Understanding Motivation towards Teaching in SerProfe UDP: A First Step to Foster Equity in Teacher Education Admission in Chile

Abstract

Enrollment in pre-service teacher education in Chile has dropped by 19% in the last year. To better understand the motivations and perceptions towards teaching among those students who could potentially become teacher candidates, we explored teaching vocation on 11th- and 12th-grade students in Santiago. From a total of 1112 students who voluntarily participated in an online survey including the FIT-Choice scale, 381 expressed their interest in teacher education. Afterward, 83 students confirmed their participation in our mentoring program regarding teacher education and the teaching profession. The results show that the students who chose to be mentored have greater intrinsic motivation towards teaching and a greater self-perceived ability to teach. Additionally, they have a more positive perception of the teaching profession, including work–family conciliation, and project greater satisfaction with their professional choice. However, they also belong to one of the most vulnerable population groups in Chile, those who have more difficulties accessing university education through traditional admission processes conditioned on academic performance. Thus, to foster equity in teacher education and attract students with the vocational potential for becoming excellent teachers, we need to consolidate admission alternatives and provide greater opportunities to students that—due to the inequities of the educational system—fail to complete a successful application or do not make the cut to enroll.

1. Introduction

Enrollment in teacher education programs in Chile has dropped consistently since 2011, with a steeper fall within the last year (19% decrease in one year, from 2020 to 2021) [1]. These data are worrisome not only for teacher education programs but also for the Chilean school system. By 2025, there will be a deficit of approximately 19% of the teachers needed to serve all the girls and boys in the country [2,3,4]. This troublesome phenomenon does not seem to be happening only in Chile. Data show that it is occurring globally [5,6]. For example, in 2018, before the COVID-19 pandemic, the US reported a drop in teacher education enrollment of around 23% in the last decade [7,8].

The factors that could explain this lack of interest in studying to become teachers overlap with those associated with teachers leaving the profession: the status of the profession, working conditions, and salary [6,9]. Some authors also suggest that the announcement of cuts, zero-replacement policies, and teacher layoffs associated with the great recession and global economic crisis of the late 2000s may have also contributed to this decrease in enrollment in teaching preparation programs [10].

In the case of Chile, there are also factors related to the admission requirements to enroll in a teacher education program. Aiming at improving the quality of teacher pre-service education, in 2016, the Chilean congress approved Law 20.903, which creates the Teacher Professional Development System. This national legislation raised the academic requirements to enroll in such programs and strengthen the regulations, making national standards and accreditation processes compulsory for teacher education. At the same time, it increased teachers’ salaries and improved teachers’ working conditions. The approval of Ley de carrera docente, as it is commonly known, was an important milestone in the history of teacher education in Chile after years of failed legislation proposals [11]. With regard to pre-service teacher education, the main purpose was to improve the quality of teacher education by regulating the programs and curriculum and increasing selectivity [12]. It is aligned with international experience and research on teacher effectiveness [13,14]. Countries where students with the best academic records become teachers by participating in very selective pre-service programs have higher student achievement in comparative international exams, such as PISA, leading the public policy debate towards the selectivity of teacher candidates [15,16]. Additionally, as Parra-Rodríguez stated, increasing the selectivity was intended to improve the social status of teacher education and the teaching profession, which, in turn, was expected to increase the attraction of high school students with the best academic records [12]. The idea of improving the social status of the teaching profession by increasing the selectivity in pre-service teacher education was widely supported [17] in a context where quality and teacher effectiveness, but not the teacher shortage, were the main concerns.

Although data show that, in Chile, this increase in selectivity has improved the academic achievement of the students entering teaching programs, it has also impacted the number of those who can make the cut. This has mainly affected students with vulnerable backgrounds and who attend public schools [18]. Evidence indicates that university selection processes based on a national university access exam, together with student GPA, do not favor equity in university admission. They result, rather, in the under-representation of students from lower socioeconomic status [19,20] and make it harder for female students to compete for access to more selective academic programs [21]. Women from lower-income households are precisely the students who usually enroll in pre-service teacher education in Chile [22].

This undesired result of the policy—that is, the decrease in enrollment in teaching programs due to its selectivity—led to the creation of a national committee composed of members of government, universities, schools, and civil society organizations to work on a proposal to increase enrollment in teaching preparation programs while maintaining a selective pre-service teaching education. This committee concluded that making teaching more attractive through effective communication of the positive impact that Law 20.903 has had on the work conditions and salary for teachers is needed [1]. Additionally, among their recommendations, the committee highlights the implementation of programs to prepare and mentor high school students interested in teaching who have had to face “conditions in their schooling that do not allow them to reach any of the thresholds established in Law 20.903” [1] (p. 8). These programs, known as PAPs (Preparación y Accesso a las Pedagogías in Spanish), are developed by universities to offer alternative access to undergraduate teacher preparation programs. Thus, 12th-grade students enrolled in PAPs would later access pre-service teacher education by successfully completing these programs and not based on their GPA or national university access exam score.

