AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE FACTORS INFLUENCING UNIVERSITY STUDENTS' INTEREST IN THE TEACHING PROFESSION: A CASE STUDY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF MALAKAND

Abstract

Teaching is one of the most significant professions among all the profession. It is important to investigate the future perspectives of teaching profession through investigating determinants of university student’s interest towards teaching profession. The objectives of study were; to investigate factors leading towards adopting teaching profession, to determine the university student’s attitude towards teaching profession, to find out the gender wise differences of males and females’ students in attitude towards teaching profession. Respondents who were a part of this study consisted of BS university students of 6^th semester from 10 different departments of University of Malakand. The researcher were used a simple random sampling technique and purposive sampling technique as well. The questionnaire which includes 23 items was created on Likert scale pattern where respondents were given five choices in front of each item. The researcher used SPSS for data analysis. The tests applied for data analysis were independent sample t-test. The results show that the mean scores of male and female respondents (15.63 and 16.29) shows that Male students had an average score while Female students had a slightly higher average score. The results show that the value of coefficient of correlation was found (0.326) at 0.05 level of significance, which indicate a moderate positive relationship between the variables however it claims there is no significant difference between male and female students in terms of their scores on the measured variable. The findings of the study which reflects that majority of the respondents were agreed to the statements and they have good positive attitude towards teaching profession. Therefore, it is recommended that they must know national professional standards for teachers in Pakistan and then rate themselves that they are competent or not.