, we were able to recruit Dr. Petra Fuková directly from the city of Ústí nad Labem from Purkyně University, who has been very involved with combined studies, which we will discuss later. Professor Joanna Madalińska-Michalak from the University of Warsaw was also included, who focused primarily on the role of female teachers, but also on the shortage of teachers and the professionalism of alternative paths. We can also mention Falk Radisch from the federal state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, who looks at the big picture. This refers to the complex conditions under which teacher shortages arise in the first place and how they can be addressed.

Ines Röhrborn: The anthology is divided into three large parts. Firstly, country portraits are presented, then alternative approaches and finally empirical research and measures to counter the shortage of teachers. Professor Gehrmann, your chapter in Part 1 of the anthology is entitled: "Lateral entry and career leap into the teaching profession". What exactly is it about?

Axel Gehrmann: As with all the articles in the volume, it is an attempt to systematically describe what the shortage of teachers in Germany consists of. The history of the shortage is reported in the historical context after 1945, with a particular focus on the last 10 years, during which the issue has become increasingly important in East Germany. I was quick to point out with colleagues that this would also be an issue in the West German situation. Ten years ago, this was not yet a matter of course; people were sometimes laughed at as if the topic had no scientific relevance. In this respect, the article is an attempt to do historical research and at the same time show an alternative way of dealing with the shortage of teachers in Saxony.

Ines Röhrborn: You yourself were a visiting professor in Japan for a long time, where you got to know Professor Kenji Maehara, among others. His article has a very interesting title: "Between teacher shortage and the wind of change". How did you perceive this article after spending some time in Japan yourself?

Axel Gehrmann: Kenji Maehara's article is the product of a lot of work and mutual exchange. It is not a matter of course that we not only don't speak the same language, but also have to focus on topics in terms of how to work on something scientifically. It's not that easy. That's why we worked on the article for a long time, especially as he initially asked himself: "Can I even work on this, because we don't actually know the problem in Japan in the way you mean with the shortage of teachers or lateral entry?" He was right, that's how I perceived it. Here we assume that there will be a shortage of around 80,000 to 100,000 teachers in the next few years. He cannot confirm this for his own country and also explains why this is the case.

Nevertheless, he also sees something on the horizon for Japan, because in the past, in the heyday of professional acceptance of the profession, there were sometimes up to 15 people applying for one job. In the meantime, the ratio in Tokyo has fallen to one to one, mind you in the capital of Japan. In Germany, on the other hand, we have no problems finding applicants in large cities. In several articles and at conferences, he has emphasized that he assumes a lightweight teacher training system in Japan. Lightweight here means that there is no undergraduate teaching degree structure in Japan. It is more of an additional course of study as part of a general course of study with few credits. While teacher training students in Germany would like more practical experience, an 8-semester course in Japan only includes two to three weeks of school visits.

He traces this in his article - the lightweight nature and at the same time the problem that when we talk about lateral entry, we have to set up our own programs, such as our BQL project. In Japan, the situation is as follows: All students have the option to qualify for any teaching profession during their studies, so there is a disproportionate number of teaching certificates. These certificates are used to recruit lateral entrants, i.e. people from other professions for the teaching profession. In this respect, the problems of demand are there, but they can be recruited differently.

Ines Röhrborn: So it has already been anticipated in Japan, so to speak?

Axel Gehrmann: Yes, we could have a wide-ranging discussion about this - has it been pre-constructed here or is it a different form of teacher training? The stakeholders in teacher training often act in isolation. They are usually concerned with their own interests - for example, producing enough graduates. Yet teacher education is essentially a central pillar of any international higher education system. The higher education system in Japan is structured very differently to that in Germany. I would like to illustrate this with an example: In Germany, we think from the perspective of the federal states. We have 16 federal states and around 70 teacher training institutions with a population of around 80 to 85 million people. Japan, on the other hand, has around 130 million inhabitants and offers over 1000 opportunities to study to become a teacher. This means that there are significantly more contexts across the country in which you can obtain a teaching certificate. When it comes to the comparability of such systems, it becomes clear how difficult it is to apply uniform standards, as there are very different cultural and structural framework conditions behind them. While Germany has a federal structure, Japan is centrally organized. However, Japan operates through more than 40 prefectures, each of which is independently responsible for the local supply of teachers. Strategically, this model may seem more efficient, but this does not automatically mean that the teachers trained there are better qualified.

