Teaching as a vocation. An inquiry into the attractiveness of the teaching profession in Flanders 2002

The increasing demand for qualified teachers is nowadays met with a decreasing supply of teachers. The current research wants to outline the attractiveness of the teaching profession for young people, using a four-choices-model. Each would-be teacher has to choose if she (1) follows a teacher training, (2) if she will finish these studies, (3) if shell start as a teacher, and finally, (4) if she will continue the job, after some experience as a teacher.

The statistical comparisons of the groups of people confronted with each of these choices, will outline differences regarding motivation, jobsatisfaction, and aspirations. The intrinsic and extrinsic motivations to choose for the teaching profession will be discerned on the basis of the statistical analysis of existing data, but also by collecting new data from students and ex-students of the different teacher training. These analyses will also indicate the possible causes for the diminishing attractiveness of the profession and should enable us to track down the bottle-necks in the teacher training.