A Typological Approach to Investigate the Teaching Career Decision: Motivations and Beliefs about Teaching of Prospective Teacher Candidates

This article was published in Teaching and Teacher Education, Vol 28 number 3,
Author(s): Margareta Maria Thomson, Jeannine E. Turner and John L. Nietfeld, " A Typological Approach to Investigate the Teaching Career Decision: Motivations and Beliefs about Teaching of Prospective Teacher Candidates", Pages 324–335, Copyright Elsevier (April 2012).

In this study, the authors examined three typologies of teachers about motivations and beliefs.

The participants were prospective teachers enrolled in a teacher education program in the U.S.

The authors utilized cluster analysis to identify typologies of the prospective teachers based upon their self-report motivations for teaching.

Different combination of reasons (i.e., intrinsic, extrinsic, and altruistic) are relevant for each cluster.
Follow-up semi-structured interviews confirmed meaningful differences found between the clusters with regard to unique combination of motivations and beliefs about teaching relevant to each typology.