Out-of-field teaching in Austria: A comprehensive analysis of its prevalence at the school, teacher, and subject levels based on TALIS 2018

Out-of-field (OOF) teaching is a strategy used to address the shortage of specialist teachers, but extant studies on this phenomenon in Austrian schools are scarce. This article uses data from TALIS 2018 to examine OOF teaching in lower secondary schools in Austria, revealing significant differences in OOF teaching’s prevalence across school types. About half of teachers in lower-level non-academic secondary schools teach OOF compared with less than 10% in lower-level academic secondary schools. In non-academic schools, arts, science, and physical education are most often taught OOF. A logistic multilevel model was used to examine the association between OOF teaching and various characteristics at the teacher and school levels. The model suggests that teaching experience is associated with reduced OOF teaching probability and that the subject taught is a key factor influencing the likelihood of teaching OOF. The study also finds that school size negatively impacts the probability of OOF teaching and that, particularly in main subjects, an increase in the proportion of disadvantaged students within a school population leads to a higher probability of OOF teaching. Consequently, this study’s findings indicate that OOF teaching predominantly manifests in smaller non-academic schools with a higher proportion of disadvantaged students.