Motivational Factors Influencing Teaching as a Career Choice: Development and Validation of the FIT-Choice Scale

TLDR

Understanding teacher candidates’ motivations for choosing teaching informs teacher education planning, curriculum design, recruitment, and policy decisions. The study develops the FIT‑Choice scale to measure factors influencing preservice teacher candidates’ decision to pursue teaching. The authors validated the FIT‑Choice scale with two large cohorts and examined longitudinal relationships to link entry motivations with later teaching engagement and professional development aspirations. The FIT‑Choice scale extends the expectancy‑value framework, broadens the focus to adult teaching career choices, and provides a theoretical and analytical framework for future research.

Abstract

The authors apply current influential models from the motivational literature to develop the comprehensive factors influencing teaching choice (FIT-Choice) scale, to measure factors influencing the choice to teach for beginning preservice teacher education candidates. They validate the scale using 2 large cohorts (N = 488; 652) and describe the factors that teacher education candidates identified as most important in their decision to teach. Furthermore, the authors examine longitudinal relationships for participants who have now completed their teaching qualification (N = 294) to determine how entry motivations relate to exit levels of teaching engagement and professional development aspirations. The study makes several important theoretical contributions: The authors extend the values component of the expectancy-value motivational framework, go beyond high school students to examine career choices of adults, and specifically examine the domain of teaching as a career choice. The new FIT-Choice measure provides a theoretical and analytical framework to help guide future investigations in this area. Understanding teacher candidates' motivations for choosing teaching has implications for teacher education planning and curriculum design, teacher recruitment authorities, and government and intergovernmental planning and policy decisions—especially when many.