Vicarious Narratives From Colleagues: Exploring Meaning‐Making, Themes, and Affective Sequences in Relation to the Psychosocial Work Environment

ABSTRACT Guided by an ecological systems approach, we extend research on intergenerational and vicarious narratives to a vocational setting. We explored meaning‐making, themes, and affective sequences in vicarious work narratives and their associations with psychosocial work environment in 125 German secondary school teachers (46% female, mean years of work experience = 17.63). Participants narrated a personal and a colleague's work challenge and completed measures of psychosocial work environment. Both narratives were coded for agency, communion, redemption, and contamination, with mostly non‐significant correlations between the two narratives, supporting that vicarious narratives are distinct from personal narratives. Teachers frequently derived specific lessons, lessons in relation to systemic work conditions, and positive identity conclusions from colleagues' narratives, suggesting that vicarious narratives from colleagues serve multiple functions. We found few significant correlations between vicarious work narratives and the psychosocial work environment, and future studies are needed to further probe potential positive outcomes.