Ines Röhrborn: Okay, thank you. Which country portrait would you recommend reading?

Peggy Germer: Professor Gehrmann has just presented the Japanese perspective, which is somewhat further away in terms of geography and culture. I would now like to introduce a European perspective that is geographically and structurally closer to us: the Czech perspective. It is amazing how similar certain programs are structured. The combined study program described by Petra Fuková from the University of Ústí nad Labem is quite comparable to our approach. For this reason, I have highlighted this perspective in particular, although of course all the other contributions in the volume are also well worth reading. The people completing this study are also already working in the teaching profession. They are around 40 years old, have children and appreciate the close connection between their studies and their profession. At the same time, they find the course very demanding, as they described it themselves, and perceive it as a great challenge. Some background information is important in this context. After the political change, Russian was largely abolished as a school subject. It was replaced by other foreign languages, in particular English and German. However, there were hardly any trained teachers for German as a foreign language. As a result, teachers were initially employed who were not qualified to teach German. Later, the Czech government introduced a program that provided for mandatory qualification.

The university in Ústí then developed its own program, which differs from ours in some respects. We also have a similar program - the BQL program for in-service qualification of teachers. Here, participants come to us two days a week, are released from their teaching duties for these days and receive six hours off. In the Czech Republic, on the other hand, the post-qualification program also takes place over two days - but on Friday and Saturday. On Friday, the program starts at 2 pm and ends at 9 pm, on Saturday it runs from 8 am to 9 pm, without any reduction hours, i.e. in addition to the regular workload. The proportion of self-study is correspondingly high. The course lasts six to eight semesters, depending on whether you are aiming for a Bachelor's or Master's degree. However, we do not differentiate between Bachelor's and Master's degrees. After four semesters, students are qualified to teach at school. So you can see: similar starting points, but different approaches, and yet there are clear opportunities for comparison. It is precisely because the Czech perspective is so close to us that it is worth taking a closer look. We can learn a lot from each other and exchange ideas. But I don't want to give too much away - the book is still to be read.

Ines Röhrborn: Exactly.

Axel Gehrmann: I would like to add something about the Polish perspective, which particularly fascinated me. The contribution is extremely detailed, especially with regard to the voivodeships. It shows very specifically how the shortage of teachers is developing there and how difficult it is to develop alternative programs at all. The depth of the analysis is impressive; the colleague tries to show very precisely how complex this phenomenon actually is. The urban-rural divide, which we are also familiar with, becomes particularly clear, but is even more pronounced in Poland, as the degree of modernization varies greatly between the regions. All in all, a very detailed and really fascinating article.

A second point, a counterpoint so to speak, concerns the western hemisphere: Richard Ingersoll's report on the USA is also highly interesting. More than 20 years ago, he introduced a concept that has only recently come to the fore in Germany, namely the so-called "teacher pipeline". This term has long been established in the USA. It deals with questions of permeability: how many people are recruited, how does access to the profession work, and how can this be tracked across the country? It is also worth noting that Ingersoll talks less about the individual programs, as these are not necessarily more diverse in the USA. Rather, he focuses on the teaching profession as such. His aim is to fundamentally maintain the pipeline and attract more people to the profession. The central difficulty that he sees in the USA, and which we hardly ever think about in this country, is that there is a constant need for new teachers because, in his view, there are too many "bad" schools. These schools regularly have to employ lateral entrants, as there are not enough teachers with an undergraduate degree who are willing to work there long-term. In our research, we have not yet reached the point where we are systematically investigating who is actually being fed into this pipeline and which thematic focuses play a role. This is precisely why I find Ingersoll's approach so interesting.

Ines Röhrborn: Research is a good keyword for the transition, because the third part of the volume presents empirical research and examines successful examples from teaching in greater depth. At the end, Professor Gehrmann, you developed three models that make it possible to overcome or counteract the shortage of teaching staff. What are they and how do they work?

