Teachers undertake professional development for a range of reasons. In the case of a professional development course [PDC] for out-of-field teachers in mathematics (secondary schools), the participants’ learning motivation – as an intention to learn a specific content or to acquire a specific skill for achieving a specific goal – influences their success in learning (Schiefele & Schaffner, 2015) and plays an important role in their professionalization. Out-of-field teachers, like other teachers, vary in motivation but also in the orientation of their motivation (Ryan & Deci, 2000). This paper focuses on the underlying attitude/goals out-of-field teachers have for applying for PDCs. Where the teacher undertakes a PDC because of external goals such as career advancement and pressure from leadership (Bosse, 2017), a PDC for out-of-field teachers might be ineffectual due to lacking commitment to the professional learning required. So, the following question is crucial for the design of PDCs: Why do out-of-field teachers apply for a PDC in mathematics? In 2014/2015 we conducted a survey of participants of two certification courses for out-of-field teachers involving weekly meetings over one year in Detmold province, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany (Lünne & Biehler, in press). All 41 participants were asked to specify their experience in teaching mathematics, their reasons for applying, and their expectations regarding the PDC. In addition, we conducted an interview with 10 participants. The evaluation was completed with Qualitative Content Analysis (Kuckartz, 2014). We used Bosse’s typology of out-of-field mathematics teacher identity (2017) to build a first set of categories for intrinsic and extrinsic motives (Ryan & Deci, 2000) and expectations. Initial results show that 16 of 41 participants have no experience in teaching mathematics, while 13 only have 1 to 2 years experience. Nevertheless, reasons like a general or more specific desire to improve one’s skill in mathematics teaching played an important role for applying. We also found that the certification played an important role, for example, some participants mentioned specific advantages to their school-career because of acquiring a certification for teaching mathematics. Our results show that PDC-participants’ reasons for applying are heterogeneous and to some extent extrinsically motivated. Participants also might have no expectations and needs for their mathematics teaching, because they lack teaching experience or because the underlying goal for applying is not learning how to teach mathematics. But participants’ orientation and case-relatedness are preconditions to methodological principles when designing a PDC (Barzel & Selter, 2015).

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