Motivations for choosing teaching as a career: a perspective of pre-service teachers from a Turkish context

Abstract

As teaching is a nation-building profession, the career motivations of pre-service teachers are worth exploring. This study examines the career motivations of 283 Turkish pre-service teachers who have chosen teaching as a career. Accordingly, they were asked questions about deciding to teach, career perceptions, and major expectations. A profile of the participants was then developed by analyzing their responses in quantitative and qualitative ways as being descriptive, statistical, and inductive steps. It is seen that extrinsic, altruistic, and intrinsic motivations all play a role when individuals choose teaching as a career. In addition, although altruistic motives are very dominant for females, mercenary-based extrinsic motives are dominant for males. Associatively, teaching is further desired as a first profession by females. In light of the findings, we give suggestions for teacher training institutions and policy makers.