The potential these programs have to attract pedagogical talent has been questioned since PAP students still represent a very small proportion of the annual enrollment in a context where new enrollments have significantly dropped in the last five years [18,23]. Since there is great variability in terms of admission, curriculum, and evaluation across the different existing PAPs, further analysis is yet needed to assess the real impact of these programs on pre-service teacher education enrollment [24].

At the same time, research has tried to understand Generation Z career choices to develop communication campaigns and other types of strategies to attract them to teaching. A recent survey on 3442 Chilean youth between 16 and 22 years of age found that 65% of them choose their careers hoping their future jobs will allow them to make a difference in people’s lives and 44% want a career that allows them to contribute to social change. Almost all of them value teaching as the most important profession for the development of the country [25]. The evidence portrayed in this national study is very similar to the international literature on Generation Z [26]. It also highlights the need to develop a specific attraction policy to connect teaching with the youth’s aspiration to make a difference during their professional life, and the need to develop strategies to disseminate the benefits associated with the teaching profession.

In this context, the Diego Portales University School of Education and Belén Educa Foundation, a network of 12 Catholic charter schools located in vulnerable neighborhoods in Santiago, initiated a collaboration to attract high school students to teaching programs. In addition to the shared concern about the teacher deficit projected nationally, data gathered by Belén Educa show that only 144 out of the 2292 graduates from their schools between 2013 and 2019 reported enrolling in a teacher education program. The foundation considers that their own graduates are the ones who have the greatest potential to become teachers in their schools and communities, contributing to their educational mission successfully. In fact, evidence confirms that, in Chile, novice teachers are first allocated in schools with similar socioeconomic characteristics to those of the teacher’s schooling background [27,28], and they do not change their schools at least within the first two years of service [29].

As a first attempt to better understand the reasons associated with Belén Educa students’ alleged lack of interest in teacher education, we decided to explore their teaching vocation. In the last decade, teaching vocation in the context of pre-service teacher education has been systematically studied, and, within this context, the FIT-Choice analysis model has been widely used to measure motivations and perceptions towards teaching [30,31,32,33,34,35,36,37]. According to this model, the factors influencing the decision to become a teacher could be categorized into (i) perceptions about the profession demands and rewards, (ii) the self-perceived teaching abilities, (iii) intrinsic motivation, (iv) social and personal utility values, and (v) the view of teaching as a fallback career [38]. Factors related to intrinsic motivation, self-perceived teaching abilities, and social utility seem to have the strongest influence among pre-service teacher education students [39].

The aim of this study is to analyze the motivation and perceptions towards teaching of 11th- and 12th-grade students from the 12 Belén Educa schools in Chile. We look at the differences between students willing to participate in a mentoring program regarding teacher education to help them prepare for their university admission process and those not interested in taking part because they are not interested in studying to be a teacher. This helps us to better comprehend the characteristics of the group of students who could potentially become pre-service teacher candidates. The importance of further understanding the students interested in teaching rests on its potential for offering more and better opportunities to those students to enroll in a teaching education program. Some of those students could be excellent teachers—given their motivation and attitudes towards the profession—but, due to the inequities of the educational system, usually fail to complete a successful application process to pre-service teacher education or do not make the cut to enroll in a program.

2. Materials and Methods

2.1. Participants

Belén Educa is a foundation whose mission is to help create a fairer and more equitable country, providing opportunities for the learning and development of children and young people coming from disadvantaged backgrounds. This non-profit Catholic organization has a network of 11 schools and 15,000 students distributed in the most vulnerable sectors of the Santiago Metropolitan area and one school in the Los Ríos Region (http://www.beleneduca.cl, accessed on 10 May 2022). Nearly 86% of their students are vulnerable (this index is calculated by the educational authority and includes socioeconomic vulnerabilities, such as the condition of poverty, together with indicators of socio-educational risk and school failure, such as low academic performance, low attendance, and high probability of dropping out (more information at: https://junaebabierta.junaeb.cl/catalogo-de-datos/indicadores-de-vulnerabilidad/, accessed on 10 May 2022).

In 2021, Belén Educa had a total of 1907 students enrolled in 11th and 12th grade. Of those, 1112 students (65%) answered an online survey during the first term of the academic year. Although it is a self-selected, non-random sample, it is positive that a large group of students answered the survey, especially if one considers the literature on these types of data collection methodology. Baruch and Holton [40] analyzed 1607 studies published between the years 2000 and 2005 in 17 refereed academic journals and identified 490 different studies that utilized surveys. They examined the response rates in these studies, which covered more than 100,000 organizations and 400,000 individual respondents. The average response rate for studies that utilized data collected from individuals was 52.7 percent, with a standard deviation of 20.4 [40].

