Teacher education programs at small liberal arts colleges and universities are among the most vulnerable to decreased enrollment, yet they are uniquely positioned to provide well-rounded future teachers and educational leaders for a democratic society. To inform recruitment efforts, this study examined students' perceptions of teaching careers and…

The comparative, mixed methods international and cross-cultural study aimed to determine the factors that motivated teachers in Jamaica, Poland and Turkey to choose teaching as a career and ascertain what motivated the teachers at different stages to remain in teaching. Data were collected through the use of the questionnaire, which experts…

This paper contributes to the discourse on the role of critical pedagogy in the U.S. education system. The paper is inspired by the story of a participant from a larger "ongoing" phenomenological study designed to explore the experience of immigrant teachers in the United States. The participant was selected because she gained prominence…

In this large-scale qualitative study, we use an emergent design to explore pre-service teachers' (PST) motivations to enter the profession. We open-code 2,798 PSTs responses to the directive, 'Explain why you decided to become a teacher', given over the course of a six-year period from one large Texas teacher preparation programme. Using constant…

We survey undergraduate students at a large public university to understand the pecuniary and non-pecuniary factors driving their college major and career decisions with a focus on K-12 teaching. While the average student reports there is a 6% chance they will pursue teaching, almost 27% report a nonzero chance of working as a teacher in the…

Teacher recruitment is a pressing need in the United States. Equally important is the recruitment of more racial-minority teachers to help close the teacher-student diversity gap. We surveyed 300 undergraduates at our university regarding their perspectives on teaching careers--what they found attractive and deterring. Results from this survey and…

The present study explored motivation for teaching career choice within the FIT-Choice framework among different types of prospective teachers in Croatia. A total number of 634 prospective teachers enrolled in different initial teacher education programmes participated in this study (prospective preschool, classroom and subject teachers). Results…

The Factors Influencing Teaching Choice (FIT-Choice) scale measures pre-service teachers' understanding of initial motivations for choosing teaching as a career. A sample of 95 primary and 247 secondary pre-service teachers from Pakistan reported their reasons for choosing teaching as a career. This study used principal component and confirmatory…

It's assumed that university students' negative expectations for the future, combined with their prevalent resort to cognitive distortions, will heighten their anxiety regarding the profession. In this context, this study attempts to uncover the mediating role of cognitive distortions regarding the effects of negative expectations for the future…

Despite some research attention given to expatriate native-English-speaking teachers' (NESTs) identities and the national educational ideologies that have led to their international recruitment, surprisingly little research has addressed their career trajectories as TESOL professionals. To address this gap, this case study explores the career of a…

We survey undergraduate students at a large public university to understand the pecuniary and non-pecuniary factors driving their college major and career decisions with a focus on K-12 teaching. While the average student reports there is a 6% chance they will pursue teaching, almost 27% report a nonzero chance of working as a teacher in the…

In many countries, high-stakes tests play an important role in allocating students to prestigious tracks and schools in secondary education or to prestigious programs and colleges in tertiary education. It is not clear what happens if the cutoff points in these tests are systematically lowered. Will this affect subsequent educational careers? This…

The purpose of this qualitative descriptive study is to understand why alternatively certified teachers choose to enter and stay in the teaching profession in Florida. The study utilizes the Factors Influencing Teaching Choice (FIT-Choice) Model as the theoretical foundation for the following research questions, "Why do alternatively…

Complex career decisions, such as teacher mobility, are often reduced to stigmatizing labels that do little to account for the state of teaching as a profession or credit those engaging in migratory decisions as making healthy career choices. Through our study, we focused on understanding workforce mobility, teaching as an unstaged profession, and…

This research examined the factors that affect the decision of prospective classroom teachers to choose teaching as a profession and their preferences regarding work-life balance. A case study design, one of the qualitative research methods employed in this study, The participants consisted of 20 prospective classroom teachers who took the…