The first presentation addresses interdependencies between structural conditions and policies of a country, such as different training systems, professional traditions and images as well as working conditions, and personal attributes, in the here presented study career choice motives. The focus is on a special group of professionals in the educational system: future early childhood educators studying for a tertiary qualification. European countries are currently at very different levels in professionalizing early childhood education, among others caused by the differing structural conditions and occupational traditions mentioned above (Eurydice, 2014). Suitable analyses regarding these professionals are still missing, apart from a few studies which do not emphasize structural factors (Langford, 2007). Diverging training systems, traditions and professional images are related to certain motives (Wigfield & Eccles, 2000), therefore the presentation covers different types of motives which are established internationally, such as intrinsic motives on educational work, content-related motives and extrinsic motives (Heinz, 2015) which reflect the country-specific structural conditions and policies. The collected motives are categorized according to the Self-Determination Theory by Deci and Ryan (2000), which is used as a framework. The presented study is part of the project [anonymized]. The coordination of the data collection and the analyses were conducted at [anonymized] in Germany. The study takes into account 468 future early childhood educators with a tertiary qualification from Germany, Sweden, Switzerland and Romania and is methodologically based on one-way variance analyses. Intrinsic motives were found transnationally to be of greater significance. Structural conditions, professional traditions and images as well as working conditions of the included countries are reflected in some of the career choice motives. On the intrinsic motivation level, imparting knowledge to young children, as required in the curriculum, is a strong part of future early childhood professionals in Romania, where the academic orientation of early childhood education has a long tradition (Oberhuemer, Schreyer & Neumann, 2010). Considering extrinsic motives, income and prestige proved to be of particular importance for future teachers in Switzerland; Swiss teaching staff is among the best paid in the world (OECD, 2006), which could affect the career choice. The results are discussed as starting point for targeted strategies for professionalisation processes, for developing training systems and the administrative framework.

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