Student Teachers' Motivation For Choosing Teaching As A Career In Rural Areas Of Maldives

This cross-sectional quantitative study is done to report the findings from a study with 30 participants that focused to explore the intrinsic, extrinsic and altruistic motivation factors of choosing teaching as a career at one university in Male, Maldives. Particularly,this paper was to present the survey findings of the 30 student teachers from all cohorts in one English taught education program. The data of this study were collected through an online questionnaire which looked into demographic backgrounds and questions on student teachers' reasons in choosing teaching as a career. The data indicated numerous reasons influence student teachers to choose the teaching as a career. It was found out that student teachers were influenced more by altruistic reasons, followed by intrinsic motivation, and then extrinsic reasons. It also showed that Student Teachers chose rural areas as a choice to enjoy low cost of living and to serve the underprivileged rural children of Maldives. This paper also intends to discuss the implications of the findings and draw conclusions which may be supportive to teacher education providers and policy makers on measures to recruit prospective students to initiate teacher education and promote rural teacher education.