Motivation to teach: The differences between faculty in schools of education and K-12 teachers

The purpose of this paper is to investigate higher education faculty’s motivation to teach and to validate the Factors Influencing Teaching Choice (FIT-Choice) survey with this population.

Confirmatory factor analysis and t-tests on data from 101 higher education faculty and data from K-12 teachers show that the two samples fit the model similarly.

Results show that the similarities between the two groups are important to note as it suggests both the value of the FIT-Choice instrument as a research tool in higher education as well as the similarities in motivating factors between higher education faculty and in-service K-12 teachers.

This is one of the first studies to use the FIT-Choice scale with university education faculty.