Why They Want to Teach: Factors Influencing Students to Become Technology Education Teachers

Identifying and recruiting prospective technology education teachers has been an ongoing concern for more than two decades. Considerable research was conducted during the late 1970s and early 1980s relative to teacher recruitment (Craft, 1979; Devier, 1982). These studies were prompted by declining enrollments in university programs and reported shortages of industrial arts teachers in forty-one states (Miller, 1980; Tomlinson, 1982; Wright, 1985). In some cases, this shortage of teachers led to high school programs being closed or cut back, the utilization of under-qualified personnel, and the abandonment of planned expansion. Simultaneously, university programs experienced significant drops in industrial arts teaching majors as students increasingly selected industrial technology or management options over teaching (Devier & Wright, 1988).