The context of the research is the difficulty in ensuring a sufficient number and quality of teachers. The demand for teachers either in quantitative or structural point of view, seems to be a widespread problem. Several international research projects, policy interventions, programs and campaigns have been launched to alleviate this problem. Programs were designed to support the career choice and to avoid leaving the profession in large numbers. For this purpose the exploration of helping and hindering factors of teachers’ career choice is essential. In our research we investigate these determinants among high school students entering higher education.

The main research question is how the perception of teaching profession affects the field related career choice?

Recent literature emphasize selection and perception or motivation as determinants in this regard (Bacolod 2007; Hanushek–Kain–Rivkin 2005). Former mainly refers to negative (self)selection mechanisms (Painter et al. 2007), and the latter puts the focus on the benefits of the teacher profession (Celikoz 2010). While the socio-economic background can not be easily changed, the perception of the profession is less stable and its improvement can facilitate choosing the teachers’ career.

Based on the above, during the research we go through the following questions:

Compared to other factors does the positive perception play an important role in teachers’ career choice?

In addition to the field relevant applicants, could any other student groups be considered as potential base for teacher trainings due to their favourable perception of teaching profession?

Within students entering teacher trainings could we find risk groups in terms of potential leaving the profession based on their negative perception?

We create explanatory models to explore the issue.

Bacolod, M. 2007. Who Teaches and Where They Choose to Teach: College Graduates of the 1990s. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 29, 155-168. Celikoz, N. 2010. Basic Factors that Affect General Academic Motivation Levels of Candidate Preschool Teachers. Education, 131, 113-127. Hanushek, E.A.–Pace, R.R. 1995. Who Chooses To Teach (and Why)? Economics of Education Review, 14 (2), 101-117. Painter, S. - Haladyna, T. - Hurwitz, S. 2007. Attracting Beginning Teachers: The Incentives and Organizational Characteristics that Matter. Planning and Changing, 38(1), 20.