Researchers and policy makers have increasingly focused their attention on improving the supply of teachers (OECD, 2005). The main concerns are three-fold: the number of candidates entering teacher education (recruitment), the number of beginning teachers leaving the profession (retention/attrition), and the proportion of teacher education graduates that never enters the teaching profession (job entrance). Focusing on the latter, this study examines how student teachers’ job motivation is affected by experiences during teacher education resulting in a particular choice on job entrance. Since all students entering teacher education have had a long “career” as pupils/students (see Lortie’s (1975) “apprenticeship of observation”), one may assume that they have an understanding of what the job entails and thus a rather job-specific motivation for teaching. It is therefore plausible to assume that experiences during teacher education have a pervasive influence on the decision eventually not to enter teaching. According to an interpretative and interactionist approach to teacher socialisation, (student) teachers are not passive receptors of socialisation processes, but rather as active agents interpret their experiences, make sense of them, and learn from them (e.g., Kelchtermans & Ballet, 2002; Zeichner & Gore, 1990). Crucial in this learning process is the development of a sense of professional identity (Rodgers & Scott, 2008). Kelchtermans (e.g., 1993, 2009) argues for the concept of ‘self-understanding’, referring to both the understanding one has of one’s ‘self’ at a certain moment in time (product), as well as to the ongoing process of making sense of one’s experiences and their impact on the ‘self’. The professional self-understanding constitutes one key domain of (student) teachers’ personal interpretative framework: the set of cognitions and beliefs that operates as a lens through which (student) teachers perceive their job situations, make sense of them, and act in them (Kelchtermans, 2009). The second key domain is the subjective educational theory: the personal system of knowledge and beliefs on teaching. The ongoing processes of sense-making – both reflecting and developing the personal interpretative framework – are considered to be crucial for understanding student teachers’ development, including the development of their job motivation and decision on job entrance. Among the so-called critical incidents, phases and persons (Kelchtermans, 1993; Sikes et al., 1985) in student teachers’ development, the periods of field experience have been documented as very influential socialising experiences (e.g., Feiman-Nemser, 2001; Wilson et al., 2002). It is during these field experiences that student teachers are challenged to actually perform their competences, become aware of their motives and commitments, and their sense of self as teacher (Bullough & Young, 2002). Using this conceptualisation of teacher development throughout teacher education as a theoretical framework, our central research question is: How is student teachers’ job motivation (as part of their developing personal interpretative framework) affected by experiences during teacher education resulting in a particular decision on job entrance? More specifically, we reconstruct a) the different changes of job motivation that result in a shift in the initial intention for job entrance, and b) identify the factors determining this process.

A qualitative–interpretative research methodology, more specifically a ‘multiple case studies’ design, was adopted. The selection of the cases stemmed from a quantitative study on the relationship between teacher education and the choice for the teaching profession (see Rots et al., 2009). In this respect, a ‘theoretical sampling’ method (Strauss & Corbin, 1998) was used. Given our central research question, we selected 12 student teachers who had shown a clear shift in their intention for job entrance. Data were collected using semi-structured interviews shortly before student teachers’ graduation from teacher education for secondary education (three-year bachelor programme in institutions of higher education). The interview questions explored student teachers’ reasons for entrance in teacher education, their experiences in each year of the programme, their personal interpretative framework and the critical incidents, phases and persons during their teacher training. Data were analyzed using the method of ‘constant comparative analysis’ (Strauss & Corbin, 1998).

Interpretative analysis reveals that the most powerful sources of the shift in motivation to actually enter teaching concern events and interactions in which student teachers’ ‘self’ as teacher is at stake. These mainly involve student teachers’ need to develop a socially recognised sense of professional competence as well as their dealing with social and cultural working conditions in the placement schools. These crucial determinants act as “double-edged swords,” being at the same time important sources for recognition as for self-doubt and loss of job motivation. Facing the complexity, the unpredictability, the normative, and especially the deeply social and relational reality of teaching and being a teacher constitutes an ongoing challenge for student teachers. Facing different definitions of good teaching and being a good teacher, dealing with social and cultural working conditions (e.g., collegiality) that may fundamentally differ from one’s deeply held beliefs and expectations, and above all becoming aware that many of the desired working conditions are largely beyond one’s control, is possibly very discomforting and disturbing for student teachers. These experiences turn out to be a key in understanding their choice on job entrance. At ECER 2010 we will theorise the implications for the pedagogy of teacher education.