The Willingness Of Undergraduate Teacher Trainees In Local Higher Education Institutions To Teach In Rural Areas And Its The Study Of Influencing Factors

Amidst a comprehensive rural revitalization strategy,the revitalization of rural education will bring China’s educational system to a new level of prosperity.As the most important resource,the replenishment and training of talents are relevant to the quality and quantity of the rural teaching force.Attention must be paid to the eagerness of teacher-training pupils to teach in rural areas,especially those from local high schools who have completed their studies,as a source of potential for rural teachers in the future,to continually enhance the capacity of these students to "go down","stay" and "teach effectively".To attract more teacher trainees to the rural teaching profession,we need to improve the effectiveness of teacher trainees’ "going","staying" and "teaching well".The study was based on human capital theory,ERG incentive theory,and compensatory wage differential theory,and used questionnaire and interview methods.A random sample of 287 undergraduate teacher-training students from University of C was used as the research target to conduct the empirical research.Semi-structured interviews with 8 undergraduate teacher-training students and 5 rural teachers were conducted using a stratified sampling approach.The study found that: undergraduate teacher candidates from local senior colleges and universities were willing to pursue a teaching career,but their willingness to teach in rural areas was at an intermediate level;undergraduate teacher candidates from local senior colleges and universities had low preference and persistence of willingness to teach in rural areas;and undergraduate teacher candidates from local senior colleges and universities tended to teach in urban areas.In terms of individual characteristics,there were significant differences in the intensity of rural teaching intentions of undergraduate teacher educators from local colleges and universities in terms of gender,grade,profession,place of origin,whether or not they had acquired a teaching certificate,the highest level of parental education,and family income,and there were no significant differences in the intensity of rural teaching intentions of undergraduate teacher educators from local colleges and universities in terms of whether or not they were only children.The binary logistic Regression analysis revealed that the following factors influenced the willingness of undergraduate teacher educators in local higher education institutions to teach in rural areas: self-personal and rural cognition significantly influenced the willingness to teach in rural areas;self-personal,rural cognition and policy cognition significantly influenced the preferred willingness to teach in rural areas;salary and benefits,self-personal and rural cognition significantly influenced the willingness to teach in rural areas in the long term.In order to enhance the intensity of undergraduate teacher trainees’ willingness to teach in rural areas in local higher education institutions and improve the career attractiveness of rural teachers,the following suggestions are made based on the characteristics of teacher trainees’ willingness to teach in rural areas and their influencing factors: to promote compensatory incentive policies and developmental incentive policies in concert;to optimize the support system for undergraduate teacher trainees’ training in colleges and universities;and to strengthen undergraduate teacher trainees’ rural education sentiment and ideal beliefs.