The choice of teaching as a possible career: the role of social origin and gender in science teachers' retention

Several countries have struggled for attracting and retaining qualified teachers, especially in the science teaching, which are moving away from this career due to low compensation and other opportunities. In this scenario, it is essential to understand what influences teachers to choose and stay in the teaching career. In this study we investigate what influences the choice of the teaching career and persevering in it. From the literature on the field, we list five motivational elements that impact the teacher’s choice: love, care, ability, calling, and profession. Using Bourdieu's theory, we interpret this process highlighting the role of social origin and gender. In-depth interviews were conducted with four Brazilians teachers and their sociological portraits were elaborated. The results show that the choice of teaching is not free or deliberate, but conditioned by the different elements mentioned above, intrinsically related to the teacher's trajectory. Given socioeconomic and gender conditions for choosing profession, the real and potential work possibilities, professional and personal expectations, teaching has become the best professional option, the dream to be achieved. In addition to exploring a relational sociological analysis of the elements that lead teachers to choose and stay in the profession and showing how the decadent context of the profession affects teachers’ actions, the implications of this study reinforce the need to make the teaching career more attractive to subjects from different genres and social backgrounds.