Social Utility Value Research Articles

A test of personal and social utility values and the appeal of a career in teaching

An effective education system depends upon attracting college students into the teaching profession, but most of the research on what motivates individuals to pursue teaching merely surveys individuals who have already entered a teacher education program. This study employs an experimental design to test the effects of exposure to randomly assigned lists of reasons to teach reflecting personal utility values or social utility values on the appeal of the career to a sample of college students. Results indicate that both personal and social utility values are relevant to the appeal of a career in teaching and to a similar degree. Gender differences in this relationship were negligible.

Students' motivations to become teachers: FIT-Choice findings from Indonesia

The motivations for undertaking teacher education and perceptions about the teaching profession were examined among 802 fourth-year undergraduate teacher education students at two public and two private universities in Jakarta and Yogyakarta, Indonesia (M = 21, SD = 2.31, 83.16% women). Following translations and piloting, participants completed the factors influencing teaching choice scale (FIT-Choice; Watt and Richardson, 2007) with culturally relevant factors added for: religious influences, second job (time for casual work), tuition fee for teacher education (cheaper), admission into teacher education (less competitive), time for teacher education studies (shorter) and media dissuasion. The extended scale proved valid and reliable with some modifications (e.g., item teaching qualification modified into teaching certification). Social utility values, prior teaching and learning experiences, intrinsic career value and religious influences were the main motivations for choosing teacher education, followed by secure progression prospects and 'second job'. Choosing teacher education as a fallback career was lowest rated, and correlated positively with all teacher education factors. Teaching was perceived as a highly expert career, with high social status.

Why the war on drugs in sport will never be won.

Recent exposes of drug use in sports suggest that doping might be more problematic than doping-control test results reveal. A zero-tolerance (ZT) model, which aims to eliminate the use, has dominated the thinking of sport’s policy makers over the last 15 years. In light of the limitations associated with ZT-based policy, we propose an alternative policy, one based on controlled use and harm reduction principles. We argue that substance control policies underpinned by harm reduction (HR) principles of social utility and public value will deliver superior social outcomes. First, a harm reduction approach better accommodates the competitive realities of sports and the impact of elite sports’ emphasis on performance at all costs. Second, HR prioritises athlete welfare over sport and brand reputation. Finally, while appreciating the regulatory and risk management responsibilities of sports’ governing bodies, the HR model offers greater space to the athlete’s right to privacy, and right to personal autonomy.

Influence of Prior Experiences on Pre-Service Language Teachers’ Perception of Teaching

Extended prior experience causes student teachers to develop personal beliefs and knowledge about teaching. Through their teacher education, they are enculturated into the profession. This process may sometimes create a tension between “old” and “new” schemes due to different factors such as prior experience and predispositions about teaching. For a better understanding of their professional and personal formation as teachers investigating pre-service teachers’ biographical background experiences and the aspects of teaching they find important is essential. This study aims at exploring positive and negative influences of pre-service teachers’ previous experiences, the aspects of teaching they find the most and least appealing and their expectations from the teacher education program. The study is qualitative in nature. Data was collected from a total of twenty six senior pre-service teachers enrolled in English Language Teaching Program at a state university in Turkey through semi-structured interviews and written comments. Qualitative content analysis was adopted to analyze the responses. While the pre-service teachers reported to be positively influenced by the teachers with pedagogical content knowledge, they are negatively influenced by the teachers who lack content and pedagogical knowledge. Among the motivating aspects of teaching, intrinsic career value, personal utility value and social utility value were the most frequently mentioned motivating aspects. Their concerns were related to task perception, most of which were connected to task demand issues. The most frequently mentioned expectation was the improvement in pedagogical knowledge.

