Preservice Students' Motivations to Become Teachers and the Effect of Prior Informal Experiences in Spain

• In Event: Aspects Influencing Preservice and Beginning Teachers' Motivations, Aspirations, and Actions

Abstract

Purpose. The purpose of this study was to investigate the factors influencing the teaching choice for Early Years and Primary preservice teachers in the Spanish context. We also studied possible effects on students´motivation for those who had previous informal volunteering experiences.

Framework. To learn more about what motivates students to choose teaching, we translated into Spanish a reliable and valid multidimensional instrument: the Factors Influencing Teaching-Choice Scale (FIT-Choice; Watt & Richardson, 2007), founded on the expectancy-value theory of achievement motivation (Eccles et al., 1983).
Experiencies in areas of informal education seem to have an influence on future teachers’ careers decisions (Chang-Kredl & Kingsley, 2014). These various elements have been brought together in the ability, social influences and prior teaching and learning experiences factors in the FIT-Choice model. We hypothesized that there might be an effect of volunteering as a prior informal experience with FIT-Choice motivation and perception factors.

Methods. A total of 851 first-year undergraduate teacher education students from eleven Spanish universities participated in the survey (M age=21.6; SD= 4.29), the majority of whom were female (80.1%). Confirmatory Factor Analysis was conducted using maximum likelihood estimation to test construct validity the translated FIT-Choice scale in the Spanish context. One-way between-groups multivariate analysis of variance assessed the impact of prior volunteering experience on FIT-Choice motivational and perceptional factors.


Results. The CFA model was specified for the theoretical factors, which fitted the data well (TLI and CFI ≥ .95, RMSEA ≤ .06, and SRMR ≤ .08).

Most highly rated motivations to teach were (in order): work with children, intrinsic career value, shape future of children, perceived ability, social contribution and prior teaching and learning experiences. The factor with the lowest endorsement was fallback career. With respect to the perception factors, the highest endorsement was for satisfaction with choice, high demand and expert career. Social status, salary and social dissuasion were least endorsed.

Significant differences were found between students having done volunteer work (Wilks’ Lambda = .97, F(6,728) = 2.94, p < .05, p 2= .02) on perceived ability, social influences and social utility factors (i.e., enhance social equity, make social contribution and shape future of children).

Significance. Better understanding of the factors for choosing a teaching career can help to establish measures to improve the attractiveness of the teaching profession. Our results suggest that previous informal activities such as volunteering could play a relevant motivational role in detecting positively motivated candidates for teaching.

Authors

• Gloria Gratacos, C.U. Villanueva (UCM)

• Ernesto Lopez-Gomez

• Santiago Sastre

• Guiomar Nocito