Fredrik Alm

Motives for becoming a teacher and their relations to academic engagement and dropout among student teachers

Difficulties in attracting student teachers have resulted in research focusing on student teachers’ motives for studying to join the profession. Because previous findings are mixed, the first aim of this study was to explore motives for students to become teachers. A second aim was to explore the relationship between teachers’ motives and their academic engagement and dropout rates at the end of their studies. A sample of 333 student teachers at a Swedish university completed a questionnaire measuring motives for becoming a teacher and their academic engagement. The best model of a confirmatory factor analyses defined three motivational factors as altruistic, intrinsic and extrinsic motives. A path analysis showed a negative significant relationship between the altruistic motive and dropout, mediated by academic engagement, whereas the relationships between intrinsic and extrinsic motives and academic engagement were not significant.

När läroplanens mål och innehåll blir ämnen på schemat

At present, approximately 900 schools in Sweden are taking part in a trial during five years, where they are exempted from the time regulations set by the present National Time Schedule. The main object of this article is to illuminate how these schools choose to use their time for teaching and learning. Based on an analysis of class schedules I will discuss the use of some schedule designations and what they can implicate. The results indicate that time is allocated to content which emanates from the national curriculum (Lpo 94), as well as from the subjects in the syllabus.