Among the participants, 52.2% identified themselves as women, 50.8% were in 12th grade, 76.0% thought their academic performance was average or below average, and 65% came from homes with a monthly family income of 500,000 CLP (~620USD) or less.

2.2. Data Collection

This study is part of a Research and Practice Partnership (RPP) between Belén Educa Educational Foundation and the School of Education of Diego Portales University (FE–UDP). These institutions have been closely collaborating in the last decade with the shared aim of preparing teachers who contribute to a fairer and more equitable education in Chile. This relationship has been strengthened in the framework of “Teacher Education: developing a research-practice partnership with the school system” (UDP19101), a ministerial grant awarded to FE-UDP in 2020.

The School of Education UDP offers 4 teaching certificates: Early Childhood Education, Elementary Education, Special Education, and English as a Second Language. The total student enrollment in 2021 was 1037 students, while freshman enrollments have decreased by 25.41% from 2018 to 2021. In the national context, the School of Education UDP is characterized by being diverse in the origin of its students (17% from municipal schools, 67% from subsidized private schools (charter schools), and 16% from private schools), maintaining selectivity criteria for the access (it is among the top 4 private universities in the country with the highest score for access to its programs). Almost 70% of the teacher education students have some type of need-based scholarship and 51% have tuition-free or “gratuidad”; that is, they are exempt from paying because they come from the households belonging to the 60% with the lowest income in the country [41].

As part of the RPP, UDP designed a mentoring program for 11th- and 12th-grade students from Belén Educa schools interested in becoming teachers. This pilot small-scale program started its implementation in September 2021. Since the program targets Generation Z youths, it followed their preferences in terms of access to information and media [25]. Moreover, attending to COVID-19 pandemic restrictions, most of the activities during the beginning of the implementation were carried out virtually. High school students interested in teaching were periodically contacted by telephone or text message by UDP Ambassadors (Ambassadors are UDP alumni or current students identified as especially motivated and passionate about teaching.). There were also weekly publications on social media, particularly Instagram, and face-to-face activities on UDP campus.

All 1907 students enrolled in 11th and 12th grade in any of the Belen Educa schools were invited to answer an online survey including the FIT-Choice scale and sociodemographic information (school grade, reported GPA, family incomes, and parents’ education). Moreover, the survey asked them to express their interest in receiving information and mentoring related to undergraduate teacher education programs. Of the 1112 students who answered the survey, 65% declared not having any interest in applying to pre-service teacher education and thus were not interested in receiving information (718 students). Those who expressed their interest (381 students) were later contacted individually by one of the UDP Ambassadors to invite them to participate in the mentoring program SerProfe UDP. When individually contacted, 83 students confirmed their interest in being mentored and in receiving information on pre-service teacher education.

In January 2022, an online survey was sent to the 83 students that had participated in the program. They were asked to assess the activities, the role of the ambassador, and the information provided during the mentoring program. Likewise, an individual telephone call was made to request information on their applications to higher education and their career choices. The goal of this online survey was to identify how many of them applied to teaching programs, and also to receive feedback on the activities and content related to the SerProfe UDP program.

2.2.1. FIT-Choice

The instrument used in this study corresponds to an adapted version of the FIT-Choice scale developed by Watt & Richardson, which analyzes the factors related to the decision to pursue a teaching career from an expectancy–value theory perspective [39]. The scale has 60 items, which are statements about teacher education and the teaching profession, structured in 18 factors. Twelve factors are related to the reasons behind studying teacher education and choosing a teaching career, identified as motivation factors, and the other 6 factors explore beliefs and perceptions on the teaching career. These 18 factors, in turn, can be grouped into 4 higher-order factors: personal utility value, social utility value, task demand, and task return. In 2012, Watt et al. [30] compared several studies to validate the reliability of the FIT-Choice scale around the world. When comparing diverse samples of Australia, the USA, and Germany, they found that the instrument works reliably through different contexts. Given that, this instrument is recognized as a comprehensive and coherent model to guide research on the factors associated with choosing a teaching career. In 2016, this instrument was translated and adapted into Spanish, and its psychometric properties were analyzed [32]. These authors found levels of reliability and factorial validity in accordance with the original version.

The adapted version of the FIT-Choice scale used in this study was tested and adjusted based on a pilot application in 2020 with 14 students from Belén Educa schools who had expressed interest in becoming a teacher that year [42]. In the adapted version for high school students, participants are asked to indicate their level of agreement with every item on a scale of 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree). Mean scores for every factor were computed by averaging the corresponding items scores (for a detailed description of the adapted FIT-Choice scale, including factor composition and structure, see Supplementary Material and data available at https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.7910/DVN/RHORUA, accessed on 10 May 2022). Cronbach’s alpha (α) was used for assessing construct reliability (all Cronbach’s alphas are reported in

Table A1. Cronbach’s alpha—FIT-Choice factors.

