Motivations, perceptions, and aspirations concerning teaching as a career for different types of beginning teachers

Why choose teaching? An international review of empirical studies exploring student teachers’ career motivations and levels of commitment to teaching

“…As discussed by Brookhart & Freeman (1992), it is obvious from these statistics, that certain student populations are overrepresented which poses difficulties regarding the generalizability of findings. Many of the more recent cross-institutional studies conducted more recently in Turkey (Aksu et al 2010), the UK (See, 2004;Reid & Caudwell, 1997;Thornton et al, 2002), the Republic of Ireland (Clarke, 2009;Heinz, 2013aHeinz, , 2013bHeinz, , 2013cDrudy et al, 2005), Northern Ireland (Moran et al, 2001), Australia (Richardson & Watt, 2006;Watt & Richardson, 2008b) and China (Su et al, 2001) offer a more complete picture of the profiles and motivations of the student populations entering teacher education in these countries.…”

“…Several studies examining the phenomenon of the career switcher into teaching have found that, while the extrinsic attractors of financial rewards and career prestige are not a high priority for late-entry teacher candidates, the special working schedules of teachers and the security of employment associated with teaching played an important role in the decisions of many respondents (Priyadharshini & Robinson-Pant, 2003, Richardson & Watt, 2005, Thornton, Bricheno & Reid, 2002, Watt & Richardson, 2008b. As reported by Richardson and Watt (2005), women and men participating in their Australian study wanted to find careers that allowed time to have a quality family life with reasonable hours and many were prepared to trade off higher salaries for security of income (Richardson & Watt, 2005).…”

Professional identity tensions of beginning teachers

“…They may not plan on having a long career as a teacher, if, for example, they become disaffected with their choice. It might be a possibility that they view the teaching profession as a 'stepping stone' to other careers, or find that teaching proves to be too demanding for them (Watt & Richardson, 2008). It may also be possible that the fact that tensions-free teachers hardly experience any tensions is related to their personality.…”

“…Troubled teachers may be very insecure about how they perform professionally and, as a consequence, experience many tensions. If beginning teachers have a passion for teaching, want to make a contribution to the lives of others, or view teaching as a morally good career (Watt & Richardson, 2008), they may feel pressured to succeed in their job.…”

Teachers’ Self-Reports of Active Teaching Methods: The Relationship of Age and Subject

“…Teaching is a profession which demands a lot from the person throughout the career (Santavirta et al, 2007) and across various cultures people who have chosen the teaching path have one thing in common -the passion to work with students (Watt & Richardson, 2008). A recent study by Guglielmi et al (2016) examined teacher engagement in different age cohorts, their results showed main difference for younger teachers compared to other groups.…”