Business teacher training students in Austria: Their Study choice and learning motivations

Context: The business education master’s programme in Austria is characterised through its polyvalent career options and its pedagogical orientation. It differs from other business and economic master’s programmes as well as other teacher training programmes offered in Austria. A lack of empirical data on this target group makes it hard to understand the students’ motivations. Therefore, it is of interest how business teacher training students are motivated to choose their study programme and how they are motivated to learn in their studies. In this pre- sent study we analyse these motivational factors. Furthermore, we investigate how the motivation of business teacher training students differs from that of other master students at a university of business and economics and how it is related to student satisfaction.

Approach: In 2020, we conducted an online survey among 178 students in economic business master’s programmes in Austria. 53 business teacher training students took part in the survey. In order to study the students’ motivations for the choice of study (intrinsic and extrinsic career- oriented motivations), the motivation for learning (intrinsic, extrinsic career-oriented and ex-
trinsic competition-oriented) and the student satisfaction we used validated scales.

Findings: Intrinsic motivation seems to be the most important for study choice as well as for learning for the business teacher training students. The results also imply that business teacher training students are more intrinsically motivated and less motivated through career options when choosing their study compared to other master students in our sample. Furthermore, the learning motivation of the teacher training students is on average more intrinsic than career- oriented or competitive. Finally, intrinsic motivation is significantly related to the student satisfaction of the business teacher training students, while extrinsic motivation is not related to their satisfaction. The study contributes to broaden the empirical evidence in this field. The findings are similar to other findings in the field of teacher training. The results show the im- portance of intrinsic motivation for choosing the study programme of business education as well as for student satisfaction as a factor of student success. Thus, recruitment should focus on measures of attracting intrinsically motivated students.