Teaching Tomorrow, Working Today: Career Motivations and Adaptive Strategies of Teacher Education Students in Non-educational Employment

Teacher education programs generally assume that their students are preparing to teach in schools. Drawing on narrative interviews with nine Indonesian teacher education students who held non-educational jobs before enrolling and kept them throughout their studies, we examine what drew them to teacher preparation and how they managed both commitments at an institution where working adults made up most of the enrollment. Economic necessity was the most consistent pattern, since participants’ wages funded their studies and reversed the usual relationship between work and study. For a subset, teacher education served as a flexible credential for wider educational futures, including independent ventures that the institution’s own mission names. All nine navigated selective institutional accommodation, a program that adjusted its schedule yet withheld accommodation in pedagogy, prior learning, and professional identity. The study advances understanding of non-traditional teacher candidates and shows career adaptability as a sustained orientation under chronic constraint.