CRPP - Conference Papers

As the sole teacher education institute in Singapore, the National Institute of Education (NIE) prepares all new teachers for teaching in Singapore’s Education System. In the last decade, NIE’s enrolment for initial teacher preparation programmes has grown significantly with peaks in the recession years. There is also some evidence of attrition taking place when beginning teachers complete their bond with the Ministry of Education. It is thus important to determine empirically the reasons why student teachers join the teaching profession. As part of a longitudinal study on beginning teachers’ attitudes towards teaching and professional development, a research survey, the first of three data collections, was administered to whole cohorts of student teachers entering the three main teacher preparation programmes at NIE in July 2004. This paper presents the survey findings on student teachers’ range of reasons for choosing teaching as a career and discusses those differences between cohorts of different programmes.