Motivations for choosing a teaching profession and the professional development process of mathematics teachers

The master’s thesis is divided into two main parts, theoretical and empirical. Theoretical part has got four main content sets: the first one contains characteristics of teaching profession and teacher's competences, the second part defines professional development and influencing factors and presents different models of professional development, the third part defines teacher's professional identity and influencing factors, the last part enumarates motives which influence decisions to become a teacher, The empirical part of the thesis demonstrates results of the research which was carried out on the sample of primary school math teachers in the Republic of Slovenia. The purpose of the thesis was to determine how diverse motives for teaching profession influence career satisfaction, teacher's professional identity and development. Acquired results are presented in five main content sets which were formed acoording to the research questions. Motives which influence a decision to become a math teacher are presented in the first section. They are followed by the rate of satisfaction between teachers and factors influencing the latter. The third section is about teacher's judgement of professional development importance and factors influencing the latter. The fourth section is dedicated to teaching identity and factors which influence the creating of identity the most. The final part unites all first sections. Combination of motives with professional satisfaction, teaching identity and professional development estimation is demonstrated. The research showed among other that teachers choose to become math teachers on the basis of their passion for maths, wish to teach youth and work with children. The research revealed that teachers are satisfied in their occupation and pay a lot of attention to their professional development influenced mostly by expert team work. The purpose of the thesis is to find ways to encourage professional development of math teachers. Outcomes of our research were compared to some foreign ones and one came to a conclusion there are differences between Slovene math teachers in motives for choosing a profession and professional development concept and other countries