engleski

Validation of a Scale Assessing Motivation for the Choice of Teaching Profession - FIT Choice

Teacher recruitment and retention has been recognized as one of the central problems of teacher policy worldwide (OECD, 2005). The issue of attracting and retaining teachers in the profession has focused the research interest on various issues related to the career choice. The area of teacher motivation has been increasingly attracting attention of the researchers and practitioners in teacher education from various European countries. The focus of this research has been particularly directed to the motivation of students preparing for teaching profession using a well established and internationally validated theoretical framework of expectancy-value theory of motivation (Eccles, 2005). The research was conducted as a part of the larger study on professional role development of student teachers during their pre-service education in Croatia. The focus of the project is the interplay of various motivational determinants of professional role development during in-service teacher training, such as personality factors, academic self-concept, motivation for learning, motivation for teaching, personal needs and efficacy beliefs. The aim of the present study has been to validate FIT Choice scale assessing various motivational factors influencing choice of teaching profession in student teachers (Watt & Richardson, 2007). Model that served as a basis for the development of this scale includes following aspects of motivation for teaching profession: socialization influences, self-perceptions of ability, perceptions of teaching profession, values of the teaching profession and motivation for the choice of teaching as fallback career. Socialization influences refer to prior experiences with teaching and learning and the role of friends, family and colleagues in individual’s choice of teaching profession. Self- perceptions refer to the perceived ability one has for teaching, while perceptions of teaching profession refer to the individual’s perceptions of teaching as an expert and demanding career and perceptions of the social status of the profession. Values refer to the intrinsic value of teaching as a career, value of the teaching career for personal goals such as having a secure job and time for family, as well as values of making social contribution as a teacher. The last construct refers to the choice of teaching as a fallback career when an individual was not sure about career choice or was not able to choose other career. The sample consisted of 188 students from teaching faculties at the two universities in Croatia. Several questionnaires were administered during their regular classes at the end of the first year of studies, including Croatian translation of the FIT-Choice scale (Watt & Richardson, 2007). The instrument was translated into Croatian using the back-translation procedure and several items were replaced with the more appropriate ones in agreement with the authors. The scale is comprised of three main sections. First section refers to the influences from important others and satisfaction with the choice of teaching as a career, next section contains items referring to the beliefs about teaching, while the third section refers to the main reasons for the choice of teaching profession. Participants gave their assessments on a 7-point Likert scale. Factor structure of the Croatian version of FIT-Choice scale provided a very good replication of the original factor structure of the subscales, given a relatively large number of factors underlying original scales and substantial differences in Croatian and Australian educational context, pre-service teacher education and status of teaching profession. Cronbach alpha reliabilities were high for the 15 subscales (Alpha >.739) while 5 subscales had somewhat lower but satisfactory reliabilities (Alphas between .617 and .670). The principal motives for career choice of our student teachers were the opportunity to work with children, social contribution, teaching as an expert career, perceived teaching ability while personal values as job security and time for family were perceived as less important. Intrinsic and altruistic motivational orientations of our student teachers are in line with the previous findings on student teachers in Europe (OECD, 2005 ; Hobson et al., 2009). Results provided a strong support for the construct validity of the scale and for the replicability of the model of influences on choice of teaching proposed by Richardson and Watt (2006) in the European context. The use of FIT-Choice scale in future research could provide valid and comparable results in international studies.

motivation for teaching; FIT- Choice; student teachers

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