Career Motivations of Turkish Prospective Teachers of English

This study aims at providing further insights into the factors influencing people's decisions to pursue teaching English as a career. The study attempts to give answers to the following questions: (1) What are the career motivations of 1st and 4th grade prospective English teachers? (2) Is there a difference between 1st and 4th grade prospective English teachers' career motivations? A total of 84 prospective English teachers (41 first grade and 43 fourth grade) participated in the study. The data were collected by means of a questionnaire designed to investigate career motivations of Turkish prospective English language teachers. For the data analysis, descriptive statistics in terms of mean and standard deviation were computed, and independent samples t-tests were conducted to find out whether the findings were statistically significantly different or not. The findings revealed that intrinsic and altruistic reasons were the most preferred ones by the student teachers. In contrast, extrinsic reasons were found to be the least influential factors behind the participants' decisions to become a teacher. The findings also showed that there is not a statistically significant difference between the grades in terms of career motivations. According to the results, further implications were suggested in the study.