Exploring Career Motivation of Indonesian Pre-service EFL Teachers

摘要

Pre-service teachers may hold different motives in choosing a career path as a teacher. The present study aims at investigating the types of motivation to choose a career as an English teacher among participants from a teacher training program in a private university in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. Of 23 students as the total population, it was found that 14 of them reported being motivated to take teaching as their future profession and met the criteria to be the respondents. A 24-item questionnaire was distributed online to the 14 respondents (N=14) to see the types of motivation the pre-service teachers had in their career choice. Of the result of the questionnaire, four students with the highest motivational level were purposefully selected to participate in a focus group interview and asked to describe their motivation to be English teachers. The findings indicated that the pre-service EFL teachers were dominantly motivated by altruistic and intrinsic motives in choosing to be EFL teachers. Extrinsic motivation, on the other hand, seemed to bring the least contribution in the pre-service teachers' decision to take teaching as a profession. Implications and future recommendations were offered.