What motivates a young person to go into teaching?
It's a question that many school leaders have mulled—and one a trio of researchers recently took up by delving into survey data from PISA, the international-comparison exam taken by high school students in 60 countries.
Specifically, the researchers used students' responses to a PISA informational question on "expected occupation" to correlate interest in teaching with various country-specific policies and characteristics. In this way, they ferreted out variables that appear to nudge young people toward teaching.
One of the most important of these, not surprisingly, was salary: Students' interest in teaching was greater in countries with higher teacher salaries. The researchers noted that this has particular relevance for the United States. They estimated that the U.S. could increase interest in teaching by 38 percent if it raised teacher salaries, in relative terms, to be in line with OECD average.
But there are other, less tangible factors involved as well. While the researchers determined that differences in working conditions, such as smaller class sizes and fewer annual teaching hours, weren't associated with greater interest in teaching, they found that certain social norms around career satisfaction were. For example, students in countries that place a high value on a job's social responsibility were more likely to want to be teachers. And students who were high performers in math—an especially important group for school recruiters—were also more apt to have an interest in teaching if they lived in countries that placed a high value on occupational respect. (Interestingly, this group was less swayed by higher salaries.)
All this suggests, according to the researchers, that the "perceived social value" of a profession is an important factor in students' career decisions, particularly for high-achieving students. They noted in this connection that, on a recent international survey, only 34 percent of U.S. teachers said their profession was valued by society.
Source: "What Motivates High School Students to Want to Be Teachers?," American Educational Research Journal, September 25, 2017.
