An Experimental Scale to Measure Motives for Teaching

Abstract

FOR MORE than 30 years investigators have sought to determine motives or reasons why people select teaching as their profession. Studies have been con ducted with three kinds of subjects: High school students (4,11), college freshmen, usually enrolled in an introductory course in education (1, 3,5, 8,12, 20,21), and experienced teachers (2,7,13). Interviews, questionnaires and essays on the theme Why want to teach have been the most prominent de vices used. Motives can be studied or inferred at several levels. Much of the research on motives for teaching has been conducted at a very peripheral level. Many investigators have elicited the top-of-the-head reasons, which, consistently, turned out to be idealistic, generally admired and socially desirable in nature. Two of such reasons are I like working with children and I want to serve society. Their subjects have not volunteered reasons suchas Iwant to con trol others, Teaching allows me to express hostility without too much criti cism or Teaching is less competitive than other professions. However, these less idealistic and less socially acceptable reasons may have been factors operating in the subject's decision to teach, although he or she may not desire to or be able to recognize their existence. Theory and research conducted within the framework of dynamic psychology (9,10,15,16) and research findings in the area of teacher personality, notably thosebySymonds (14,15,17,18) sug gest that we take a more sophisticated approach to the study of motives for teaching. The experimental scale discussed in this paper was constructed* in or der to obtain a quantifiable measure of overt motivation (that is, reasons verbalized by subjects) which 1. would take into account the factor of the relative social acceptability of the stated reason and which 2. could be related to other varia bles, such as measures of covert motivation (for instance personality needs), teaching effectiveness, and satisfaction with teaching. The scale is designed for use with female pre-service or in-service teachers.