Examining Teacher Trainees’ Attitude towards Teaching Profession and Teaching Subjects in Tanzania

Abstract

Teacher trainees’ positive attitude on teaching is fast becoming a key instrument in teacher trainees’ motivation to teaching. Thus, it is regarded as a central policy agenda that has recently captured the minds of academics and researchers. Based on those facts, we examined the extent to which teacher trainees hold positive attitude on two dimensions—attitude towards teaching profession and teaching subjects. Additionally, we investigated whether these dimensions of attitudes are significantly related to demographic variables such as gender, GPA, whether or not they had worked before joining teacher education university programme, years of work, future work preferences and subjects of specialization. Participants for this study constituted a sample of 901 final-year teacher trainees from one of the teacher education university college in Tanzania. Findings indicated that teacher trainees’ attitude and GPA were not significantly related. Instead, a significant correlation was observed between the two dimensions of attitudes. Shockingly, findings indicated that more than 50% of teacher trainees had no preferences of working as teachers. Worse enough, the figures were similar even among science and mathematics majors who are highly demanded in the teaching career. Finally, the implications for policy and future research are put forth.