A National Survey of Education Students: Some Data on Background, Habits, and Reasons for Entering Education
Keywords:
Teacher education, Career choice, SocioeconomicAbstract
A sample of 583 education students from ten Canadian universities responded anonymously to a questionnaire on their backgrounds, habits, and outlooks. Their reports of family background; religiosity and political identification; reading history, habits and orientation; coursework and education status; and their expressed reasons for pursuing a teaching career showed: (1) their socio-economic backgrounds were representative of the broader Canadian society, although slightly advantaged; (2) women were more privileged than men; (3) most students were offspring of parents who had not attended university, and their expectations of social interaction and material benefits led the list of reasons for entering education; (4) persons in the sample had a conventional political and religious orientation; (5) their patterns of reading and mass media use indicated that few were interested in or attached to “high” cultural pursuits and preferred mass commercial culture; (6) many in this sample of education students (especially men) recalled protracted difficulties with reading, and the sample as a whole was noticeably non-bookish.
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