Axel Gehrmann: Well, I would rather say it's about countering the shortage, not completely eliminating it. The models are very different, but essentially it is an attempt to establish a statist approach to overcoming the shortage. This means that it is the state community that takes care of it, not private actors or institutions. This principle corresponds to the German model, as well as the Swedish model. This contrasts with the Anglo-American model, which - in the context of so-called New Public Management - is much more market-oriented. There it says: We may create the necessary institutions to ensure nationwide coverage, possibly also digitally. The state then says: Let it be. You leave it to the system, somehow a solution will be found. Each county is responsible for how many teachers it organizes for itself. From our rather statist perspective, this approach seems very strange.

And then there is the Japanese model, which is structured completely differently. To a certain extent, it is an attempt at overproduction, or to put it more accurately: a fundamentally different understanding of the university. To put it mildly, we think of the teaching profession in such a way that the degree course prepares students directly for the profession, i.e. leads into the pipeline to a career. In Japan, on the other hand, there are hardly any degree programs that lead directly to a specific profession. Studies there are not directly linked to a professional activity. Instead, the principle of "learning on the job" applies - later, in an institution, an administration, a public body or a company. Ultimately, it hardly matters what you have studied in Japan. Instead, it is more important to pass the entrance exam for certain companies with your degree. In other words, what counts is which university you studied at rather than which subject. The result is a deliberate overproduction: many people decide to study to become a teacher even though they don't actually want to become a teacher, but simply to keep as many career options open as possible and possibly switch to a different profession later on.

Basically, three different models can be derived from this: A statist model in which the state actively assumes responsibility; a laissez-faire model that relies on individual responsibility and market mechanisms; and a model that deliberately relies on overproduction and organizes career entry via "learning on the job".

Ines Röhrborn: The international volume was published this year in February and within four months there have already been over 21,000 clicks on this open access book. Who is the target group and how do you envisage this success?

Peggy Germer: Of course, we cannot verify this with absolute certainty, but we assume that the target group is primarily made up of educational stakeholders working in the university and higher education sector. In addition, it certainly includes employees in ministries who deal with education policy issues, as well as other interested parties from politics and education administration. The readership may also include individual network partners who have made their students and teachers in the field of alternative teacher education aware of the publication in a targeted manner.

It would undoubtedly be an exciting research question to find out more precisely who is actually among the readers. After all, 21,000 clicks is quite remarkable. We have various research networks that are accessible online, and I think that the collaboration with Springer-Verlag has achieved a considerable reach, especially with regard to providing free access worldwide and making the book's content accessible.

Ines Röhrborn: It's definitely a great result!

Peggy Germer: Thank you.

Axel Gehrmann: One of the results of this is that we are now being invited to conferences by people who were previously unknown to us and were not even present in this context. We have received several such requests in the meantime, and there is an increasing number of queries about our work. My impression is that the research topic "teacher shortage and the associated alternative routes into the profession" is gradually moving out of a rather marginal position and into the spotlight. Suddenly, new interests are emerging and the topic is no longer marginalized. We are now being met with a certain openness and the thought: "Ah, it's very similar here." We are now experiencing such reactions more frequently, especially from educational stakeholders who ask in a targeted manner. And that's a pleasing result, because that's exactly what our work was geared towards.

Ines Röhrborn: I still imagine it was a mammoth project to bring 11 nations and the authors together. It took some time before it was published. What are your next publication ideas for the near future?

Axel Gehrmann: If you go back to that briefly, yes, it did take a long time. The conference took place in 2020, in the middle of the coronavirus period. Just getting people to work with us again was a challenge. I've already taken on several editorships, and even within Germany it's not easy. However, if you want to do this internationally in the midst of a global crisis and work with a publisher that operates internationally but communicates in a very unique style that you first have to get used to, then it takes time. We have learned a lot from this and at the same time benefited from our networks. The next project has already been decided: we have continuously collected empirical data on the BQL in-service qualification, which we have been running since 2016/2017, which we now want to evaluate and summarize. This involves not only describing the structure of the teacher shortage in the Free State of Saxony, but also how this is embedded in the national context. We also have our own material on various types of schools and subjects. I am very proud of the fact that we have now contributed to the emergence of new doctoral projects on this topic. The topic is beginning to take on a life of its own, which is really great. Our goal is to once again work out the Saxon perspective in a targeted manner and to say: this is our product, this is our empirical basis.

