Investigating effects of the quality of field experiences and personality on perceived teaching skills in German pre-service teachers for secondary schools

•We investigated German student teachers for secondary schools in their first field experience.•Personality and features of the field experience are correlated with teaching skills.•Features of the internship explain more variance than personality factors.•Linking theory and practice is the most important quality factor.•We discuss methods for an effectively linking between theory and practice.

Quality of field experiences during teacher education as well as individual characteristics of student teachers are considered important for the development of teaching skills. In the present study we investigated both organizational and individual predictors of self-rated teaching skills in student teachers for secondary schools in Germany (N = 443). As predictor variables for teaching skills after a field experience we assessed the perceived quality of the internship as well as personality traits, as control variables prior educational experiences and academic abilities. The assessed quality feature “linking theory and practice” explained more variance in the prediction of teaching skills than personality traits.