Motives of High-School Graduates for Entering the Profession of Teaching

Abstract

What are the reasons or motives that lead high-school graduates to enter the vocation of teaching? Are these motives suggestive or promising of a satisfactory professional attitude? Do young people enter the profession of teaching from choice or because there is nothing else to do after graduation from high school? Do prospective teachers give evidence of having received counsel or guidance in the selection of their vocation, or do the incidents of circumstance or chance take the place of vocational advisement? At what ages do young people decide to become teachers? Are their vocational choices based on early desires, or are they delayed for more mature thought and consideration? Do teachers in elementary schools and high schools impress their pupils with the importance, dignity, and worth of teaching in such a way as to lead them to select teaching as a desirable life-career? How do teachers in elementary schools and teachers in high schools compare as recruiting agents for the vocation of teaching? Is the influence of teachers of less or greater weight in determining vocational choices for teaching than is the influence of parents? What are the opinions of students in training schools with regard to their subjects of study? Are these opinions suggestive of desirable modifications of methods or subject matter? What subjects in the training-school curriculums are regarded as easy? What subjects are considered difficult? Why? Believing that the opinions of several hundred students would be interesting and profitable, the writer submitted the following questionnaire to 826 students in the Jamaica Training School for Teachers, New York City, in December, 1926. With a view to finding out the reasons and motives which induce young people to enter the profession of teaching in New York City, you are asked to i6