Willingness to work by profession (based on survey of teacher education graduates)

The education sector is accumulating a critical mass of intellectual resources to meet the challenges of ensuring the country’s sovereignty under the conditions of unprecedented sanctions pressure from the West. At the same time, it still has a number of structural problems that emerged during the period of reforming the education system (this is the aging of teaching staff, insufficient staffing of general education organizations, and the growth of the teaching load due to the increase in class sizes, etc.). The problem of employment of graduates of professional education in accordance with their qualifications has also become more acute. According to Rosstat data, the share of teachers who find jobs in their specialty is about 80%, which is noticeably lower than in other socially important spheres. The purpose of the study is to assess the motives for choosing a profession and the readiness of graduates of pedagogical training areas of universities and pedagogical colleges for professional activity in their specialty. The information base of the study is the data of Rosstat, as well as the results of the pilot survey of graduates of higher and secondary vocational education organizations of the Vologda Oblast, studying in pedagogical specialties. The authors identified the motives for choosing a profession, and assessed the graduates’ readiness to find a job within their specialty. They identified the reasons for reluctance to work at school, including low wages, fear of working in a teaching staff and lack of professional vocation. The method of cluster analysis was used to identify groups of graduates depending on their readiness to work at school and the presence of disappointment in the profession during training. Two groups are of the greatest interest. The first group are the graduates “ready for school work", having positive characteristics practically by all the criteria (choice of work according to vocation, desire to work with children, etc.). The second group are the graduates “not ready for school work" characterized by a loyal attitude to the teaching profession. The authors believe that it is possible to change these graduates’ career plans into choosing employment in their field if additionally work with them and guide. The practical significance of the research results lies in the fact that they can be used in the development of measures in the field of vocational orientation in general educational organizations.