Trends in High School Students' Expectations for the Teaching Profession: The Role of Teacher Pay in a Comparative Perspective

• In Event: 44.024 - Understanding How to Improve Teacher Quality Through International Comparative Research

Abstract

Objectives. High school students’ expectations for a career in teaching are important determinants to understanding how teacher quality could be improved because the quality of the teaching workforce depends on the availability of a suitably large pool of qualified individuals wishing to have a career in the profession. This study examines the following questions. First, the study examines whether high-achieving students are more or less likely to have teaching career expectations over time. Second, the study examines whether boys are more or less likely to expect a teaching career over time. Third, the study examines trends in high school students’ expectations for a teaching career and how this is associated with changes in teacher salaries.
Perspectives. This study draws on human capital theory which emphasizes the importance of economic incentives in explaining the development of occupational preference among high school students. The human capital theory of occupational choice assumes that individuals rationally choose occupations that provide maximum benefits—potential earnings and, for some, nonmonetary returns—across all potential occupations. Bostkin (1974), for example, emphasized the importance of expected earnings on individuals’ choice of occupation. The application of human capital theory to occupational expectations is simple and straightforward: Students develop occupational preferences based on the expected future earnings of occupations. The purpose of this research is to test whether competitive teacher salaries are positively associated with high school students’ career expectations for the teaching profession.

Data and Methods. The study uses data from the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2000, 2006, and 2015 cycles to investigate changes in academic profiles among students who report wanting to be teachers in 33 countries, including the United States. Three-level Hierarchical Generalized Linear Models and Difference-in-Difference are employed to investigate whether salary increases can attract high-achieving students into the teaching profession.
Results and Scholarly Significance. Prior research has shown mixed findings on the role that monetary incentives play in explaining academically-strong students’ teaching career expectations (Park & Byun, 2015; Han, Borgonovi, & Guerriero, 2016). Their identification strategy relied on cross-national variation in teacher salaries by using a single wave of cross-sectional PISA 2006 data and therefore results are correlational in nature. By utilizing three waves of PISA (2000, 2006, and 2015), this study provides better insight into the degree to which changes in teacher salaries affect academically-strong students’ teaching career expectations. Findings contribute to advancing our understanding of the ways in which teacher salary increases can encourage academically-strong students to consider becoming K-12 teachers.

Authors

• Seong Won Han, University at Buffalo - SUNY

• Francesca Borgonovi, OECD

• Sonia Guerriero