Motivational Factors Influencing Teaching as a Career Choice: Development and Validation of the FIT-Choice Scale

Abstract

The authors apply current influential models from the motivational literature to develop the comprehensive factors influencing teaching choice (FIT-Choice) scale, to measure factors influencing the choice to teach for beginning preservice teacher education candidates. They validate the scale using 2 large cohorts (N = 488; 652) and describe the factors that teacher education candidates identified as most important in their decision to teach. Furthermore, the authors examine longitudinal relationships for participants who have now completed their teaching qualification (N = 294) to determine how entry motivations relate to exit levels of teaching engagement and professional development aspirations. The study makes several important theoretical contributions: The authors extend the values component of the expectancy-value motivational framework, go beyond high school students to examine career choices of adults, and specifically examine the domain of teaching as a career choice. The new FIT-Choice measure provides a theoretical and analytical framework to help guide future investigations in this area. Understanding teacher candidates' motivations for choosing teaching has implications for teacher education planning and curriculum design, teacher recruitment authorities, and government and intergovernmental planning and policy decisions-especially when many Downloaded by [Tufts University] at 10:15 07 October 2014

The Moral Nature of Teacher Candidate Beliefs About the Purposes of Schooling and Their Reasons for Choosing Teaching as a Career

“…The analysis of candidates' responses to these essay questions quickly revealed that many of our teacher candidates hold beliefs that are consistent with the extant literature on why teachers choose a career in teaching (Book & Freeman,1986;Brookhart & Freeman, 1992;Goodlad, 1984;Joseph & Green, 1986;Serow, Eaker, & Ciechalski, 1992;Watt & Richardson, 2007). While the data from prior studies have typically not been analyzed in explicitly moral terms, we find that the most prominent reasons for becoming a teacher are significantly connected to the moral work of teaching.…”

Comparing Teacher Education and Finance Majors' Agreement with Financial Morality Topics

“…While it is agreed that there may be differences among the traditional and non-traditional respondents, both types of entrants into the field do express the welfare of children as a common motivation (Korthagen, 2004;Lee, 2010). Research has also found that preservice teachers, regardless of age, report altruistic reasons for pursuing a teaching career and appreciate the intrinsic value of teaching (Pop & Turner, 2009;Watt & Richardson, 2007).…”

Who chooses teaching under different labor market conditions? Evidence from West Germany, 1980–2009

“…So far, existing research in the field suggests that this might be detrimental to producing teachers who are fully committed to the profession (e.g. Watt & Richardson, 2007).…”

“…The FIT-Choice (Factors Influencing Teaching Choice) scale assesses the primary motivations of teachers to teach, and was demonstrated to be psychometrically sound (see Watt & Richardson, 2007 for details). Students from universities of applied sciences are excluded, because 50.5 % of these students have restricted higher education entrance qualifications ('fachgebundene' and 'Fachhochschulreife').…”

“…doing something because it leads to a separable outcome) are less clear, and correlations are typically weak. According to Watt and Richardson (2007) extrinsic motivations (also named 'personal utility values') such as job security, transferability, and time for family, relate negatively to later planned persistence and career choice satisfaction. Among student teachers, the strongest extrinsic career choice motivation is "job security" (König & Rothland, 2013;Watt, et al, 2012).…”