Preservice Teachers' Motivations for Choosing Teaching as a Career: Does the subject choice matter?

Studies examining teaching as a career choice tend to focus on the differences between gender or study programme-related factors when looking at the participants' motivations for choosing teaching as an occupation. Only a few studies have examined the relationship between subject-related differences and career choice motivations. This article therefore aims to analyse n = 1365 German student teachers' motivations for choosing teaching as a career with reference to their subject choice. Students are in their first semester and enrolled in study programmes to become lower and/or upper secondary school teachers. The findings indicate small differences between different subject groups but show variance based on the study programme in combination with the subject groups