Identifying Potential Secondary School Teachers among Science University Students: A Latent Profile Analysis

The STEM teacher shortage in secondary education makes it important to investigate who is interested in becoming a STEM teacher, so that recruitment initiatives can be adjusted to these students’ characteristics. A latent profile analysis on data from 905 STEM university students identified two types of students with teaching aspirations. The first type (14%) consisted of undecided students who were interested in many careers, had high social interest, and wanted to work in a nice environment with much social contact. The second group (12%) was interested in research, science communication, and teaching. This group had high intellectual and social interest, and wanted to be intellectually challenged. Both groups had high teacher self-efficacy. Implications for teacher education recruitment are discussed