Session Information
10 SES 05 A, Research on Values, Beliefs and Understandings in Teacher Education: Choosing Teaching as a Career
Paper Session
Contribution
This qualitative study was conducted to investigate the motives of nine non-education faculty graduates attending to a non-thesis teacher education master program for taking up teaching as a career. Factors Influencing Teaching Choice (FIT Choice) Framework (Watt and Richardson, 2006) was used as a theoretical and analytical framework. The findings of this study address the influence of social, economic and cultural contexts on how graduate students develop their motives for their decisions to become teachers. Findings could be used by teacher educators, policy makers and employing authorities in preparing teacher education programs, evaluating state of the teacher recruitment and to attract suitably qualified people into the teaching profession.
Recruiting non-education faculty graduates into teaching has been used as a solution to overcome the problem of teacher shortages within the last two decades in Turkey. This way, a partial solution for unemployment was also practiced. Although the initial attempts i.e. hiring too many non-education faculty graduates as teachers after short certificate programs which were later replaced with non-thesis teacher education master programs were effective to overcome teacher shortages, qualifications of the teaching force and the teacher education given at the graduate level have been interrogated lately.
Teacher education at the graduate level has been criticized for a number of reasons mainly because of entrants’ qualifications and the characteristics of the non thesis teacher education programs. However, neither the teacher education programs at the graduate level i.e. how they prepare teachers, nor the teaching qualifications of the non-education faculty graduates in these programs have been examined so far. Although they are highly criticized, the entry motivations of non-education faculty graduates in the non-thesis teacher education programs have been overlooked, too.
Examination of non-education faculty graduates’ reasons to choose teaching and identifying their underlying motives would help not only to attract suitably qualified people into teaching profession but also to evaluate the state of teacher recruitment and improve teacher education programs. Sinclair, Dowson and McInerney (2006) highlight the importance of attracting pupils with the right motives that they would become more motivated, more interested, more active and better teachers in the future. This in turn brings several desirable outcomes particularly in relation to academic achievement.
This study was conducted to investigate the motives of nine non-education faculty graduates attending to a non-thesis teacher education master program in a Turkish university for taking up teaching as a career. The research question was:
What are the motives of non-education faculty graduates to choose teaching as a career?
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Alamargot, D., Favart, M. and Galbraith, D. (2000). Evolution of idea generation in argumentative writing: writing as knowledge constituting or knowledge transforming process. Proceedings EARLI–Writing Conference Sinclair, C., Dowson, M. and McInerney, D.M. (2006) Motivations to Teach: Psychometric Perspectives Across the First Semester of Teacher Education. Teachers College Record, 1132-1154. Watt, H.M.G. & Richardson, P.W. (2007). Motivational factors influencing teaching as a career choice: Development and validation of the FIT-Choice Scale. Journal of Experimental Education, 75(3), 167-202. 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.
Search the ECER Programme
- Search for keywords and phrases in "Text Search"
- Restrict in which part of the abstracts to search in "Where to search"
- Search for authors and in the respective field.
- For planning your conference attendance you may want to use the conference app, which will be issued some weeks before the conference
- If you are a session chair, best look up your chairing duties in the conference system (Conftool) or the app.