Dimension	Number of Items Included	Cronbach’s Alpha
Work with children/adolescents	3	0.94
Enhance social equity	3	0.80
Shape future	3	0.79
Make social contribution	3	0.63
Job security	3	0.74
Job transferability	3	0.65
Time for family	5	0.79
Intrinsic career value	3	0.86
Self-perceived ability	3	0.88
Prior teaching/learning experience	3	0.78
Social influences	3	0.86
Fallback career	1	-
Expert career	3	0.79
High demand	3	0.72
Good salary	2	0.82
Social status	5	0.76
Social dissuasion	3	0.56
Satisfaction with choice	3	0.89

in Appendix A). Most factors have an acceptable α > 0.7, with the exception of “make social contribution” (α = 0.63), “job transferability” (α = 0.65), and “social dissuasion” (α = 0.56).

2.2.2. SerProfe UDP Follow-Up Survey

This questionnaire was sent to the 83 participants with questions about the program, specifically about its content and format and its usefulness during their university application process. In addition, the instrument included three questions to better explore their interest in applying to a teaching program (see Supplementary Materials for full description).

2.3. Data Analysis

One-factor ANOVA for independent samples was used to analyze mean differences between groups. Bonferroni post hoc test was calculated when equal variances among groups were assumed (after Bartlett’s test of homogeneity of variances) and Games–Howell test when variances turned significantly unequal. ANOVA analyses, post hoc test, and Cohen’s d for effect size of significant differences are detailed in Appendix A (

Table A2. Mentored students’ performance on FIT-Choice compared to their peers.

FIT-Choice Factors	Post Hoc Test *	p	Cohen’s d
Work with children/ adolescents	a > b	0.000	1.56
	a > c	0.007	0.35
	b < c	0.000	1.14
Enhance social equity §	a > b	0.000	0.59
	b < c	0.000	0.52
Shape future §	a > b	0.000	0.47
	b < c	0.000	0.45
Make social contribution §	a > b	0.000	0.44
	b < c	0.000	0.41
Job security	a > b	0.000	0.56
	b < c	0.000	0.51
Job transferability	a > b	0.000	0.65
	b < c	0.000	0.59
Time for family	a > b	0.000	0.82
	a > c	0.022	0.32
	b < c	0.000	0.49
Intrinsic career value §	a > b	0.000	1.90
	a > c	0.004	0.41
	b < c	0.000	1.36
Self-perceived ability	a > b	0.000	1.51
	a > c	0.000	0.49
	b < c	0.000	1.01
Prior teaching/learning experience §	a > b	0.000	0.39
	b < c	0.000	0.33
Social influences §	a > b	0.000	1.97
	a > c	0.000	0.60
	b < c	0.000	1.10
Fallback career	a < b	0.000	0.75
	a < c	0.022	0.35
	b > c	0.000	0.40
Expert career	c > b	0.004	0.22
High demand §	a > b	0.036	0.26
	b < c	0.000	0.27
Good salary §	a > b	0.000	0.34
	b < c	0.008	0.28
Social status	a > b	0.001	0.41
	b < c	0.000	0.42
Social dissuasion	a > b	0.000	0.55
	b < c	0.000	0.42
Satisfaction with choice §	a > b	0.000	1.77
	a > c	0.003	0.42
	b < c	0.000	1.24

* Post hoc test: a = mentored; b = no interest in education; c = initially interested but not mentored; Bonferroni test when equal variances and ^§ Games–Howell post hoc test for unequal variances; Cohen’s d: 0.2, 0.5, and 0.8 correspond to small, medium, and large effects

and

Table A3. Mentored students’ perceptions on teaching as a fallback career (adapted for 12th-grade students) compared to their peers.

Fallback Career Items	Post Hoc Test *	p	Cohen’s d
After graduating from high school, I would like to continue studying in higher education. §	a > b	0.000	0.38
	a > c	0.016	0.25
	b < c	0.002	0.21
The decision of what I am going to do after graduating from high school is important. §	a > b	0.000	0.28
Studying to become a teacher is one of my favorite alternatives. §	a > b	0.000	1.70
	a > c	0.004	0.43
	b < c	0.000	1.13
Studying a pre-service teacher education program is within my alternatives. §	a > b	0.000	1.76
	a > c	0.000	0.48
	b < c	0.000	1.15
Teaching education would not be my first option to apply to.	a < b	0.000	0.47
	b > c	0.001	0.25

* Post hoc test: a = mentored; b = no interest in education; c = initially interested but not mentored; Bonferroni test when equal variances and ^§ Games–Howell post hoc test for unequal variances; Cohen’s d: 0.2, 0.5, and 0.8 correspond to small, medium, and large effects

). To account for statistically significant differences between categorical and ordinal sample characteristics (e.g., gender, self-reported income tier), bivariate analyses were performed with the chi-square (X2). All statistical analyses were performed using the statistical software program STATA. Scripts and raw results are available as Supplementary Materials (https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.7910/DVN/RHORUA, accessed on 10 May 2022).