Building on this, we want to conduct further empirical research, because lateral entry into the teaching profession is continuing. However, certain questions now need to be approached differently. For example, we now know How old are the lateral entrants? What habitual orientations do they bring with them? What previous educational experience do they have? And that is actually really amazing, even internationally there are striking similarities. We were in Australia and presented our data there. Our colleague Marylin from Melbourne said: "Wow, Axel, yes, that's how it is here too." So it seems that there is a global social context for this phenomenon. That's really fascinating - and we'll now summarize it in a compact way.

Peggy Germer: In addition to the empirical basis, it is of course just as important to present our examples of good practice and best practice. The Dresden model is a successful model that is attracting attention throughout Germany. I am convinced that it is worth taking a closer look at the individual subjects: What methods and didactic models are used to make teaching truly effective and successful? The aim is to implement the qualification, usually two years per subject, as well and smoothly as possible.

Ines Röhrborn: I wish you every success for the next round of publications. And I would also be interested to know whether there is anything that you personally have taken away from this anthology or from the individual articles that has influenced your perspective in a new or perhaps lasting way?

Peggy Germer: Then I'll just start. I think what Professor Gehrmann has already mentioned, the similarity of the problem and in some cases even similar approaches to solutions, even though we are separated by around 20,000 kilometers, is truly remarkable. Equally impressive is the different approach to certain issues, the integration into the respective national structures and the educational stakeholders, who are located very differently in each case. If I may come back to Australia: I found it particularly fascinating that it is not the financial aspect that is decisive for a mid-career change, but rather the intrinsic motivation to give something back to society, to get involved in school education and thus actively shape the future. I would also like to go back to what Mr. Gehrmann said about publication. After all, it's always about what moved me personally about this anthology. Working together with international partners over a period of five years requires a lot: patience, the ability to deal with contradictions and, last but not least, the ability to endure unclear situations. During this time, the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine broke out, as did the attack on Israel - all of which naturally had an impact on the conference proceedings, timetables and deadlines. I am therefore all the more grateful that we were able to publish the first English-language volume of the ZLSB in the end, with so many committed contributors who stuck with it until the end.

Axel Gehrmann: For me, the situation of the people has once again become much more tangible and sustainable: Who actually decides to become a teacher? I am pleased to see that there is a particular interest in this profession worldwide. I don't think we should assume that people will have to be forcibly recruited for this profession in the future either, that's an important point. At the same time, we can also find people in the older segment of the labor market who we can target in a targeted manner.

Another aspect is that other countries are much more relaxed about changes in the employment system, or even actively anticipate these changes. In Germany, on the other hand, we are strongly fixated on our undergraduate teaching structure. It is seen as indispensable, as the only viable path - nowhere else, never otherwise. In other countries, this is handled in a much more relaxed manner. And yet, if you look at the output of their education systems in an international comparison, they achieve neither significantly worse nor significantly better results. This should certainly give us pause for thought. We invest enormous sums in undergraduate teacher training and hardly use the potential that Maehara, for example, describes with regard to lateral entrants: "They also bring a breath of fresh air into the institution." Why don't we use this potential in a more targeted manner? Why is a career change not a matter of course? Why is it considered unusual to start a business first and then become a teacher, and not see this as a social stigma? I am very concerned with these questions. Our system is rigid in many respects. And I find it all the more astonishing that we in Saxony have managed to establish an alternative path at all, in such a highly bureaucratized German context.

Ines Röhrborn: Thank you very much! I have to say, I really wanted to read the book, because you can feel that there is an incredible amount of passion in it. There is a lot of history between the lines, international history, and it becomes clear that all the protagonists and authors have one thing in common: the shared desire to make education possible, to bring good teachers into practice and to find ways to give children and young people access to education. In this respect, I think it is a book that is definitely worth reading. It was a great pleasure to welcome Mr. Axel Gehrmann to my left and Dr. Peggy Germer to my right today. Thank you very much for joining us. This was the fourth episode of our ZLSB book podcast entitled "Reading Center". We hope that you have also become curious about the book, that you have leafed through it, clicked on it - and yes, that click counts for us too. We would be delighted if you would listen to the next episode again. See you next time, we look forward to hearing from you!