Helen M. G. Watt

Gender and occupational outcomes : longitudinal assessments of individual, social, and cultural influences

Despite concentrated research and important legislative milestones on gender equality over the past quarter-century, gender-related disparities in science, technology, and math careers persist into the 21st century. This persistence sustains a troubling state of gender inequity in which women are not sharing in the salary and status advantages attached to scientific and technical careers. In this landmark volume, editors Watt and Eccles, both well known for their research contributions in this area, compile a rich source of longitudinal analysis that places the problem in context.Experts from different countries in the fields of developmental and social psychology, human development, biology, education, and sociology draw on multi-wave longitudinal data on the gender-related variables that influence occupational outcomes. Together, the studies bring a variety of perspectives, theoretical models, and cultural settings to bear on the books central questions. Further, the book examines the implications these results have for policy, suggesting which circumstances may be most conducive to promoting a more comprehensive and realistic understanding of gender differences in career choice and persistence. Detailed explanations of study design will serve as a resource for future researchers in this area.

Current and future directions in teacher motivation research

Educational psychologists have, over the last half century or so, directed their attention to the study of student motivation. While teachers have not entirely been ignored, there has been little inquiry into teacher motivation that has been systematic and theory-driven. The concentration on students has tended to overlook the centrality of teacher motivations as integral to teachers’ goals, beliefs, perceptions, aspirations, and behaviours, and thereby to student motivations and learning. It is perhaps not surprising that those motivation researchers who have developed robust theories in relation to student learning in educational contexts would begin to turn their attention to teachers, to see whether those same theories might have explanatory power with regard to teacher motivations. Teacher self-efficacy research (e.g., Tschannen-Moran & Woolfolk Hoy, 2007; Woolfolk Hoy & Burke-Spero, 2005) has made important contributions to the study of teachers. Motivation researchers are now beginning to turn their attention to other aspects of the complex of motivational factors which demand greater attention and exploration. Robust theoretical frameworks already exist in the motivation literature, which can be applied to guide future research in this area. There has recently been a surge of interest, or what we have elsewhere described as a “Zeitgeist” (Watt & Richardson, 2008a) in applying well-developed theories in motivation research, to the domain of teaching.

Psychometric Properties of the Frost Multidimensional Perfectionism Scale with Australian Adolescent Girls: Clarification of Multidimensionality and Perfectionist Typology.

The psychometric properties of the Frost, Marten, Lahart, and Rosenblate Multidimensional Perfectionism Scale (1990) are investigated to determine its usefulness as a measurement of perfectionism with Australian secondary school girls and to find empirical support for the existence of both healthy and unhealthy types of perfectionist students. Participants were 409 female mixed-ability students from Years 7 and 10 in two private secondary schools in Sydney, Australia. Factor analyses yielded four rather than the six factors previously theorized. Cluster analysis indicated a distinct typology of healthy perfectionists, unhealthy perfectionists, and nonperfectionists. Healthy perfectionists were characterized by higher levels on Organization, whereas unhealthy perfectionists scored higher on the Parental Expectations & Criticism and Concern Over Mistakes & Doubts dimensions of perfectionism. Both types of perfectionists scored high on Personal Standards.

An introduction to teaching motivations in different countries: comparisons using the FIT-Choice scale

The FIT-Choice program of research (Factors Influencing Teaching Choice; http://www. fitchoice.org) began in 2001, prompted by two questions that had been forming for Richardson over the course of a decade: why do people from demanding, high-status and financially rewarding careers want to switch into teaching? and, what motivates people to choose teaching at all? Richardson directed a Graduate Diploma in Education program which attracted a large proportion of people intent on leaving their prior careers to become teachers. At the beginning of each year people from a wide variety of careers would competitively seek enrolment into teacher education, including women seeking to return to work and a new career following time out of the workforce to start a family, younger graduates who had decided on teaching after a ‘gap’ year or two travelling overseas, older recent graduates, people already teaching in private schools, and an assortment of engineers, practising medical doctors, veterinary surgeons, solicitors, accountants, psychologists and company executives. What was striking about this latter group was their intention to leave more prestigious and highly paid careers to pursue teaching. The severe downturn in employment opportunities in the petroleum industry seemed a logical explanation at one stage for why petroleum engineers were seeking other employment, but this was not the case for solicitors, veterinarians, medical practitioners, accountants and many others. Having to select from such people prompted Richardson’s reflection on his own decision to become a teacher, how it had happened and what motivated others to do the same. Did these aspiring career switchers into teaching hold values, beliefs, expectancies in common? Assumptions and explanations that circulate among those involved in teacher education did little to address the questions about what motivates a broad cross-section of people who have diverse experiences in work and life to want to become teachers, and what sustains them once they enter teaching. Their talents and demonstrated abilities undermined the simplistic notion often promulgated in the media that people who want to become teachers are those unable to pursue more prestigious careers, so that teaching is a ‘fallback career’. Were their reasons for switching to a teaching career as diverse as the individuals themselves, or were there core motivations shared by teachers in general? Why had the teacher education literature not been in dialogue with the literature on occupational choice and more importantly, why was no attention paid to robust existing motivational theories when examining teaching motivations? It was these questions