3. Results

The ANOVA analysis was carried out in order to answer the motivational and perception characteristics regarding the teaching profession that differentiate the students into the three groups, that is, those showed interest and decided to participate in the mentoring program (“mentored group”), those who initially had done so but gave up (“initial interested not mentored”), and those who did not indicate interest in teaching (“not interested”). It is worth noting that the FIT-Choice scale was answered by the students before the beginning of the mentorship program, so these results reflect the factors influencing their decisions prior to any information or support.

The results show significant differences between the groups for most of the dimensions of the FIT-Choice scale (see

Table 1. Mentored students’ performance on FIT-Choice compared to their peers.

FIT-Choice Factors	Mentored (a)	No Interest (b)	Initial Interest Not Mentored (c)	F	Post Hoc
	x (Sd)	x (Sd)	x (Sd)
Work with children/adolescents	5.24 (1.71)	2.65 (1.65)	4.6 (1.83)	190.87 ***	a > b ***
					a > c ***
					b < c ***
Enhance social equity	5.65 (1.04)	4.88 (1.34)	5.55 (1.12)	37.32 ***	a > b ***
					b < c ***
Shape future	6.05 (0.98)	5.47 (1.28)	6.02 (0.99)	27.28 ***	a > b ***
					b < c ***
Make social contribution	5.84 (0.89)	5.36 (1.12)	5.8 (0.96)	22.08 ***	a > b ***
					b < c ***
Job security	5.01 (1.15)	4.35 (1.18)	4.94 (1.12)	34.01 ***	a > b ***
					b < c ***
Job transferability	4.87 (1.24)	4.09 (1.18)	4.8 (1.18)	45.78 ***	a > b ***
					b < c ***
Time for family	4.09 (1.25)	3.17 (1.1)	3.71 (1.15)	42.32 ***	a > b ***
					a > c *
					b < c ***
Intrinsic career value	4.86 (1.6)	2.37 (1.27)	4.21 (1.53)	267.35 ***	a > b ***
					a > c **
					b < c ***
Self-perceived ability	5.24 (1.44)	2.91 (1.55)	4.48 (1.54)	165.78 ***	a > b ***
					a > c ***
					b < c ***
Prior teaching/learning experience	6.19 (0.82)	5.73 (1.14)	6.09 (0.97)	15.4 ***	a > b ***
					b < c ***
Social influences	4.37 (1.66)	1.92 (1.19)	3.38 (1.63)	206.59 ***	a > b ***
					a > c ***
					b < c ***
Fallback career	3.60 (1.83)	5.61 (2.03)	4.26 (1.91)	31.61 ***	a < b ***
					a < c *
					b > c ***
Expert career	5.63 (1.01)	5.5 (1.16)	5.74 (1.06)	5.17 **	c > b *
High demand	6.18 (0.88)	5.91 (0.99)	6.17 (0.82)	9.28 ***	a > b *
					b < c ***
Good salary	3.87 (1.43)	3.36 (1.51)	3.8 (1.71)	10.75 ***	a > b **
					b < c ***
Social status	4.69 (1.02)	4.24 (1.09)	4.71 (1.12)	22.39 ***	a > b **
					b < c ***
Social dissuasion	4.86 (1.44)	4.01 (1.54)	4.63 (1.38)	26.23 ***	a > b ***
					b < c ***
Satisfaction with choice	4.97 (1.68)	2.43 (1.4)	4.27 (1.66)	227.74 ***	a > b ***
					a > c **
					b < c ***

*** p < 0.001; ** p < 0.01; * p < 0.05.

).

The mentored students differ significantly from those students who report having no interest in education or teaching, except in those factors related to the demands of the program and the teaching profession. In the case of those two factors, the perception of difficulty is similar among all the groups.

The results indicate that the mentored students showed greater motivation, both in terms of intrinsic value and social and achievement value, in addition to a greater self-perceived ability to teach, a better perception of the task of teaching, and greater previous positive teaching experiences (Table 1).

In addition, the mentored students answered more negatively to those items that explore the potential of teaching as a fallback career (

Table 2. Mentored students’ perceptions on teaching as a fallback career (adapted for 12th-grade students) compared to their peers.

