Reasons of Preservice Teachers Attending the Pedagogical Formation Certificate Program for Choosing Teaching as a Profession

Abstract

DOI: Due to social, economic and cultural conditions, preservice teachers’ reasons for choosing the teaching profession differ from country to country. The purpose of the current study is to determine the factors affecting the choices of prospective teachers in the process of preferring the profession of teaching. The participants of the study were 230 voluntary preservice teachers randomly selected from among the students attending the pedagogical formation certificate program in the academic year of 2016-2017. Factors Influencing Teaching Choice scale (FIT-Choice scale) developed by Watt and Richardson (2007) and then adapted in the Turkish context by Kılınç, Watt and Richardson (2012) was used in the research. The correlation between the pedagogical formation students’ motivation and level of perception in relation to their preferring the profession of teaching was investigated by using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). It is seen that the obtained model has good fit indices. According to SEM, as a reason for choosing teaching as their profession, while the pedagogical formation students put greater emphasis on desire to work with children/adolescents and secure nature of the profession, they put less emphasis on transferability of teaching (job transferability) and use of the time allocated to the family. Moreover, their satisfaction with their decision to be a teacher seems to be great and it is observed that they have not been affected by the opinions of people around them.