Conference Agenda

In a challenging context for the teaching profession and also for teacher education (Carrillo & Flores, 2022), it seems pertinent to highlight the relevance of teachers' motivations for choosing to teach. The factors that are sources of motivation for choosing to teach cover a wide range of nuances that are worth systematically exploring. In this regard, over the last decades, much research has been conducted on the factors that influence teaching choice in the international context (Fray and Gore, 2018; Heinz, 2015; Watt et al., 2017; Navarro et al., 2021). That is why identifying and analyzing the motivations for choosing to teach is a prolific line of research (Shang et al., 2022). Although, a scoping review of the literature shows that the investigations are contextualized in face-to-face teacher education.

From this perspective, the objective of this research is to identify the factors influencing teaching choice through an exploratory study with student teachers in a distance education context. The hypothesis that we posed is that the factors that influence the teaching choice of students in a distance university are different than those motivational profiles that traditional students have (face-to-face education) because the profile of the distance student is very heterogeneous.

Acknowledgments: Teaching Innovation Project supported by the Vicerrectorado de Digitalización e Innovación de la UNED (Spain): "Factors that influence teacher choice: an exploratory study with university students of the Degree in Early Childhood Education" (FIED-EI).

The role of teachers is becoming increasingly important as Europe addresses its educational, social and economic challenges (Eurydice, 2018). At the same time, the most widespread problems in Europe and the world are teacher shortage, which is no longer a myth (Martin, & Mulvihill, 2016), but is real, large and growing, and worse than we thought (García, & Weiss, 2019). The European Commision (2015) pointed out problems of teacher shortages: shortage in some subjects, in some geographical areas, ageing teachers, high drop-out rates from the teaching profession, insufficient numbers of students in teacher studies programmes and high student attrition. The pandemic has also had an impact on the number of existing teachers, through increased anxiety and changes in workload (Darling-Hammond & Hyler 2020). The shortage of teachers, especially those for STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics), is a well-known global problem recognized by many (Diekman, & Benson-Greenwald, 2018).

What are the main factors influencing the teacher shortage? In this research the factors are divided into three groups: work environment/circumstances, personal and academic/professional.

Factors related to the working environment/circumstances determine a teacher's job satisfaction in school. They are: lack of recognition, poor remuneration/advancement opportunities, and loss of autonomy (Aragon 2016). Few researchers noted the characteristics of schools: type of school, class size (Cowan, et al., 2016), a perceived lack of respect for teachers (Barth,et al., 2016), and teacher workload, teacher cooperation (Toropova, Myrberg, & Johansson, 2021). In Latvia, teachers' job satisfaction is most influenced by a positive and democratic school culture - teacher relationships, teacher-student relationships and teacher-principal relationships (Geske & Ozola, 2015:206). In the LIZDAs study (2016): the biggest difficulties that teachers face in their work are the lack of respect from education policy makers, children's permissiveness, increased media interest in negative events in school life, stress and professional burnout

Personal factors are mainly related to teachers' perceptions of the teaching profession and their motivation to work in schools. Kyriacou and Coulthard’s (2000) study on undergraduates’ views of teaching as a career choice indicated three categories of the most motivating factors: altruistic reasons (desire to benefit society), intrinsic reasons (interest in subject matter and expertise), and extrinsic reasons (extended work breaks, level of pay, etc.). As the current shortage of teachers in STEM subjects calls for stimulating students' interest and motivation to learn, the teacher is given the role of inspirer. To teach, motivation can be seen as a multidimensional construct that includes (social influence, positive prior teaching and learning experiences, perceptions of teaching ability, intrinsic value, personal and social utility values), perceptions of the teaching profession (perceptions of task demands and returns), and evaluations of social withdrawal experiences and satisfaction with the teaching profession choice (Kuijpers, Dam, & Janssen, 2022).

Academic/professional factors have been attributed to the teacher's performance in the classroom: Do my knowledge, skills, and attributes fit with those demanded by the profession? (Klassen, Granger, & Bardach, 2022). It means that all teachers need the skills (explain a subject in a way that students understand, use a variety of teaching methods) and knowledge (subject content, pedagogy and psychology) to accomplish their immediate goals as a teacher.

The teacher shortage is becoming more acute today, with fewer and fewer students choosing not to become teachers. This situation is particularly problematic in STEM education, so the aim of the study was to find out the views of STEM faculties students on the choice of science teaching as a profession. In order to achieve this goal, the research question was posed: what factors determine the choice of STEM students to become/not to become a STEM subjects teacher?

Background, rationale and research questions:

Although the empirical evidence on the educational impact of the systematic use of formal performance data from central tests is quite strong (Datnow & Park, 2018), the Flemish⁽¹⁾ education system is one of the few European education systems in which no form of central testing is widely implemented (OECD, 2013). As of school year 2023-2024, all Flemish pupils will also take central tests during their school career, which (in contrast to numerous other education systems) aim to take a strong development-oriented perspective.

While policymakers and governments expect teachers to use data to improve student learning, teachers still appear reluctant to integrate this data into their teaching practices (Schelling & Rubenstein, 2021). In this regard, a numerous number of descriptive studies provide in-depth insight into influencing factors of data use (Schildkamp, Poortman, Luyten, & Ebbeler, 2017). However, most of these studies only consider (a small number of) psychological factors to a limited extent. Since data use is essentially a human endeavour, it is important, in order to fully benefit from the rich potential of data use, to also study psychological aspects (Schildkamp, Poortman, Ebbeler, & Pieters, 2019).

Because the use of formal performance data from central tests for educational improvement can be considered a (relative) educational change, certainly in Flanders, but also to some extent in an international context, and to select psychological factors driving teachers’ data use for educational improvement, we drew inspiration from the literature related to ‘change readiness’. Armenakis, Harris and Mossholder (1993) consider teachers’ readiness as ‘one's beliefs, attitudes and goals regarding the extent to which change is needed and their perceptions of individual and organisational ability to successfully implement those changes’. The readiness to use formal performance data concerns, in other words, both ‘willing’ and 'being able' to change. Each of these dimensions explains an aspect of readiness (Rafferty, Jimmieson, & Armenakis, 2013) and is highlighted in the literature because of their role in successful educational change processes (Armenakis & Bedeian, 1999). Because readiness can be considered a predictor of behavior (Armenakis, Harris, & Mossholder, 1993), we expect that a positive teachers’ readiness (i.e. a positive appraisal of willing and being able to use formal performance data to improve student learning) may contribute to effective (future) data use. Consequently, this study firstly examines the extent to which teachers are ready to use formal performance data (from central tests) to improve student learning (RQ1).

Moreover, data use does not occur in isolation (Schildkamp et al., 2019). By including school-level factors we account for the fact that teachers’ readiness does not occur in isolation en can be impacted by a data use stimulating school culture (Prenger & Schildkamp, 2018). As a consequence we secondly study to what extent characteristics of a data use stimulating school culture have an impact on teachers’ readiness (RQ2).

In sum, the present study aims to address the aforementioned knowledge gap by quantitatively studying Flemish teachers' readiness to engage with formal achievement data (from central tests) to improve student learning and school culture’s impact.

^{(1) Flanders is the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium.}