Motivational factors influencing teaching (FIT) as a career: An empirical study of the expatriate teachers in the Emirates

This study aimed to investigate the motivational factors that lead to choice of teaching career in expatriate teachers in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). A UAE version of the Factors Influencing Teaching (FIT)-Choice scale (Watt & Richardson, 2007) was developed following the pre-testing strategies used by Dillman (2000), Heinz (2013) and Sharif (2014) and applied to identify the factors that most influenced the expatriates choose teaching as a career in the UAE. In a proposed and successfully tested model in this study, altruistic &/or intrinsic and extrinsic factors were found to be the mediator in the relationship between prior teaching & learning experience and social influence, and choice of a teaching career. Some gender differences were observed in case of four factors, ie, fall back career, work with children and adolescents, salary and prior teaching and learning experiences, and implications were discussed. For recruitment campaigns, strategies based on this study findings and understanding of the expatriate teachers’ motivations to adopt teaching as a career in the UAE were discussed. Due to the fact that the most recent study by LinkedIn among 380 million global members highlighted the UAE to be the most popular destination for expatriates surpassing Australia, Canada and Singapore (Maceda, 2015), the findings of this study can be considered to be of value to: (a) altruistically/intrinsically motivated professionals who are international-minded and seeking greener pastures in the UAE, and (b) the UAE policymakers who are working hard to fill the demand-supply gap drawing the attention of expatriates with the right skills and expertise. Finally, the research attempts in this study are seemingly unique in the sense that no previous study on teaching motivation had a combined focus on ‘in-service’, ‘expatriate teachers’ and UAE using FIT-Choice scale.