The Impact of "Philosophy of Education in English Language Teaching" Course on Career Motivation of Pre-service EFL Teachers at Farhangian University

Abstract
Aim: This study aimed at investigating the effectiveness of philosophy of education course on career motivation of pre-service teachers at Farhangian University. Ninety-one freshmen per-service EFL teachers were selected by convenience sampling. Before the course began, the participants were asked to mention the reasons behind choosing the profession. After fourteen weeks of instruction, they were asked again to state if they would choose the teaching profession if they were given a second chance. The findings indicated that the participants had chosen the profession due to job benefits, personal interests, teacher’s social role, personal abilities, family, and spiritual function. Moreover, the participants evaluated the course as a success in strengthening their career motivation and stated that they would choose the profession again due to teacher’s social role, personal interests, job benefits, personal abilities, and spiritual function. It can be concluded that the course is effective in strengthening the participants’ career motivation.
Keywords: Career motivation, Teacher education, Pre-service teacher, Philosophy of education

Introduction
Career motivation in teacher education programs has been among the top priorities for educational researchers. A plethora of research has consistently demonstrated that attracting highly motivated candidates for the teaching profession is of vital importance in admission programs (Sinclair et al., 2006). However, attracting motivated candidates does not guarantee they will stay motived during the programs because career motivation may fluctuate throughout the training programs (Sinclair, 2008). Therefore, teacher education programs incorporate some instructional courses to modify or strengthen the level of pre-service teachers’ career motivation. The effectiveness of these courses in achieving this objective has been a matter of debate. A considerable number of studies (e.g., Mirzalu, & Safiyari, 2020; Shojaei et al., 2018) have reported evidence of changes in pre-service teachers’ motivation after the training courses. In contrast, some other studies (e.g., Aslani Katuli, 2017) have indicated negligible changes in this variable despite the efforts of teacher educators in such instructional courses. Therefore, the effectiveness of teacher education courses on pre-service teachers’ motivation is far from unanimous.
In the context of this study, Farhangian University in Iran has placed considerable attention to pre-service teachers’ career motivation in the latest curriculum of Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL). Among several courses in this curriculum centering on pre-service teachers’ career motivation is “philosophy of education for English language teachers”. The main objective of the course is to modify or strengthen the pre-service EFL teachers’ career motivation. Therefore, this study aimed to fill the gap by adopting a qualitative approach to investigate the impact of this training course on pre-service EFL teachers' career motivation. More specifically, this study attempted to answer the following questions:
1) What are the reasons behind choosing the teaching profession on behalf of per-service EFL teachers?
2) To what extent, does “philosophy of education for English Language Teachers” course change the pre-service EFL teachers’ career motivation?
3) What is the pattern of motivation changes in these pre-service teachers?

Methodology
This qualitative study adopted thematic analysis to generate the pattern of choosing the teaching profession before entering the teacher education program and the pattern of choosing the profession after passing an instructional course on philosophy of education to provide a basis for measuring the effectiveness of the course. To achieve this purpose, 91 Iranian freshmen pre-service teachers (43 females and 48 males) who had been accepted into a teacher education program in teaching English as a foreign language were selected by convenience sampling. During the first semester of their academic study, some courses were offered, including "philosophy of education in English language teaching”, which aimed to modify or strengthen pre-service teachers’ career motivation. As the first step, in the first session of the course, the participants were informed about the purpose and procedure of the research and were asked to take part in a structured interview to state their reasons behind choosing the teaching profession. Then, the instruction was provided for 13 one-hour sessions on a weekly basis. In the last session of the course, the participants were asked to evaluate the course success in changing their career motivation. They were asked further to take part in another interview and mention if they would choose the teaching profession if they were given a second chance. They were also asked to mention the reasons behind their choice. Finally, the extracted data from the interviews were entered into MAXQDA 2020 for analyses.

Findings
Regarding the first question which delt with the reasons behind choosing the teaching profession, the participants mentioned 300 reasons. The thematic analysis of the data classified these reasons under 26 minor themes and these minor themes under six major themes including job benefits (33%), personal interests (31%), the social role of the teacher (22%), personal abilities (8%), the role of the family (3%), and the spiritual function of teaching (3%). The further analysis of data indicated that these reasons were intrinsic motivation with 121 mentions (48%), extrinsic motivation with 109 mentions (36%), and altruistic motivation with 70 mentions (23%). Regarding the second question, which required the participants to evaluate the course success in changing the level of their career motivation, the results indicated that out of 91 participants, 59 responses were high effect (65%), 19 were average effect (21%), 7 were negligible effect (8%), 4 were no effect (4%), and 2 were reverse effect (2%). Therefore, the results indicated that the participants believed that their career motivation improved due to the training course on philosophy of education. The results of the analysis performed on the data obtained from the answers to the third question indicated that the participants stated 136 reasons for choosing the teaching profession if they were given a second chance. These reasons were classified under 18 minor themes and five major themes including the social role of the teacher (40%), personal interests (30%), job benefits (21 %), personal abilities (5%) and spiritual function of teaching (4%). These career motivations fall into altruistic motivation with 57 mentions (42%), intrinsic motivation with 50 mentions (37%), and extrinsic motivation with 29 mentions (21%).

Discussion and Conclusion
Based on the findings of the study, it can be concluded that the training course on philosophy of education was effective in improving the career motivation of per-service EFL teachers. Due to the course instruction, the pre-service teachers’ career motivation pattern changed inherently with a shift from extrinsic motivations to altruistic motivations as the primary reasons for choosing the teaching profession. Based on these findings, policy-makers and curriculum developers in teacher education should offer courses aiming to improve pre-service teachers’ career motivation. Teacher educators should also examine pre-service teachers’ career motivations before they begin their instruction and try to improve altruistic and intrinsic motivations which have been proven to be more effective than extrinsic motivations. This study investigated the effectiveness of one course on freshmen per-service EFL teachers during a six-month semester. Future studies can be carried out to address career motivation in other courses during the four-year teacher education programs.