Motivations for entering teacher education: a systematic review of a choice

Abstract

The decision to choose a university degree depends on multiple factors. Particularly, deciding to enter a teaching program, which involves a number of reasons influenced by beliefs, entry requirements and the status of the profession. In this context, this study aims to describe the motivations of prospective teachers to study pedagogy degrees. To do this, a review of academic
texts published between 2010 and 2021 was carried out in the EBSCO host databases, which contain the concepts in both English and Spanish: “teacher”, “career choice” and “education”. The results of this study indicate that there is a predominance of research with a quantitative approach, where the most used technique is the questionnaire and scales, while in second place is the semi-structured interview. Finally, the study concludes that there is a generalized use of a theoretical framework from the psychology of self-determination and the expectancy-value theory in research. On the other hand, there is a tendency to use descriptive and preferably exploratory research designs and little use of longitudinal studies.