Session Information
10 SES 05 A, Research on Values, Beliefs and Understandings in Teacher Education: Choosing Teaching as a Career
Paper Session
Contribution
In several Western countries, a considerable percentage of teacher education graduates do not enter the teaching profession (OECD, 2005). While the issues of teacher recruitment and (beginning) teacher retention/attrition have received much research attention (Borman & Dowling, 2008), surprisingly little attention has been paid to teacher education graduates’ choice (not) to enter the teaching profession (Sinclair, 2008; Watt & Richardson, 2008). Particularly, there is a lack of theoretically based empirical research that helps to understand the relationship between teacher education and graduates’ choice on job entrance. Building on the social learning theory of career decision making (Mitchell & Krumboltz, 1996) and the model of Chapman (1983), this study identifies the predictors of graduates’ choice on job entrance. Based on the model of Chapman (1983), five categories of predictors were distinguished:
(1) Personal characteristics: sex and age
(2) Initial motivation for teaching
It is likely that a student‘s initial motivation to study teacher education is related to his/her decision on job entrance upon graduation.
(3) Teacher education
Next to the subject specialisation, we included graduates’ final diploma grade obtained in teacher education. Another important characteristic of teacher education is the adequacy of the support provided by the faculty of the training institute (‘faculty support’). Furthermore, there is a growing body of empirical evidence that mentoring can promote increased retention of novice teachers (Hobson et al., 2009). Since support from mentors during student teaching might have a comparable effect, the variable ‘mentor support’ was included in this study. Next, building on studies of teacher retention (Darling-Hammond et al., 2002; Zientek, 2007), we expected respondents’ feelings about their preparation for the teaching profession (‘teacher education preparation’) to be an antecedent of their entrance into teaching.
(4) Integration into teaching
Another element in the model of Chapman (1983) is the professional and social integration into the teaching profession. This refers to people’s self-perceived values, competencies, and accomplishments as a teacher. In this study, integration into teaching comprises respondents’ self-rated skills and abilities as a teacher (‘teacher efficacy’), their professional orientation, and their general educational beliefs.
Teacher efficacy has been related to enthusiasm for teaching, teaching commitment, and retention in teaching (Tschannen-Moran & Woolfolk Hoy, 2007). Furthermore, current educational policies (e.g., in Flanders; Aelterman, 1998) emphasize learner-oriented beliefs as well as an extended professional orientation. Therefore, we assumed positive links between respondents’ learner-oriented beliefs and extended professional orientation on the one hand and their entrance into teaching on the other.
(5) External influences
Teacher supply is influenced by general economic conditions (OECD, 2005). Therefore, respondents’ perception of ’employment opportunities’ as well as their perception of readily available ‘job alternatives’ for their actual first job were included in this study.
The general purpose of the present study is to test the predictive relationships between the above mentioned variables and graduates’ job entrance (teaching profession or not). A key contribution to previous studies based on the model of Chapman (1983) is the fact that a prospective research design was adopted that builds on two data collection phases.
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Aelterman, A. (1998). Het beroepsprofiel van de leraar: Een instrument in de kwaliteitszorg van de overheid [The professional profile of the teacher: An instrument in the government’s search for quality]. Tijdschrift voor Onderwijsrecht en -beleid, 3-4, 170-176. Borman, G. D., & Dowling, N. M. (2008). Teacher attrition and retention: A meta-analytic and narrative review of the research. Review of Educational Research, 78, 367-408. Chapman, D. W. (1983). A model of the influences on teacher retention. Journal of Teacher Education, 34, 43-49. Darling-Hammond, L., Chung, R., & Frelow, F. (2002). Variation in teacher preparation: How well do different pathways prepare teachers to teach? Journal of Teacher Education, 53, 286-302. Hobson, A. J., Ashby, P., Malderez, A., & Tomlinson, P. D. (2009). Mentoring beginning teachers: What we know and what we don‘t. Teaching and Teacher Education, 25, 207-216. Mitchell, L. K., & Krumboltz, J. D. (1996). Krumboltz’s theory of career choice and counseling. In D. Brown & L. Brooks (Eds.), Career choice and development (3rd ed., pp. 233-280). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. OECD (2005). Teachers Matter: Attracting, developing and retraining effective teachers. Paris: OECD Publishing. Sinclair, C. (2008). Initial and changing student teacher motivation and commitment to teaching. Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education, 36, 79-104. Tschannen-Moran, M., & Woolfolk Hoy, A. (2007). The differential antecedents of self-efficacy beliefs of novice and experienced teachers. Teaching and Teacher Education, 23, 944-956. Watt, H. M. G., & Richardson, P. W. (2008). Motivations, perceptions, and aspirations concerning teaching as a career for different types of beginning teachers. Learning and Instruction, 18, 408-428. Zientek, L. R. (2007). Preparing high-quality teachers: Views from the classroom. American Educational Research Journal, 44, 959-1001.
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