Factors Influencing Kuwaiti Student Teachers' Choice of Teaching as a Profession
This study investigated the factors that influenced Kuwaiti student teachers to choose teaching as a profession. Data collected from responses to questionnaires completed by 400 student teachers who took a summer course in the academic year 2009/2010 at the College of Education Kuwait University. The study revealed that students have been influenced mostly by altruistic and intrinsic factors. Extrinsic factors were of limited influence on students' choices. Students presented their choices based on their altruistic beliefs of the crucial role they would play in developing society and helping students succeed in their studies. The intrinsic factors revealed students' beliefs about the educational mission they will fulfill as future teachers. Nevertheless, two reasons were identified to be related to extrinsic factors: enjoying three months end of year holiday and benefiting from a large salary. However, teachers deserve even more of monetary incentives as a reward for the efforts they make all year long. Introduction High school graduates face a challenging task when it comes to decide on what they will do as a future career. Choosing a college and selecting a field of specialty will be a significant major decision making goal at this stage of life for high school graduates. Most of the time, college choice holds into it a certain amount of pressure (Hayes, 1990) as it is generated by expectations of parents, educators, teachers, and friends. Nevertheless, high school grades play another significant pressurizing factor which leads to a certain choice of course of study and as a consequence the future career. Choosing to become a teacher is a courageous decision, as teaching is described as a stressful and a demanding profession, and requires responsibility, commitment, and accountability. Teachers do too many tasks and play too many roles at the same time, and try to be effective. According to DeCicco and Allison (1999: 273) teaching is defined as "mission clutter" This makes teaching a career which may not suit everyone. It requires special people to become teachers and even better ones to manage to stay in the filed and sustain the idea of quitting for the sake of joining another career (A1 Yaseen, 2006) Worldwide, many countries encounter a problem in supplying an adequate number of new teachers in the profession (McGraw 2001; Menter et al 2002) The teaching career encounters a great competition from a whole range of jobs which influences many student teachers to reconsider joining their future profession in favor of other job opportunities (Kyriacou Benmansour 2002) Yet, teaching could be considered as a potential future career by most youth, because they have lived and experienced it as students in schools and became aware of it as a possibility. The determination to choose teaching over other jobs definitely rests on individuals' perception of what this job can provide them with and help them to achieve. The choice of a profession is chiefly an important decision in a person's life, as this depends on a sense of fullness and self confidence coming about when being engaged in work. Several factors could play a role in creating a happy and satisfactory sense with work which leads to successful professional careers. Bell (2003) listed five factors to be seriously considered including: the condition of the job market; an idealistic commitment which strongly influences a person's direction; ability; interests; and most important, temperament. According to Obinaju (1996) the teaching profession provides teachers with several factors which create job satisfaction such as remuneration, regular payment of salaries, regular promotion, and pleasant working environment. No doubt, there are many other factors that play a significant role in choosing teaching as a profession. What is looked for in any career including teaching is reaching the degree of professionalization where concerns are paid to the improvement of both status and the capacity of members to increase the quality of the provided service (Hoyle, 2002)