Motivation for the choice of a teaching career: comparison of different types of prospective teachers in Croatia

The present study explored motivation for teaching career choice within the FIT-Choice framework among different types of prospective teachers in Croatia. A total number of 634 prospective teachers enrolled in different initial teacher education programmes participated in this study (prospective preschool, classroom and subject teachers). Results revealed that the intrinsic value of teaching, the social value of teaching and perception of own teaching abilities were the most important motives for choosing a teaching career, while the fallback career motive had the lowest ratings across the groups. Analyses also revealed that the motivation of prospective preschool and classroom teachers is very similar and that the importance of intrinsic utility value and social utility value was somewhat less pronounced among subject teachers. Although all prospective teachers expressed a relatively high level of satisfaction with career choice, group comparisons revealed that prospective subject teachers’ satisfaction level was lower compared to the other two groups.