Fallback Career Items	Mentored (a)	No Interest (b)	Initial Interest Not Mentored (c)	F	Post Hoc
	x (Sd)	x (Sd)	x (Sd)
After graduating from high school, I would like to continue studying in higher education.	6.78 (0.49)	6.33 (1.23)	6.57 (0.9)	9.46 ***	a > b ***
					b < c **
					a > c *
The decision of what I am going to do after graduating from high school is important.	6.85 (0.42)	6.62 (0.84)	6.72 (0.65)	4.43 *	a > b ***
Studying to become a teacher is one of my favorite alternatives.	4.55 (2.00)	2.00 (1.43)	3.76 (1.82)	190.06 ***	a > b ***
					b < c ***
					a > c **
Studying a pre-service teacher education program is within my alternatives.	4.99 (1.76)	2.24 (1.53)	4.11 (1.84)	205.79 ***	a > b ***
					b < c ***
					a > c ***
Teaching education would not be my first option to apply to.	4.56 (2.02)	5.55 (2.1)	5.05 (1.86)	13.03 ***	a < b ***
					b > c **

*** p < 0.001; ** p < 0.01; * p < 0.05.

).

Moreover, when comparing the mentored students with the group of students who initially showed interest in pre-service teacher education but who finally declined the invitation to participate in the program, we find that the factors that differentiate them are fundamentally those related to motivation and self-perceived ability (Table 1). In fact, the mentored students show greater motivation to work with children and adolescents; they also perceive themselves as having greater teaching skills and declare a greater intrinsic value of the teaching profession. They also valued more positively the possibilities of family conciliation associated with the teaching profession. These students also reported more satisfaction with the prospect of becoming a teacher.

After confirming that mentored students differ significantly from their peers in terms of their pedagogical motivation and perception of the teaching profession, we delved into the sociodemographic characterization of the groups and their differences. It is worth noting that the Belen Educa students, although coming from 12 different schools, are not representative of the Chilean educational system in terms of SES since all their schools are located in vulnerable areas.

The data show that female students are more likely to be in the mentored group than males (14.1% of people who identify themselves as female are in the mentored group compared to just 6.3% of male students; X² = 13.36; p = 0.004), just like students coming from households with lower incomes (13.2% of the students who report that their family have monthly incomes of less than $500,000—approx. 620 USD—are in the mentored group compared to 5.4% of the group with self-reported income larger than that; X² = 12.26; p = 0.000). In addition, students enrolled in 11th grade are also more likely to be in the mentored group (13.3% of 11th-graders are in the mentored group, in contrast to 7.9% of 12th-graders (X² = 6.27; p = 0.012). On the other hand, there are no significant differences between the groups on informed academic performance, nor the level of education of their parents (see Supplementary Materials for full report).

In summary, the analyzed data indicate that, compared to their peers, the students from Belén Educa schools who first expressed their interest in teacher education and then chose to participate in our mentoring program are the students with greater intrinsic motivation towards teaching and a greater self-perceived ability to teach. In addition, these students have a more positive perception of the teaching profession and project greater satisfaction with their professional choice. At the same time, this group is characterized by a higher proportion of women who come from families with lower SES.

When invited to give their feedback after the mentoring program, 38 out of the 83 students responded to our follow-up survey. According to their responses, 45% agree or strongly agree with the following statement “Without the program, I would not have applied to a pre-service teacher education program”, and 76.3% agree or strongly agree with “The program has helped me learn more about university life.”

Regarding the intention to apply to a pre-service teacher education program, 32 participants (84% of the responses) confirm their willingness, and 27 (71% of responses) specify that they plan to apply to one of the UDP teacher education programs.

When referring to the different components of the program on a scale from 1 to 7, the participants gave an average score of 6.11 (1.48) to the ambassadors, a 5.68 (1.74) to the frequency of contact by the ambassadors, a 5.45 (1.54) to the activities carried out by the program, and a 5.55 (1.59) and a 5.58 (1.78) to the information sent by email and by WhatsApp, respectively. These exploratory findings shed light on the importance of the ambassador, someone closer to the students in age who establishes a close relationship with them and, at the same time, is knowledgeable regarding application processes and programs’ features since she is a teacher education student or a recent alumna.

4. Discussion

This paper looks at 11th- and 12th-graders from 12 Chilean charter schools in Chile in order to understand their motivation towards the teaching profession. We found that students who not only state their interest in the teaching profession but also receive mentorship and support to help them decide and apply to a pre-service teacher program have a higher intrinsic motivation towards education and the teaching profession, as well as a higher self-perceived ability to teach in relation to their peers who either show no interest in being a teacher or who stated interest but refuse to be mentored.

