The situation of teacher education varies from one European country to another.  In some of them teaching career is not a popular choice, but in other countries teacher’s profession is popular among young people. We have chosen two examples for our research, Estonia and Finland.

In the most effective educational systems one of the most important aspects for the increasing of teaching effectiveness is finding right persons for teacher profession (OECD, 2007).

The shortage of teachers is a problem in many European countries, including Estonia.  Teaching has been among the least preferred occupational preferences for young people in Estonia (Krips et al., 2009; OECD-TALIS, 2010). On the one hand, the best student candidates do not choose teacher education programs and the number of candidates is not high enough to choose from. But the other problem is that only one-third of graduates of teacher education programs enter into the profession (Ots et al., 2008). Contrary to this trend teaching is a popular career among young Finns.  The Finnish universities can choose the best candidates among a large number of applicants. As far as the especially popular class teacher education is concerned, only about 10% of all the applicants can be accepted to class teacher education. (Mikkola, 2012; Niemi, 2012).

Motivations for choosing teaching career vary, including a desire to work with children/adolescents and obtaining the intellectual fulfillment (OECD, 2005; Richardson & Watt, 2006), positive self-evaluation of their capabilities to be teachers (Sinclair, 2008), salary, job security, and career status (Kılınç et al., 2012; Watt & Richardson, 2008). In Estonia according to the conversations with the student teachers, high sense of mission and secure job (employment) are the two main motivatiors to choose teaching career, but many of these students see working as a teacher as only temporary in their working career (Leitmaa, 2011). Wages are not the primary reason for becoming a teacher in Finland either; factors like high social prestige of the teaching career, individual teachers’ wide professional autonomy in schools as well as the ethos of teaching as a service to society are more important (Sahlberg, 2010).

The situation in Estonia and Finland concerning the popularity of the teaching career is different. The question arises whether and how the factors influencing teaching choice (motivations) differ between the two countries.

The aim of the presentation is to compare motivations and perceptions among first year student teachers in Estonia and Finland.   

Research questions are the following: (1)Which are the most important motivations  and perceptions influencing the choice of the teaching career in Estonia and in Finland? (2) Which differences and similarities in motivations and perceptions appear between student teachers from Estonia and Finland?

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