Motivation and degree completion in a university-based teacher education programme

This study investigated which factors determine degree completion in a Dutch university-based teacher education programme. We assumed that both student characteristics and characteristics of the learning environment affected degree completion. We included the following factors in our study: motivation for becoming a teacher, teaching self-efficacy, professional commitment, perceptions of time management and perceptions of quality of instruction in the teacher education programme. Data were collected from 135 preservice teachers using a digital questionnaire. The student administration of the teacher education department provided data on degree completion. Analyses showed that teaching ability was the most important motive for becoming a teacher; it was also found to be a negative predictor of degree completion. We found that social utility values, professional commitment, perceptions of quality of instruction and time management contributed to the prediction of degree completion. The findings and implications for teacher education and policy are discussed.

English

The present study was carried out to examine the relationships between elementary school teacher candidates’ motivations for choosing the teaching profession, beliefs about the teaching profession, satisfaction with the choice, and burnout. The study was carried out with 171 senior elementary school teacher candidates at one public university in Turkey. Results showed student burnout was significantly and negatively correlated with ability, intrinsic career value, social utility value, and prior teaching and learning experiences as motivations to enter the teaching profession. It was also found that student burnout negatively and significantly related with task return and satisfaction with the choice of career. Moreover, there was found to be a significant and positive relationship between burnout and fallback career as motivating factor, which reveals that students who chose teaching profession as a last resort profession experienced a greater level of burnout. Regression analysis revealed that ability-related motivations to entering into teaching contributed negatively to student burnout, whereas fallback career and personal utility value motivations contributed positively to student burnout. Regarding beliefs about the teaching profession and satisfaction with the choice, it was found that task return and satisfaction with the choice were negative contributors to student burnout.   Key words: Elementary teacher education, student burnout, reasons for choosing teaching as a career, beliefs about the teaching profession, satisfaction with the choice &nbsp

Motivations of Turkish Pre-service Teachers to Choose Teaching as a Career

This study was conducted to investigate the motivations of 974 Turkish pre-service teachers for choosing teaching as a career and to examine their perceptions about the teaching profession. Correlations, t test, ANCOVAs and MANCOVAs were used to explore the relationships among participants’ motivations and perceptions, and to make comparisons according to different characteristics such as gender, different specialism, number of times participants had entered the university entrance examination, and rank of their preference of teaching as a profession. The results showed that the social and personal utility value and prior teaching and learning experiences were the highly rated motivation factors. The findings also revealed how the general image of teaching as a career held in the social-cultural context of Turkish society shaped participants’ motivations and perceptions.

Initial motivations for teaching: comparison between preservice teachers in the United States and China

This study examined similar and differing initial motivations to teach between 257 US and 542 Chinese preservice teachers using the recently validated FIT-Choice scale. In both countries, participants were motivated to enter teaching because of their social utility values. US preservice teachers reported significantly higher motivations from social utility values, teaching abilities, intrinsic career value, and prior teaching and learning experiences, and lower fallback career motivations. While both viewed teaching as low in return, Chinese participants rated teaching to be low in demand whereas US participants perceived it as high in demand. Despite this, US participants were more satisfied with their career choice. Subtle similarities and differences between the two countries are discussed in relation to social and cultural-value differences.

Factors Influencing Teaching Choice in Turkey

Why choose to become a teacher in Turkey? The authors examined motivations and perceptions among preservice teachers (N = 1577) encompassing early childhood, primary and secondary education. The Factors Influencing Teaching Choice (FIT-Choice) instrument was translated into Turkish and its construct validity and reliability assessed. Altruistic ‘social utility values’ were the most influential, followed by the desire for a secure job. Intrinsic value and perceived teaching abilities came next, contrasting with higher ratings in Western studies, alongside prior positive teaching and learning experiences. Family flexibility, job transferability and social influences were moderate, and the negative ‘fallback career’ motivation lowest, although not far below the scale midpoint. Science-related teacher candidates scored more highly on fallback career, had chosen a teaching career the most recently, and were lower on almost all other teaching motivations, demonstrating a less positive motivational profile. Findings are interpreted in light of the economic development and role of the teaching profession in Turkey. Less adaptive motivations belonging to preservice teachers in scientific fields highlight potential risks and recruitment strategies to optimise teacher quality in those priority fields which further research could fruitfully examine.