This finding is important in light of the studies that show that intrinsic motivation and self-efficacy or self-perceived teaching ability are the best predictors of less burnout and greater optimism in the first year or during professional practice [43], and that these motivational factors are also related to the teacher professional development plans that teacher candidates have, being more present in those who show a greater commitment to the profession and think about always continuing in it [44,45]. Finally, as Han & Yin [33] point out, although the relationship between teacher motivation and student learning is complex and needs further study, the associations found between teacher motivation to teach and student motivation to learn, as well as the relationship between motivation to learn and student learning, theoretically justify the importance of this relationship, pending further empirical evidence. In support of the Han & Yin suggestion, Hatties’ meta-analyses highlight the great effect that teacher qualities have on student learning [46]

An analysis of the sociodemographic characteristics of this particular group (“mentored”) shows that they differ from their peers by being a group with a higher proportion of female students and who come from families with lower SES. In Chile, the university admission process is solely based on academic achievement. The literature indicates that this choice is not only unfair for students with a low SES—as is the case of those who are willing to apply to teaching programs—but also produces inequality and segregation at the university level and the labor market [19,20,21]. Ultimately, this biased admission process might impact the K–12 classroom by reducing teacher effectiveness and student learning. As Nevarez et al. point out, literature on the benefits of teacher diversity could be summarized as diverse teachers being leaders for social justice through local and global civic engagement, developing inclusive school cultures, developing a culturally relevant pedagogy, being cultural translators and transformers, and significant role models [47]. The benefits of diverse teachers are not exclusive to diverse student populations but they support all students’ development of cultural proficiency and engagement with equity and social justice [48]. Additionally, some robust findings show that the relationship between teacher diversity and student achievement is stronger in low-income contexts [49].

Therefore, a policy that rests solely on increasing the academic demands to enter a teaching program needs to consider the context of Chile. First, it is important to better understand the relationship between high school academic achievement and professional teaching performance. Recent studies in Chile indicate that academic performance in secondary education does not predict good teaching when entering the profession [1]. This is the case for almost a third of the teachers (27% in 2016) considered “high-performing” according to the national evaluation but who would not have made the cut if they had entered university in 2017 or afterward. It is also the case for 24% of the applicants who would not have been able to access university based on their achievement in secondary school since they did not reach the top 40% of their class [23].

Moreover, policymakers must take into account that academic achievement in secondary education is conditioned by characteristics such as gender, SES, and other demographic factors. In the case of Chile, this is especially important to consider since it is one of the countries in the region with the highest levels of school segregation [50,51,52]. Moreover, the data show a strong positive relationship between socioeconomic segregation and academic segregation [53]. In any case, policymakers and university leaders need to consider the recommendations of the national committee on teaching and implement programs to prepare and mentor high school students interested in teaching who have had to face “conditions in their schooling that do not allow them to reach any of the thresholds established in Law 20.903” [1] (p. 8).

PAP programs (Preparación y Accesso a las Pedagogías in Spanish) might represent alternative access to undergraduate teacher preparation programs since they are not based on students’ GPA or national university access exam scores. However, this entails an increase in the cost of preparing teachers since PAP programs assume students attend an academic and professional foundation year parallel to their last year of high school. This foundation program should be provided by the universities that are already burdened by the deficits of low enrollment in teacher education programs. Besides, further research is needed to understand the effectiveness of these programs in attracting prospective teacher education students [24].

Mentoring programs such as SerProfe UDP can also play an important role in this equation. This study found that, after receiving support for their career choice and university application process, 32 out of the 38 participants who answered our survey declared their intention to apply for teaching programs. Moreover, approximately 45% of our surveyed participants report that, without the support offered by the program, they would not have considered applying, and 76% of them agreed that the program has helped them learn more about university life.

The experience of the program SerProfe UDP might shed some light on how pre-service teaching programs in Chile need to be more active in order to provide greater access opportunities to students who have less information and social capital, and whose demographic characteristics have been traditionally associated with lower admission rates. Along with increasing diversity in pre-service teacher education classrooms and K–12 teachers, these programs could help attract and support teacher candidates whose motivation towards teaching, according to international research, suggests a greater commitment and optimism towards the profession, as well as greater teacher effectiveness in culturally diverse classrooms [42,43,44,45,46,47,48,49]. For this reason, it is important to better understand the factors that can support prospective students intrinsically motivated to teach to apply to pre-service teacher education programs.

Although we can draw some lessons from the implementation of the mentoring program SerProfe UDP related to the importance that this support system seems to have in the students’ probability to apply to a teaching program, we are well aware of some limitations, specifically in relation to the evaluation of the program. Firstly, the design of the pilot program did not follow an experimental or quasi-experimental model. Second, neither the subgroup of students who initially answered the FIT-Choice scale nor the group of participants who finally answered the program follow-up survey are necessarily representative samples of their respective groups. These prevent us from concluding that specific contents and activities carried out by the program are better than others, or that the increase in the intention to apply to teacher preparation programs is conditioned by some of these factors.

