Secondary school graduates' perceptions of teaching as a career in Hong Kong: Promises and dilemmas

The teaching profession, similar to other human service occupations, requires recruits to have a strong sense of social responsibility, as their commitment is to help their students to become better citizens. Success in recruiting qualified and committed teachers, nevertheless, depends on whether the teaching career is attractive to quality and motivated young people. This paper reports a quantitative and qualitative study of the perceptions of teaching as a career by graduates from twenty secondary schools with different backgrounds in Hong Kong. It analyzed the relationship of the characteristics of these students with their interest in teaching, and examined the factors which may have influenced their choice of teaching as a career. It is hoped that the findings of the study could increase our understanding of young people's perceptions of a teaching career in different societies, and help policy makers adopt more effective measures to increase the attractiveness of teaching to qualified school leavers.