Motivation to become a teacher, satisfaction with choice and certainty of future career in teaching

Research within career choice motivation theory consistently shows that students with intrinsic and social teacher motivations are generally more committed and satisfied with their career choice. The purpose is to investigate to which degree intrinsic, extrinsic, and altruistic motivations to become a teacher when starting teacher education can predict satisfaction with the choice of teacher education and certainty in pursuing a teaching career one year later in the Danish teacher education context? We employ the tripartite taxonomy of intrinsic, extrinsic, and altruistic motivations, to further classify the categories of teacher motivations found in the Danish data of an ongoing comparative study with Finnish student teachers. We now present preliminary cross-sectional results from first-year (N=123) and second-year (N=100) student teachers to establish the baseline (initial motivations) and define our expectations for findings in the longitudinal prediction study, which will be finalized, when the first-year students have become second-year students.