This does not mean that initiatives such as SerProfe UDP are not important. Increasing the attractiveness of teaching is fundamental in order to overcome the future deficit of teachers in Chile. Thus, programs that attract and inform students about teaching programs and the profession, as well as admission requirements, process, and scholarships, are key, especially for prospective teacher education students. This is so because, given their sociodemographic background, they are less likely to have access to this information, and, secondly, these programs respond to the nationally identified need to help students understand the advantages and benefits of studying to be a teacher and the improvement in the salary and working conditions of the profession in Chile [54].

Our educational system needs more and better teachers. It is alarming that, in our study, half of the secondary school students with greater intrinsic motivation for teaching and greater self-perceived ability to teach would not consider studying teacher education if they did not previously participate in a program that provides information and mentorship through their application process. The sociodemographic characteristics of this group of students suggest that this is especially worrisome if we take into account that this phenomenon is related to the inequity of our educational system, which provides less information and fewer opportunities for access to higher education for those students who come from lower-SES families.

Given that the implementation of this type of program seems to be an important pathway to access to teaching, especially for low-SES students, government support to improve and integrate these programs into schools of education as a structural strategy of admissions is fundamental. This should be a joint attempt to provide greater opportunities and promote equity in access to teacher education and the teaching profession while tackling the teacher deficit forecast for the near future. Moreover, the anticipated teacher shortage should be addressed by keeping teacher effectiveness as a priority, and, thus, promoting diverse teachers for the increasingly diverse classrooms in Chile seems a promising strategy.

Another limitation to our findings is related to the fact that students just reported their intention to apply to a teaching program. After their report, some students might change their minds, or those who applied may not be admitted given the score cut to study pre-service teacher education in Chile. In fact, in 2019, around 800 potential teacher education students did not make the cut to be admitted to a program. Having made the cut, this group of students would represent a 6pp increase in the number of teacher education students in 2019. We do not know these 800 students’ career motivations, background, and learning needs, but, based on our experience, we suspect a significant proportion of them could have successfully become teachers with the adequate university support.

Although mentoring programs such as SerProfe UDP are promising in attracting students to teacher education programs and supporting them throughout their application process, they do not seem to be enough since they do not provide any support to improve students’ academic achievement. In this sense, Law 20.903 allowed the creation of programs to attract and better prepare students for education programs (PAPs), but no public financial resources are available to implement them. This means that these programs have to be part of the university’s strategy to foster admission. Moreover, the university needs to monitor and support these students throughout their university education, which makes these programs very expensive options.

Although there are still few attempts to systematize PAPs’ varied experiences and evaluate the impact of these programs in Chile [24], the initial evidence indicates that students who enter this route to pre-service teacher education show a university retention rate similar to those who enter through traditional admission processes conditioned exclusively on academic performance [55]. Thus, PAPs seem to be promising investments in order to increase enrollment in teacher education programs without compromising teacher quality.

In the framework of an RPP between the School of Education at University Diego Portales and Belén Educa Educational Foundation, this research aims to understand the motivations and perception of teaching in high school students from vulnerable districts in Santiago. Characterizing those students with greater motivation toward teaching helps to design better strategies to foster equity and inclusion in admission to teacher education programs, assuring quality and increasing enrollment through promoting diversity in teacher education. This shared experience has impacted the participating institutions that are now aware of the importance of broadening the scope of the SerProfe UDP program to include academic preparation. We believe developing a PAP model within our RPP collaboration will result in giving more opportunities to students with the potential to become excellent teachers who otherwise might not be admitted to our teacher education programs.

5. Conclusions

This study on the attractiveness of the teaching profession among high school students takes place within an RPP between the Belén Educa Foundation and the UDP School of Education. As part of this collaboration, SerProfe UDP, a mentorship program to access pre-service teacher education, was piloted. Our aim with the analyses reported here was to better understand who the students are that eventually decided to participate in our mentorship program and what characteristics differentiated them from their peers before they entered the program.

Our findings regarding these students’ motivational and attitudinal characteristics toward teaching suggest they could become very committed teachers, resilient to burnout, and capable of motivating their own students to learn. Paradoxically, they belong to the most vulnerable population groups, those who traditionally have more difficulties in accessing university education in Chile.

After participating in SerProfe UDP, almost 40% of the students confirmed their intention to apply to a pre-service teacher education program. Additionally, 45% of our surveyed students reported that, without SerProfe UDP, they would not have considered applying for teacher education, and 76% declared that, thanks to the program, they now know more about university life and the teaching profession.

Further efforts to foster equity and inclusion in teacher education are needed. Building strong RPPs with different school districts and school networks, and co-designing and assessing different programs to improve teacher education enrollment and teacher diversity, seems a promising pathway to strengthen our profession and support quality.