Exploring pre-service teachers\u27 motivation for joining the teaching profession in Karachi, Pakistan

Teacher recruitment and retention remains an important concern, as not many people make teaching a profession of choice, which results in teacher shortage. The teacher shortage worldwide has given mount to conduct studies on pre-service teachers\u27 motivations for joining teaching career. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate pre-service teachers\u27 motivation for joining the teaching profession and their perception about teaching. Furthermore, it explored the association between the motivational factors and the perception constructs. It also compared the pre-service teachers\u27 motivation across the selected demographic variables (i.e. prior qualification and achievement grades in higher secondary). Using a cross-sectional survey, Factors Influencing Teaching Choice (FIT-Choice) scale was directly administered to 220 pre-service teachers enrolled in B.Ed. (lions) programme in Karachi, which were recruited from six teacher education institutes. Results revealed that the pre-service teachers highly considered teaching a sacred profession which would help them to promote peace and harmony through teaching (religious motives). Further, the desire to influence the next generation by providing service to society was also an important factor for the pre-service teachers in joining the teaching profession (social utility value). On the other hand, they reported to choose teaching as a last resort career (fallback career). The pre-service teachers perceived teaching as highly demanding (task demand) with moderate return in salary and status (task return) and they exhibited a relatively higher level satisfaction with their choice of profession. A positive relationship was found between the intrinsic career value (r=0.62, p\u3c0.001) and perceived ability (r=0.61, p\u3c0.001) to satisfaction with choice. Contrarily, a negative association p\u3c0.01) was observed between the intrinsic career value and social dissuasion. Comparison across prior academic qualification revealed that the arts group preservice teachers were more intrinsically motivated (intrinsic career value) than their science group counterparts (p\u3c0.01). Further, the low achieving pre-service teachers reported to have more positive outlook for the teaching profession by scoring significantly higher on religious motive (p\u3c0.05), intrinsic career value (p\u3c0.001), social utility value (p\u3c 0.001), ability (p\u3c0.001) and personal utility value (p\u3c0.01) as compared to the high achievers. Interestingly, fallback career (p\u3c0.05) was relatively rated high by the pre-service teachers falling in the category of high achievers as compared to mediocre and low achievers. The study provides insights to the teacher educators for counselling their students about their future aspiration and opportunities pertaining to the field of teaching. The tool adapted can be a valuable addition to the contextual literature which can be used for similar studies