Motivation and personality of preservice teachers in Croatia

The study presents results founded upon the Factors Influencing Teaching Choice scale validation and the relations between personality traits and motivation for teaching in Croatia. A sample of 374 first-year preservice teachers from three universities participated in the study. Confirmatory factor analysis of the items comprising the Croatian version of the FIT-Choice scale provided support for its construct validity following the omission of six items with low factor loadings. Personality dimensions of the five-factor model provided a set of theoretically meaningful relations with the specific motivational factors determining the choice of teaching profession. In line with previous studies, our results showed that personality traits better predicted intrinsic motivation compared to extrinsic motivation. Two interpersonal dimensions, extraversion and agreeableness, were significant predictors of intrinsic career value, but also of satisfaction with the choice of this profession. Extraversion also predicted ability, whereas agreeableness demonstrated positive relations with social utility value motivations for a teaching career.

Motivational Constructs Influencing Undergraduate Students’ Choices to Become Classroom Music Teachers or Music Performers

The primary purpose of this study was to examine whether any of the six motivational constructs in the expectancy-value model of motivation (i.e., expectancy, ability perceptions, intrinsic interest value, attainment value, social utility value, and cost) would predict whether students intended to have a career teaching classroom music or performing music. Participants included 270 undergraduate students enrolled in music programs at seven major U.S. universities who completed an online questionnaire. Using stepwise multiple regression, the authors documented that attainment value, intrinsic interest value, and expectancy predicted 74% of the variance in whether students intended to choose a career teaching music. They found that expectancy, attainment value, ability perceptions, and intrinsic interest value explained 65% of the variance in whether students intended to choose a career in music performance. Because of the importance of attainment value in predicting students’ intentions to teach and the importance of expectancies in predicting their intentions to have a performance career, these two constructs would be obvious choices for teachers and advisors to target if they want to encourage students to pursue these careers.

Choosing Teaching as a Career: Motivations of Pre-service English Teachers in Turkey

This study examined the career motivations of pre-service English teachers at a state university in Turkey. For data collection, an adapted version of the Factors Influencing Teaching Choice Scale was used and 207 pre-service teachers were surveyed. The findings revealed that social utility and intrinsic values of teaching were important career motivations for the participants which were followed by ability related beliefs. Both male and female participants were more intrinsically and socially motivated, while male participants had higher ratings for job security and employment possibilities. There was not a statistical difference between first and fourth graders’ career motivations.

Preference, Social Utility and Relative Scarcity

This paper points out that consumption preference and pure subjective preference are not the same concept. The price system of commodity gives the social utility value of commodity and consumers only have two options for this utility value: accept or not accept. Consumption behavior is the result that consumer compares the utility of currency with the social utility of commodity. Consumer behavior theory has several logical paradox and this is a wrong theory.

A Study on Ways to Vitalize Digital Contents Business through IP Holding Company

In order to have the highest level of a certain society's technology be evaluated as digital contents technology the value concept of such technology's social utilization must be established while active investment on the technology takes place and makes it the subject of social capitalization. This study wishes to discuss the strategies and methods of establishing and managing IP holding company which requires business activation with digital contents technology at its base, research ways of vitalizing IP holding company to expand social utility values of contents technology, suggest necessary systemic improvements and investment activation methods, management structure, and governance structure by investigating ways to stimulate the industrialization of contents technology through the establishment and management of this IP holding company, and finally come up with a realistic measure to establish and manage a IP holding company. Strategies on commercialization of digital contents technology and acceleration of technology development, as well as activation of venture business set-ups will be analyzed and suggested based on such suggestions while IP holding company's digital contents technology investment activation model will be established to produce means to realize discovering superior contents companies and activation of investment, and activating high quality contents production for the global market.

