TEACHING AS A SECOND CAREER: PROCRUSTES PROFILE ANALYSIS OF CAREER SWITCHERS

Abstract

For decades, the traditional path to a teaching career has involved entering the classroom immediately after graduating from college. However, the demographics revealed that about half of modern teachers filling the nation’s classrooms are second-career teachers. These are professionals who graduated a special program for teachers and passed the LET Exam qualifying then to teach. As a prevalent phenomenon, this study was conducted to uncover motives and reasons that continually attract professionals to choose teaching as a second career. Forty-one DBET students of SLSU-Tomas Oppus from SY 2011-12 to SY 2013-14 were purposively chosen as respondents of this descriptive-longitudinal study. Profile of the respondents were descriptively cross-tabulated and revealed that a majority of the respondents were female with a maximum income of Php19,000.00/month and graduates of business and management degrees. Procrustes profile analysis categorized the respondents into five groups and were the basis for identifying reasons for choosing teaching as a second career. They revealed that social and economic status and enjoyment in working with adolescents were the major reasons for choosing teaching as a second career. This study, therefore, provides more evidence alongside with previous studies in the literature which considers personal and social concern as the motivating factor for choosing teaching as a profession.