Choosing to teach: The stories men tell themselves about why they became teachers

This study examined the reasons that men described as the motivators to their deciding to become teachers. Using seven male teacher-intern narratives, two research questions were explored: Why do men choose to teach, and how do the men who choose to teach deal with the perceptions of teaching as a female dominated profession?; The male presence in teacher education programs is declining. This phenomena is thus making the teaching profession less representative of the global population and in doing so, creates, norms, and substantiates an artificially gendered division of labor and relative worth. The purpose of this study was to: (1) uncover the reasons men decide to become teachers; (2) understand the complexity of the process of coming to that decision by examining: (a) the stories in which men describe their choice to teach; (b) the experiences in these men's personal and scholastic histories that contributed to their stories of coming to choosing teaching as a profession; (c) the opinions and personal values that, when combined with events in their histories, shaped the decision to become a teacher. (3) arrive at results which provide the basis to reconceptualize the recruitment and retention of male teachers by uncovering the components that both positively and negatively affect the decision making process when choosing to become a public school teacher.; The narratives revealed concerns related to the changing societal acceptance of social inequities, the need to remediate these problems through becoming a teacher, and the notion of personal contribution to society through actively participating in education. The narratives reflected ways in which the men's histories structured their career choices. Recommendations include the formation of a university-school district mentor program for the secondary student interested in teaching as a career and the continuation of narrative studies focusing on male teacher prospects.