The Relationship Between Pre-service English Teachers' Career Choice Satisfaction and Career Intentions
Author(s):
Zeynep Olcu Dincer (presenting / submitting) Golge Seferoglu (presenting)
Conference:
ECER 2015
Network:
10. Teacher Education Research
Format:
Paper

Session Information

10 SES 01 D,

Paper Session

Time:
2015-09-08
13:15-14:45
Room:
325.Oktatóterem [C]
Chair:
Peter Gray

Contribution

In today's globalizing world English has become a lingua franca for international communication, technology and education. Attracted by the global power and efficiency of English in most of the countries' foreign language teaching policies has been focusing on the improvement of teaching and learning English processes. Educating English teachers to answer the demand for qualified English teacher workforce has been a nationwide policy for Turkish Universities. Here the focus of the efforts is two-fold: pre-service education of English teachers and hiring& training in-service teachers. Having this aim in the agenda, many research studies and projects have been conducted or supported by national and international institutions. On the same path with these studies, the present research aims to investigate career choice satisfaction and career intentions of senior year pre-service English teachers and the relationship between their career intention and career choice satisfaction. Although pre-service teachers' career intentions and career choice satisfaction are the terms significantly related to teacher attrition and effective use of teacher workforce,  there are not many studies to be used to improve local implications in Turkish context.

Career choice satisfaction and career intentions of pre-service teachers are found to be related to each other(Watt and Richardson, 2008). Candidate teachers' career choice satisfaction, being happy with the idea that being teaching profession,  is claimed to be influenced by prestige of teaching in society, self-regulated decisions, gender, difficulty of entrance to teacher education program, personality traits, working with children, having future time perspective, making social contributions, shaping the future of children and adolescent (Clark et al., 2009; Çevik et al., 2012; Eren & Tezel, 2010; Eun et al. 2013; Kılınç et al., 2012; Lin et al., 2012; Margaritoiu & Simona Eftimie , 2012; Young, 1995; Watt and Richardson , 2007). Career intentions of pre-service teachers refers to the their decisions to stay in teaching or changing the their career path just after graduation or after spending some time in teaching profession. Rots et al. (2010) indicated that there is a consistency between the job related decisions of teacher candidates and their actual entrance decision after graduation.

The purpose of this research is to answer the following research question:

a) What is the career choice satisfaction level of senior pre-service English teachers?

b) What are the factors that affect pre-service English teachers’ career choice satisfaction?

c) Do senior pre-service English teachers' career choice satisfaction change significantly according to the program that they are enrolled in?

d) Is there a significant relationship between senior pre-service English teachers' career intentions and their career choice satisfaction?

Method

This mixed methods study was conducted in 2012-2013 academic year. Data were collected from thirteen different Turkish universities' English Language Teaching departments. The research was administered in the last two months of participants' four-year pre-service education. Questionnaire items was answered by 672 pre-service senior English teachers from 13 different universities. Semi-structured interview sessions were held with 88 participants from 8 different universities who responded the questionnaire and accepted to participate in the interviews. All the participants took part in the study voluntarily. The two questionnaire items for career choice satisfaction (likert type) were adapted from Career Choice Satisfaction Scale used by Watt and Richardson (2008) and Eren (2012). The language of the items was Turkish. For career intentions, the participants were required to choose among three options (don't want to be an English teacher, changing career after a period of time, and want to teach English whole career life) that reflects them the best, and they were asked to explain the reasons for choosing it. In order to analyze quantitative data SPSS 13 was used. As the data are not normally distributed it was analyzed with a non-parametric test (Kruskal Wallis). Qualitative data set was analyzed by using Microsoft Word and Excel by following the data analysis procedures of content analysis.

Expected Outcomes

The mean scores for the career choice satisfaction items indicated that overall career choice satisfaction level of the participants was high. Mean for the first item (How happy are you with your decision to become a teacher?) is Mean = 3.97. For the second item (How satisfied are you with your decision to become a teacher?) the mean score is Mean =3.72. Statistical analysis results shows that career intentions of the participants significantly changes on university basis. Kruskal Wallis test results indicate that there is a statistically significant difference between the three groups with different career intentions (teaching whole life, changing career and not teaching at all) in terms of their level of happiness for being in the profession (p<0.05). The results of the content analysis indicate that influential factors for candidate English teachers’ career choice satisfaction can be grouped into two; personal and peripheral reasons. Personal reasons refers to the issues related to the beliefs, attitudes and emotions of the candidate teachers and the experiences influential on them; i.e., loving teaching, loving English language, positive effects of teacher education courses and teaching experiences, working with children, positive beliefs about teaching, high entrance motivation, motivation to make a change in English teaching practices and self-efficacy beliefs. The sub-factors listed under peripheral reasons refer to the social and organizational factors which are not under the control of the participants; i.e., alternative income opportunities, satisfactory salary, and recruitment opportunities, feeling social responsibility and prestige & facilities of English in the society.

References

Clark, H. K., Murdock,N. L., & Koetting, K. (2009). Predicting burnout and career choice satisfaction in counseling psychology graduate students. The Counseling Psychologist, 37,4, 580- 606. Çevik, B., Yavuz, F., Alkan, M., & Perkmen, S. (2012). Understanding Music Pre-service Teachers’ Vocational Satisfaction. Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, 46 ,4446 – 4448. Eren, A. (2012 ). Öğretmen adaylarının mesleki yönelimi, kariyer geliştirme arzuları ve kariyer seçim memnuniyeti. Kastamonu Eğitim Dergisi, 20 (3), 807-826. Eren, A.,& Tezel, K. V. (2010). Factors influencing teaching choice, professional plans about teaching, and future time perspective:a mediational analysis. Teaching and Teacher Education, 26, 1416- 1428. Eun, H.Y., Sohn, Y.W., & Lee, S. (2013). The effect of self-regulated decision making on career path and major-related career choice satisfaction, Journal of Employment Counseling, 50, 3, 98-109. Kılınç, A., Watt, H. & Richardson, P. (2012). Factors influencing teaching choice in Turkey. Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education, 40,3, 199- 226. Lin E., Shi ,Q., Wang ,J., Zhang,S., & Hui,L. (2012). Initial motivations for teaching: comparison between preservice teachers in the United States and China. Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education, 40,3, 227- 248. Margaritoiua A.& Eftimiea, S. (2012). Pre-university Teachers' Professional Satisfaction. Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, 78, 110 – 114. Young, 1995; Watt and Richardson , 2007 Rots, I., Aelterman, A., Devos, G., & Vlerick,P. (2010). Teacher Education and the choice to enter the teaching profession: A prospective study. Teaching and Teacher Education, 26, 1619-1629. Watt, H. M. G., & Richardson, P.W. (2008). Motivations, perceptions and aspirations concerning teaching as a career for different types of beginning teachers. Learning and Instruction, 18, 5,408-428.

Author Information

Zeynep Olcu Dincer (presenting / submitting)
Erciyes University, Turkey
Golge Seferoglu (presenting)
Middle East Technical University, Turkey

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