In a climate of recurring teacher shortages in many (European) countries, attracting talented and motivated people into the teaching profession is an international concern that occupies policy makers and researchers from a diverse range of countries (OECD, 2005). Particularly, there is a need to better understand individuals’ motivations for choosing teaching as a career, how these motivations are formed, how they influence career decision-making, and how they are challenged in particular school environments (Richardson & Watt, 2010). Although a growing body of research examines teachers’ motivations, beliefs, and early career development (see Brookhart & Freeman, 1992; OECD, 2005), research has tended to be empirically rather than theoretically driven, maybe due to the paucity of compelling conceptual frameworks (Retelsdorf & Günther, 2011; Richardson & Watt, 2010). Moreover, while many studies have investigated the factors that initially motivate people to become teachers, much less is known about changes to those motivations over time.

This paper proposal is a part of a larger research project that investigates the development in student teachers’ motivation for teaching and commitment to teaching during the course of their teacher education programme for upper secondary school, resulting in a particular decision on job entry upon graduation. The “Factors Influencing Teaching Choice” framework (FIT-choice, Watt & Richardson, 2007), which comprises 12 motivation factors, is grounded in the expectancy-value theory (Eccles, 2005) and offers a theoretically grounded and psychometrically strong approach to examine teaching motivations and their correlates over time.

The present study is among the first to apply a typological approach. This is an important contribution to previous research based on the FIT-choice framework. Given the diversity among entrants to teacher education for secondary school and in career decisions following graduation (Rots, Aelterman, Devos & Vlerick, 2010), we assume that student teachers have different levels of professional engagement, already at the outset of their teacher education. Building on Watt & Richardson (2008), we expect to identify a typology of student teachers based on their planned effort in teacher education and their planned entry into teaching upon graduation. Developments in motivation and commitment are compared for different types of student teachers.
As the first phase of a larger research project, the current proposal tackles the following research questions:

1. Are there identifiable types of student teachers having distinct profiles of professional engagement at the outset of teacher education?
2. Do distinct types of student teachers show different motivations for teaching and different levels of commitment to teaching at the outset of teacher education?

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