Given the expectation of rising numbers of pupils in the Swiss schooling system and the ageing of the present teaching staff, the recruitment of students aspiring a teaching certificate is a matter of rising concern (Swiss Coordination Centre for Research in Education (SKBF) 2014). Recent research shows, that gender and migration background a two major determinants, when it comes to studying to become a teacher (Beck et. al 2014, Federal Office of Statistics (FOS) 2014), with a vast majority of aspiring teachers being female and without a migration background. Therefor in the scientific as well as in the political debate there are demands, to bring more men and persons with a migration background into teacher training programmes. In the case of gender, the main arguments are often, that the so called "feminisation of the teaching profession" has a negative effect on boy's school performance as well as the development of their gender identity (Neugebauer et al. 2010). In the face of rising numbers of students with a migration background in Switzerland, there is reasoning, that the underrepresentation of teachers with a migration background could pose a problem with regard to cultural and linguistic diversity (SKBF 2014). One of the key problems of the analysis of migration background is the question, how a migration background can be defined and operationalized, because naturally different operationalizations can lead to different results. Due to data availability and quality operationalization is often rather by driven data, than by theoretical considerations.

While the gender gap in teacher training can at least partially be explained with differing motives concerning career choices and the, at least theoretical, absence of wage discrimination (Denzler et al. 2005; Denzler & Wolter, 2008; Neugebauer 2013), there are to this point no studies, about the motives of people with a migration background entering teacher training in Switzerland. A lot of studies concerned with the choice of becoming a teacher utilize the value-expectancy model (Wigfield and Eccles 2000), which distinguishes between intrinsic and extrinsic motives for the teaching profession, taking into account the expectancy to successfully complete the training.

This paper addresses the following main questions: How can the composition of teacher training students in Switzerland be described along the lines of gender and migration background, compared with students at universities? Do students of different gender and migration background differ with regard to their motives of entering teacher training? To which extent are the results of the former two questions varying, taking different operationalizations of migrations background into account?

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