Investigating pre-service teacher motivation across cultures using the Teachers’ Ten Statements Test

Motivations for choosing teaching as a career were investigated in 200 pre-service teachers from Canada and Oman. We used a novel structured qualitative approach and two theoretical models to analyze how pre-service teacher career-choice motivation varied according to cultural context. The results of the study showed that Canadian participants made more self-references, and expressed higher levels of individual-focused motivation and social utility value as career motivators than did Omani participants. Participants from Oman expressed greater endorsement of teaching as a fallback career and higher levels of socio-cultural influences than Canadian participants. Results extend teacher motivation “teacher motivation theory” by investigating socio-cultural influences.

Relations among competence beliefs, utility value, achievement goals, and effort in mathematics

Research has shown that motivation is a key factor in the learning process as well as in school achievement. In essence, a number of researchers have highlighted the close link between motivation and achievement-related behaviours such as effort. The present study aims to acquire more specific information concerning the relations between competence beliefs, utility value and achievement goals in mathematics among secondary school students, to further document the influence of social agents, and to better understand the relationships between these variables, as well as to effort. Participants were 759 Grade 7 to Grade 11 students (389 males, 370 females). Structural equation modelling techniques were used to test a model of achievement-related behaviours (effort) in mathematics based on support from social agents, competence beliefs, utility value and achievement goals. Several self-reported scales were administered. Results indicate that effort in mathematics is mainly explained by mastery goals and competence beliefs. As for the role of social agents, results demonstrated that the perception of parental support chiefly explained variables associated with the valuing of mathematics while teachers' support acted most on competence beliefs. Two main conclusions stem from our results. First, mastery goals have an important and significant impact on students' effort in the learning of mathematics. Second, the nature and the strength of the relationships between competence beliefs, utility value, achievement goals and effort are not significantly influenced by age and gender, at least in mathematics.

How to Improve the Social Utility Value of Geographic Information Systems for French Local Governments? A Delphi Study

Today, geographic information technologies (GITs) stand out as the unavoidable answers to the French local governments' new stakes. Yet, an important discrepancy has been noticed between the utility levels (in the qualitative sense) and the theoretical intrinsic potential of these technologies. The social utility value of GIT seems quite low compared with the quantitative level at which they are diffused. The authors focus on the ‘determination of value’, by considering the obstacles to the development of a spatial data infrastructure in the French context. From the results of a Delphi study, the authors bring to the fore the fact that the institutional and organisational barriers 0ack of a clear policy in matters of access and dissemination; cost of public data; absence of fully operational norms and standards; failure to raise the awareness of the potential users as a whole; etc) more than technical difficulties, are the prime causes of this phenomenon. Through this analysis, the authors emphasise the need to organise a French national spatial data infrastructure, strongly linked with most of the local initiatives developed by the local governments.

Transitional Dynamics and Uniqueness of the Balanced-Growth Path in a Simple Model of Endogenous Growth with an Environmental Asset

We present an optimal endogenous growth model with an environmental asset which delivers a direct social utility value. The efficiency of the production services provided by the environmental asset directly depend on past capital accumulation. Such an assumption corresponds to assuming that past capital accumulation embodies new technologies requiring lower and lower environmental pressure per unit of output. We show that a sustainable balanced growth, where output and capital both grow at a constant positive rate, and the environmental asset remains constant over time, exists, is unique and is saddle-point stable. We discuss the implications of the optimal balanced growth path for environmental policy and show that emission taxes can be used to support subsidies on capital required to make the competitive endogenous growth rate equal to the socially optimal growth rate.

Ethnicity and social mobility: The case of Turks in Germany

This article uses the recent upward mobility processes of parts of the second-generation labour immigrants in Germany as an opportunity to investigate the interrelation of ethnicity and social mobility. Exploring this interrelation is important because migration research has so far either overlooked it or one-sidedly reduced it to the problem of an ethnic elite that cuts itself off from the majority of society. The widespread assumption that the social utility value of ethnicity, automatically declines during the upward mobility process needs to be questioned. Analysing the mobility strategies of educationally successful Turkish climbers shows exemplarity that ethnicity can indeed be a useful social resource in the mobility process. On the basis of first empirical explorations it can even be argued that in Germany a heterogeneous potential of future ethnic elites is currently emerging.