Misaligned: Exploring Undergraduates’ Career Values and Perceptions of Teaching

Purpose: Undergraduates are an important yet understudied pool of prospective teachers who could help to alleviate teacher shortages faced by schools across the United States. This article explores the degree to which undergraduates at one public flagship university are interested in a teaching career, the factors they value when choosing a career, and how they perceive teaching along those factors. Research Methods/Approach: Our mixed-methods study was guided by a conceptual framework grounded in expectancy-value theory. We conducted a survey of undergraduates at the University of Maryland and follow-up focus groups with respondents who reported some degree of interest in teaching, whom we term undergraduate prospective teachers (UPTs). Findings: We find that, for the many undergraduates in our sample who had some degree of interest in teaching, all career attributes in our conceptual framework (e.g., job availability and security, salary) were at least somewhat important. Although UPTs had favorable perceptions of the degree to which teaching offered some of these attributes (e.g., social contribution), we more often identified areas of misalignment between the attributes UPTs value and their perceptions of teaching (e.g., salary, workload). Implications: Our findings point to several policies that could address misalignments between UPTs’ career values and perceptions of teaching, including raising salaries, improving work environments, and mitigating preparation costs. They also suggest the importance of better communicating about these policy changes and existing areas of alignment through strategies such as marketing campaigns and informational interventions.