Exploring Pre-Service Teacher’s Motivations for Choosing Teaching as a Career.

Abstract

The purpose of the present paper is to determine the motivation factors that motivated the student-teachers of Jammu province to choose teaching as a career. Sample of the study was 200 student-teachers of 08 Colleges of Education of Jammu provinces affiliated to the University of Jammu and was selected by using simple random sampling.  Here 25 student-teachers were selected from each sampled College of Education. The sample consists of both male and female. Five Point - Likert Scale with 28 motivation statements under 5 broad groups of factors of motivation, namely Intrinsic, Altruistic, Extrinsic, Social Influences and Pragmatic was used for collecting the data. The results showed that from the 5 broad groups of factors of motivation, Intrinsic factor was highly rated and seems to be more dominant (Mean = 4.258) than Altruistic Factor (Mean=4.190), Extrinsic Factor (Mean=3.783), Social Influences (Mean=3.833 ) and Pragmatic Factor (Mean=2.546 ). We also compared the groups with regard to gender, level of education and locale. Intrinsic factor was rated highest in all the groups. Due to small sample size, the results cannot be generalized on the entire teacher education policies and practices but on the whole this study imparts perception towards the motivation factors that motivate large number of student-teachers to pursue Secondary Teacher Education Programme and to join teaching as a career.