The professional life of leisure pedagogues at Austrian all-day schools

All-day schools do not have a long history in Austria, and neither does the idea of leisure education within schools. Not surprisingly, the field of work of these professionals is not well researched as the supporting staff at schools has a subordinate role within the school system. Additionally, the motivation of these pedagogues, who are responsible for a holistic education of pupils at Austria’s compulsory schools, is unclear and diffuse. For this purpose, a study was initiated with the objective to learn more about the situation of leisure pedagogues in all-day schools in Styria, one of nine federal states in Austria. In order to gain relevant information, a team of five researchers from the University College of Teacher Education Styria analyzed the current situation. The first goal of this research is to explore what characterizes these experts, who are not teachers by education. The second goal is to evaluate the training, which consists of 1500 working hours and was only recently developed. The focus is to discover more about how leisure pedagogues see themselves and what they think their job should look like. Methodologically, this exploratory research is based on qualitative data and focuses on in-depth analysis in order to gain privileged access to the participants’ everyday lives. By means of grounded theory, key themes arose from the data. Qualitative, semi-structured expert interviews were held in 2019 with 6 graduates of the leisure pedagogue training. Focus was given to the following categories: job profile and job requirements; motivation; challenges; training; initiatives. (DIPF/Orig.