Different routes same destination: A cluster analysis of teacher students types among Palestinian students live in Israel

While the attractiveness of teaching as a career is declining as it's indicated by the teacher shortage crisis (European union, 2013; OECD, 2017 ), it is still considered one of the most preferred domain of study among Palestinian Arab students live in Israel. previous studies have shown, students from the Palestinian community in the Israeli context (Mahajna, 2014), as in the other contexts (Bergmark, Lundström, Manderstedt, & Palo, 2018; Han, Borgonovi, & Guerriero, 2018), rate intrinsic and altruistic motives higher than extrinsic motives.This similarity in motives is likely to make the above mentioned causes for why individuals choose teaching as a profession insufficient explanation. This explanation have not taught us who will continue in the teaching profession and who will leave it (Heinz, 2015).Though the real question that should be asked is: who among those who come to the teaching profession expected to remain in the teaching profession. Accordingly, the purpose of the present study is to examine typology of students who choose the teaching profession based on four indicators: (a) the type of motivation for choosing teaching profession, (b) perceived suitability to the teaching profession, (c) career choice satisfaction, and (d) teacher student commitment to the teaching profession. Data were collected from 113 Arab students in their first year of studies who attended a teacher training college. The participants comprised 87.6% of the total number of students were accepted to teacher training studies in the same year. four sets of questionnaires were administered: (a) the type of motivation for choosing teaching profession, (b) perceived suitability to the teaching profession, (c) career choice satisfaction, and (d) teacher student commitment to the teaching profession. cluster analysis was performed to distinguish between different types of students teachers. Results indicated that there are four different types of student-teachers who show different characteristics: the "prophets", the "convinced", the "realist" and the "sufferers". The "prophets" student-teachers showed a low level of future external goals and a high level of future internal goals in teaching profession. The "convinced" teacher students reported a low level of career choice satisfaction, and a low level of future internal goals. The largest group was the "Realists" teacher students. students from this group reported the highest level in all the variables were examined. The last group, the "Sufferers" student-teachers reported the lowest level in the variables: perception suitability to teaching profession and career choice satisfaction.