Career Motivations as Sources of Teacher Identity in Foreign Language Education

A wide range of factors impact the choice of teaching as a career and result in entry to the teaching profession. The notion that these career motivations may also be possible antecedents of teacher identity was the rationale behind this study. The present study aimed to determine pre-service English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers’ motivation for choosing teaching as a career and teacher identities, and to gauge to what extent career motivations predict their teacher identities. The study, therefore, adopted a correlational design, and more specifically, the multiple regression technique. Participants included 271 undergraduate students majoring in an EFL teacher education program of a state university in Turkey. The data collected through a set of scales were analysed statistically. Results obtained using the Factors Influencing Teaching Choice (FIT-Choice) model showed that the three major self-reported career motives were altruistic-type social utility values called shaping future of children/adolescents and making social contribution as well as job transferability, a component of personal utility values. Teacher identity levels appeared to display a steady increase in each of the four grade levels from freshman to senior year. Multiple regression results indicated that career motivations accounted for a substantial proportion of the variance in teacher identity. Among career motivations, ability, intrinsic career value and working with children/adolescents appeared to be the three strongest positive predictors of teacher identity, respectively. Following these, time for family and fallback career negatively predicted teacher identity. Based on the findings, educational implications were drawn and directions for future research were discussed.