The Relationship Between Preservice Teachers' Academic Engagement and Their Commitment to Teaching as a Career

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session 3
  In Roundtable Session: Socializing Candidates Into the Field: Fostering Equity Commitments Through Teacher Identity Development

Abstract

This study investigated the relationship between pre-service teachers’ academic engagement and their commitment to teaching as a career choice. The study was conducted with 225 pre-service teachers (181 females and 42 males) in the faculty of Education at one of the well-established public universities in Ankara, Turkey. University Student Engagement Inventory (USEI) and the Commitment to Career Choices Scale (CCCS) with two independent constructs as vocational exploration and commitment (VEC), and tendency to foreclose (TTF) were administered to collect data. The results of correlation analysis revealed a negative correlation between academic engagement and VEC. The results of multiple regression analysis revealed that gender and planning to become a teacher predicted academic engagement, class standing predicted VEC, and age predicted TTF.

Authors

• Seyed Hossein Kalati, Middle East Technical University

• Gokce Gokalp, Middle East Technical University