Motivations for Choosing a Career and the Expectations of Serbian and Slovenian Preschool Teachers of Their Own Career Development

Abstract

Studying motivations of teaching professionals for their profession is an important area of research. Knowing motivations is relevant to both school policy and teacher educators in order to tailor initial and further training accordingly, thus enabling individuals to be best equipped to meet the challenges of their careers. In the present article, we were interested in why Slovenian and Serbian preschool teachers choose their profession, how the preschool teachers with different motivations for their choice perceive their profession as a career, what factors they consider to have an impact on their career development, and what expectations they have in relation to it. The study was based on a survey approach and included 289 preschool teachers from Serbia and Slovenia. The results show that among preschool teachers in both countries intrinsic and altruistic motives prevail in their choice of the preschool teaching profession and that their importance increases as the importance of motives of a simplistic view of studies and work decreases. The results indicate that the predominant motivation for choosing preschool teaching as a career plays an important role in the preschool teachers’ views of their profession, their identification of the career development factors, and their career expectations and plans. The implications of these findings for preservice and inservice preschool teacher education are discussed.