Preservice Teachers’ Motivations to Become Teachers: An Investigation and Scale Development within Self-Determination Theory

The motivation for choosing teaching as a career has long been of interest to investigators and policy-makers. The purpose of this study was two-fold: ۱) to investigate the motivations and perceptions about teaching as a career choice among preservice teachers within the Self-Determination Theory (SDT) of motivation; ۲) to develop and validate a new scale for motivations to become a teacher within SDT model. The collected responses through interviews (۳۰ interviewees) and an open-ended researcher-made questionnaire (۵۶ respondents) were initially analyzed via MAXQDA. Using SDT as a frame of reference, the analysis yielded three main categories of motives along the intrinsic-extrinsic motivation continuum and a-motivation. The interpretations of the data at the initial phase revealed that intrinsic factors were the primary motivations inspiring preservice teachers to choose teaching as a profession. The subcategories of extrinsic factors were the secondary motives influencing their preference for being a teacher. Comparisons of the participants by sex showed that females were more attracted by intrinsic than extrinsic factors as teaching motivations. The new scale for teaching motivation with ۵۹ items went through exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis and yielded a three-factor solution comprising a-motivation (۶ items), extrinsic motivation with four subcomponents (۱۹ items) and intrinsic motivation (۷ items) as the best fit for the scale measurement model. A total of ۳۳۲ participants using availability sampling in three Farhangian Universities took the scale during the second phase to validate the study.