Factors influencing male teacher trainees’ career choice for early childhood education at Colleges of Education in the Upper West Region

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate factors influencing male teacher trainees’ career choice for ECE at Colleges of Education in the Upper West Region. The study employed descriptive survey design with quantitative approach. Using census technique, a sample size of 160 male teacher trainees was chosen for the study (with a return rate of 98.7%). A self-designed questionnaire was used to collect data. The data collected were analysed using descriptive statistics (frequencies and percentages, means and standard deviations). The study’s findings indicated that family, personal, peers, and outcome expectation factors influence the career choice of male teacher trainees for ECE in the Upper West Region. The results also show that if governments and other relevant stakeholders implement strategies like giving young men the opportunity to work with children, giving men who enter the early childhood field a motivational allowance, media campaigns, giving men preference when employing teachers for ECE, teacher education programmes increasing the quota for male applicants for ECE programmes, subsidising the cost of ECE programmes, among others, more young men will enter the field. It was recommended that the government, through the Ministry of Education (MOE), reconsider teacher remuneration and other working conditions in order to recruit and retain more teachers in general, and specifically male ECE instructors.