Has COVID-19 changed pre-service teachers’ perceptions of the profession? Yes, but not necessarily in bad ways

• Author(s) / Creator(s)

  • Wells, Kendra
  • Daniels, Lia M.

• Teaching became harder work during the pandemic. Pre-service teachers watched these changes from the sidelines, which might have impacted their perceptions. We sought to determine what profiles of career fit (demand and return) characterized pre-service teachers and how the resultant profiles differed on commitment to the profession, value of school belongingness, teaching efficacy, and career anxiety. To do so, we administered a survey to 146 pre-service teachers. We used K-means clustering to determine groups based on perceptions of changes to demands and returns during the pandemic. A busy group, neutral group, and valued group emerged. Results of ANOVAs revealed significant differences on Value of Belongingness and Career Anxiety between groups, but no significant differences between groups on Career Commitment or Teaching Efficacy. These results are hopeful from a teacher attrition perspective, because different perceptions of changes to demand and return were not associated with different levels of career commitment.

• Date created

  2023-01-01

• Subjects / Keywords

  • person-centered analysis
  • fit-choice
  • efficacy
  • teacher attrition
  • belongingness
  • cluster analysis
  • pre-service teachers
  • career commitment

• Type of Item

  Conference/Workshop Presentation

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/r3-mgfj-hr97

• License

  Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International