Teacher shortage in Germany is severe – especially in vocational schools. Recent prognoses expect a shortfall of approximately 1600 qualified V(ocational)E(ducation) and T(raining)-Teachers a year until 2035 (Autor:innengruppe Bildungsberichterstattung, 2022, 315). The lack of vocational teachers concerns beyond S(cience)T(echnology)E(ngineering) and M(athematics) and the personal service professions. It is an unsolved problem at present whether the expansion of training capacities and the development of cross- and side-entry programmes will be sufficient to address the shortage in all vocational disciplines. Therefore, it is quite important to understand both, the attracting as well as the deterring factors of choosing teaching in vocational schools as a career. In educational research, however, teachers’ motivation in the choice of career has been analysed especially referring to expectancy-value theories (Eccles & Wigfield, 2020) mostly based on university student samples (Watt et al., 2012; König et al., 2013). This is obviously not ideal for two reasons: Firstly, in student-teacher surveys, the motivation to become a teacher is measured after the transition in teacher education (Goller & Ziegler, 2021). This might lead to biased answers due to social desirability and false memories to an extent we can’t nearly assess yet. Secondly, we learn less about the dissuasive factors of teaching as a career if we only ask those who have already - at least to a certain extent – decided on the teaching profession (Renger et al., 2022; Rahn et al., 2023). Against this background, the lecture will explore the questions, what influences students’ motivation or (dis-)inclination of choosing teaching as a career before deciding to start teacher training? Which attraction factors and especially which aversion factors can be identified? In order to answer this, empirical findings from a survey of roundabout 540 students of German vocational schools are presented and discussed. Referring to expectancy-value theory the fit choice scale of Watt & Richardson has been adapted. In addition, the prestige of teaching in VET as a profession has been measured. With a few exceptions, the scales have satisfactory or good internal consistency. Some descriptive results and logistic regression models will be presented and discussed as well. The presentation will lead to practical conclusions for VET-Teachers’ current recruiting strategies on the national level, which might run the risk of having undesirable side effects and some conclusions for international comparing research on the teacher shortage in VET.

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