Factors Influencing Teaching Choice in Turkey

Why choose to become a teacher in Turkey? The authors examined motivations and perceptions among preservice teachers (N = 1577) encompassing early childhood, primary and secondary education. The Factors Influencing Teaching Choice (FIT-Choice) instrument was translated into Turkish and its construct validity and reliability assessed. Altruistic ‘social utility values’ were the most influential, followed by the desire for a secure job. Intrinsic value and perceived teaching abilities came next, contrasting with higher ratings in Western studies, alongside prior positive teaching and learning experiences. Family flexibility, job transferability and social influences were moderate, and the negative ‘fallback career’ motivation lowest, although not far below the scale midpoint. Science-related teacher candidates scored more highly on fallback career, had chosen a teaching career the most recently, and were lower on almost all other teaching motivations, demonstrating a less positive motivational profile. Findings are interpreted in light of the economic development and role of the teaching profession in Turkey. Less adaptive motivations belonging to preservice teachers in scientific fields highlight potential risks and recruitment strategies to optimise teacher quality in those priority fields which further research could fruitfully examine.

Relationships among perceived competence, intrinsic value and mastery goal orientation in English and maths

A large and burgeoning literature has established that mastery goal orientations yield positive cognitive and behavioural educational outcomes. Less research has focused on the psychological antecedents of adopting mastery goals. The present study draws upon prominent psychological theories of ac motivation, specifically the expectancy-value theory of Eccles, Wigfield and colleagues (Wigfield and Eccles 2002), to explore possible antecedents of students’ mastery goals. Based on this theoretical framework, our study focused on children’s perceptions of their competencies in English and maths and how these related to intrinsic value and mastery goals for English and maths. Questionnaires were used to gather data about Year 6 (N=60) participants’ perceived competence, intrinsic value and mastery goal orientation, and correlational analyses established the direction and strength of the relationships between the perceptions. Participants were targeted for follow-up interviews (n=17) according to a matrix of low and high competence perceptions and mastery goals, with students selected from within each of six focal groups. Interview responses were reported according to emergent themes, from which we describe how the constructs under consideration relate to one another and highlight implications for educational practice.

Gender and Occupational Choice

Men and women tend to end up in different kinds of occupations. This phenomenon is extraordinarily robust across different settings (see Watt & Eccles, 2008), although there is certainly also cultural variation; good illustrations are women’s higher representation in the sciences in India and the former Soviet Socialist Republics than in other countries. Children’s literature, role models, vocational high school, and career counseling are some of the ways people get ideas about which careers are appropriate for them.

Types of Professional and Emotional Coping Among Beginning Teachers

Teaching is increasingly recognised as a complex, demanding career. Teachers experience higher levels of stress and burnout than other professionals. The career is subject to heightened levels of public scrutiny and yet offers only modest rewards in the form of social status and income. Drawing on a typological model of coping styles among a diverse sample of German health professionals, we identified six types of emotional coping (Good health, Sparing, (healthy) Ambitious, (path to) Burnout, Diligent, and Wornout) among a longitudinal sample of 612 Australian primary and secondary teachers. A significant outcome of our study was the empirical differentiation between burned out and wornout teachers. This extends the literature on teacher burnout and offers new directions to the study of ‘at risk’ beginning teachers.

Factors Influencing Teaching Choice: Why Do Future Teachers Choose the Career?

Teachers constitute a large, heterogeneous workforce which has been the subject of policy measures designed to raise the quality of the pool of those seeking to enter, and remain, in the profession. The essence of these recruitment and retention interventions has been the desire to attract academically able and committed people who will be inspirational, effective teachers of children and adolescents (Schleicher A, Building a high-quality teaching profession: lessons from around the world. International Summit on the Teaching Profession. OECD Publishing, Paris. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/9789264113046-en, 2011). Across several decades, educators and public policy-makers have been faced with the recurring issue of how to attract and retain the highest quality teachers as a vital resource in the advancement of student learning and achievement (Greenwald R, Hedges LV, Laine RD, Rev Educ Res 66(3):361–396, 1996). Yet, identification of this need has not meant the problem has been easily addressed.

Relations among beginning teachers' self-reported aggression, unconscious motives, personality, role stress, self efficacy and burnout

Disturbing evidence documenting some teachers’ aggressive classroom management (mis)behaviour is growing. Relative to the importance of this issue, the level of research activity into the area is small (Sava, 2002). Writing about teacher aggression is widespread in the non-English literature: in France, Romania, Russia, and Spain (Sava, 2002). Reports have also appeared in Australia (Lewis & Riley, 2009), China and Israel (Lewis, Romi, Katz, & Qui, 2008), Poland (Piekarska, 2000), Scotland (Munn, Johstone, & Sharp, 2004), and Japan (Treml, 2001). In Europe, the term didactogeny has been coined for the experience of “a faulty education that harms children” medically, psychologically, or educationally (Sava, 2002, p. 1008).