The Predictive Factors and Model Construction of the Teaching Willingness of Post-2000s Pre-service Teachers Majoring in Early Childhood Education--A Mixed Method Study

Background Career prospects exert a great impact on the teaching willingness of pre-service teachers. In this context, their career development must explore teaching willingness and its related predictive factors. This exploration is also beneficial for building a stable and high-quality team of teachers. Methods Given the Chinese cultural background and the characteristics of post-2000s pre-service teachers, this study adopts a mixed method to investigate the teaching willingness of 878 post-2000s pre-service teachers majoring in early childhood education in eastern China. Results The results found that (1) there are five types of teaching willingness among pre-service teachers: positive-stable type, negative-maintaining type, continuous-enhancing type, continuous-declining type, and fluctuating type. (2) Based on the Grounded Theory, this study identifies 12 predictive factors from four dimensions: individual, interpersonal, organizational, and background. Building upon these factors, we established a theoretical model wherein the interpersonal, organizational, and background dimensions predict teachers’ teaching willingness through the individual dimension. (3) Quantitative study is applied based on large-scale questionnaires, which shows that five key factors, including self-efficacy, family influence, undergraduate education, job characteristics, and government policies, play a core role in the teaching willingness of pre-service teachers majoring in early childhood education, while self-efficacy is a mediation variable for the other four factors. Conclusions Accordingly, it is suggested to improve the teaching willingness of pre-service teachers majoring in early childhood education by enhancing their self-efficacy from four aspects, namely family influence, undergraduate education, job characteristics, and government policies.