Motivations for and Perceptions of Becoming an EFL Teacher: Adaptation and Validation of the Factors Influencing Teaching Choice Scale among English-Majoring Students in Iran

This study investigated the validity and measurement invariance of an adapted version of the Factors Influencing Teaching Choice scale for assessing prospective teachers’ motivations for and perceptions of choosing to become teachers of English as a foreign language (EFL) in Iran. To this end, 173 pre-service teachers who intended to pursue EFL teaching as their future career completed the adapted instrument, named the Factors Influencing Teaching Choice–English as a Foreign Language (FITefl-Choice) scale. The collected data were analyzed using a combination of exploratory and confirmatory factor analytic techniques to examine the internal structure of the adapted scale, followed by measurement invariance testing to evaluate the stability of the model across demographic groups. The analyses supported a parsimonious factorial structure that demonstrated stronger conceptual coherence and empirical adequacy than competing models. In addition, the results indicated that the measurement properties of the scale were consistent across gender and university type, suggesting that the instrument functions equivalently across these groups. The theoretical and practical implications of using the FITefl-Choice scale are discussed, and recommendations for future validation studies of this adapted instrument are provided.