A tanulmány a Dunaújvárosi Egyetem Tanárképző Központjában 1989 és 2024 között készült 2311 szakdolgozati cím kvalitatív és kvantitatív vizsgálatára épül. A kutatás célja a hallgatói témaválasztásokon keresztül feltárni a tanárképzés és a neveléstudomány diskurzusainak változásait. Hipotézisünk szerint a szakdolgozati címek érzékeny indikátorai a tanárképzés paradigmaváltásainak, különösen a kompetenciaalapú, digitális és reflektív pedagógiai szemlélet előretörésének, valamint a felnőttképzési tartalmak térnyerésének. Az elemzés kvalitatív tartalomelemzésre és leíró statisztikai módszerekre épült. Eredményeink három korszakot azonosítanak: a rendszerváltás utáni normatív modellt, a 2000-es évek tanulóközpontú fordulatát, valamint a 2010-es évektől kibontakozó digitális és andragógiai orientációt.

Vocational education and training (VET) plays a vital role in sustaining labour market competitiveness and supporting social cohesion, with vocational instructors holding a decisive role in transmitting occupational expertise and shaping the professional identity of future skilled workers. Although teacher motivation and professional identity have been widely examined, relatively little attention has been devoted to the role of personal resources in the education of vocational instructors. This study addresses this gap by analysing four cohorts of vocational instructor trainees at a Hungarian university between 2021 and 2024 (N = 221). Data were collected using the Values in Action (VIA) Inventory of Strengths, which measures 24 character strengths across six virtues, and analysed through descriptive statistics, cohort comparisons, correlation tests, and principal component analysis. The findings revealed a consistent profile dominated by fairness, kindness, love of learning, teamwork, and perseverance, reflecting a combination of ethical commitment, interpersonal sensitivity, intellectual curiosity, and resilience. Cohort-level comparisons indicated minor variations, such as stronger teamwork in 2022 and higher love of learning in 2023, while the correlation and Principal Component Analysis (PCA) confirmed that strengths clustered into broader constellations largely consistent with Peterson and Seligman’s six virtues. These results underscore the relevance of a strengths-based approach in vocational instructor education by showing how existing resources can support identity development, resilience, and long-term professional commitment, and point to the need for future longitudinal and multi-institutional studies.

This study contributes to research on teacher education and professional identity formation. Drawing on a longitudinal corpus of 2311 thesis titles produced between 1989 and 2024 within a single teacher education context, the analysis conceptualises titles as institutionally regulated academic practices through which students position themselves in relation to teaching, research, and professional knowledge. Methodologically, the study employs a thesis title analysis combining document analysis with discourse analytic sensitivity. Titles were coded along four analytical dimensions: thematic orientation, professional versus academic orientation, level of discursive abstraction, and implied student positioning. Rather than assuming a linear progression from practice-oriented to academic work, the analysis foregrounds parallel, hybrid, and non-linear patterns over time. The findings show that thesis titles consistently maintain strong connections to professional practice while increasingly incorporating analytical and abstract framings. Hybrid titles, which combine concrete teaching contexts with academic problematisation, emerge as a stable and recurring pattern. These titles reflect a liminal identity position in which student teachers negotiate professional relevance and academic legitimacy. These findings have implications for supervision practices and research-based learning design in teacher education programmes.