Historically, teaching has been regarded as a social elevator, offering upward mobility for individuals from non-academic households (e.g., for Sweden, Calander et al., 2003). Among ongoing arguments whether teaching may still hold such potential, there is limited knowledge regarding the relationship between academic background and other personal factors of future teachers, such as their career choice motives.

This connection holds significance on several levels. Many countries face teacher shortages, so understanding the motivation of first-generation students is crucial for increasing the number of future teachers. On an individual level, career choices are decisions made under uncertainty, particularly when exploring options distinct from those personally known, e.g. due to parents’ occupations (Gottfredson, 2005). This uncertainty, coupled with the aspirations tied to upward mobility, may be more pronounced for first-generation students, hence the importance to acknowledge and explore their distinct motivational patterns.

The potential of teaching for upward mobility can be linked to a number of factors. First, teaching is a visible academic career: Gottfredson (2005) argues that to choose a career, one has to have this specific occupation within their cognitive map of occupations. For most occupations, this depends on the context a person lives in, but teaching is an profession that can be found on nearly everybody’s occupational map.

The second factor is accessibility. Historically, teachers did not need to study at an expensive university – at least for elementary school teachers – as teacher training could be done at less expensive teacher’s colleges (for Switzerland e.g. Schohaus, 1954). Similarly, the social valuation is not seen as prohibitively high. High status might make a profession seem “too difficult for [students] to enter with reasonable effort or […] pose too high a risk of failure if they try” (Gottfredson, 2005, p. 79). Whether the potential for upward mobility can be used is dependent on personal factors. In a study of educational trajectories of German students whose parents have low educational degrees, Legewie (2021) identifies four personal network factors leading to upward mobility or non-mobility: support with academic efforts, encouragement, support with solving problems, and role models.

The career choice of teachers can be assessed using FIT-Choice, an internationally established framework that assesses perceptions about the teaching profession (e.g. social status and salary of teachers) and motives for choosing the profession (e.g. intrinsic motivation, subject centered motivation, Richardson & Watt, 2006, 2016). Career choice motives are known to differ between countries (Richardson & Watt, 2016) as structural conditions influencing career choice, While a FIT-Choice study has already been conducted in Germany (König & Rothland, 2012), data on South Africa is limited (du Preez, 2018).

Thus, both career choice and social mobility might look different in a developing country like South Africa which can also be compared to a industrialised Western society which produce most of the literature about teacher’s career choice. This imbalance calls for collaborative, comparative studies that include countries from the Global South. For South Africa, for example, social mobility seems to depend heavily on parents’ educational background (OECD, 2018).

Therefore, this research paper utilizes data from an international project for a comparative analysis of students from Germany and South Africa with respect to the occupational backgrounds of their parents. The study aims to address three main questions:

1. Are there differences in the parents’ educational background of teaching students from Germany and South Africa or regarding sociodemographic variables (gender, age)?
2. Do the career choice motivations of students and their perceptions about the teaching profession differ between Germany and South Africa?
3. Are there differences in career choice motivations and perceptions about the teaching profession based on the parents’ educational background?

[The project] is an international project coordinated by [partner], Germany, with participants from five countries. Participation was anonymous and voluntary. The project used an online version of the FIT-Choice questionnaire (Richardson & Watt, 2016). Data was collected during lectures so researchers could assist should questions arise. The South African questionnaire was handed out in English, but interpreters for Africaans were present to translate. In Germany, the questionnaire was administered in German. FIT-Choice consists of items concerning career choice motives (n=37) and beliefs regarding the teaching profession (n=13). The model was tested across all five countries using confirmatory factor analysis with robust estimators (R Core Team, 2020; Rosseel, 2012) with acceptable results (career choice motives: RMSEA = 0.035, SRMR = 0.060, χ2/df = 2,28; beliefs: RMSEA = 0.048, SRMR = 0.055, χ2/df = 3,67; construct reliability of scales = 0.63 – 0.92; all factor loadings significant with p < 0.001; see Schermelleh-Engel, Moosbrugger, & Müller, 2003). The educational background of parents was measured by a scale based on an expanded version of the UNESCO ISCED-2011 scale (Unesco, 2012), ranging from 1 (“no schooling completed”) to 11 (“doctorate degree”) for both mother and father. A level of seven indicated at least a college degree or a degree from a university of applied sciences; all higher levels indicated university-related degrees. Students were put into three groups: A) 48% had no parents with an education level of 7 or above on our scale (meaning they are the first-generation students) B) 27% had one parent with a level of 7 or above (meaning they come from a family with mixed educational backgrounds) C) 24% had both parents with a level of 7 and above (meaning they come from a family where higher education is common). The data was analyzed using quantitative method (t-tests, χ2-tests, ANOVAs). All analyses were conducted in R and SPSS. Levene tests were used to test for variance homogeneity and robust estimators were used when necessary. The data used for this analysis included the datasets from South Africa (n = 142) and Germany (n = 211) that were taken from a larger sample of n = 1157 cases. The average year of birth was 1998 for German and 1999 for South African students (t(322.009) = -5.791, p < 0.001). In total, 88.4% of the participants were female, with no significant differences between the countries. Participants were within their first terms of teacher training.

There were no significant variances between the educational background of participants from both countries, nor regarding gender or age. Regarding their motives, all groups followed a specific trend, so variation stayed limited. The perceptions social status and teacher morale and the salary were assessed higher by group A while the motives shape future of children/adolescents, make social contribution and subject specific motivation were highest among group C, leading to a more extrinsic pattern in group A compared to C. Variance between Germany and South Africa was more pronounced. Eight out of twelve motives were different, as were two of the four perceptions. South African participants scored higher for all motives except time for family and scored higher on expert career, while Germans valued salary higher. This is in line with previous research and reflects the country's favorable socioeconomic conditions for teachers (Author 2020). With 48% first generation students, the study indicates that in both countries, teaching can still serve as a social elevator. First-generation students consistently rating teachers' social status and salary higher than other students illustrates that those are rated in comparison with other occupational options: As group A’s occupational landscapes presumable hold less other academic, well-paying, high-status professions, teaching is comparatively rated higher. The role of extrinsic motives is disputed. They may negatively affect intrinsic motivation (Deci, Koester & Ryan, 1999) and indeed, higher perceptions of salary and social status among first generation students were accompanied by lower intrinsic values. Nevertheless, they still exhibited high absolute values on intrinsic motives, indicating they possess intrinsic motivations as well (Author, 2020). Furthermore, the importance of extrinisic factors for students from less well-off backgrounds can’t be disputed. Thus, amid teacher shortages, emphasizing both intrinsic and extrinsic benefits of the occupation could be a way to expand the teacher workforce.

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