When a Young Student Wants to Be a Teacher: Cross-National Differences in 15-Year-Old Students’ Expectations of Becoming a Teacher

Recent educational reforms around the world have placed increasing emphasis on teacher quality as a key to improve student achievement. The lack of interest in studying factors affecting young students’ expectations of a teaching career contrasts sharply with numerous policy and scholarly efforts made to promote science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) career aspirations among young students. This chapter shows how several key individual- and familial-level factors, such as gender, academic performance, family socioeconomic status (SES), and having a parent who is a teacher, are associated with 15-year-old students’ expectations of becoming a teacher. It reviews cross-national variations in young students’ expectations of becoming a teacher at a later age and in the way in which the four individual and familial key factors (i.e., gender, academic achievement, and SES) are associated with their teaching expectations. The chapter examines a bivariate relationship between academic achievement and the likelihood of students expecting to be a teacher across societies.