Reasons for Career Change among Attendees of Retraining Courses
Yaser Awad, Khawla Zoabi, Soad Abu-Rokon

Abstract
This paper sets out to establish the reasons for career change among Arab academics in Israel who opt to retrain as schoolteachers. Recent years have witnessed a marked rise in the number of students enrolling in teacher training courses at the various colleges of education, designed to train teaching staff for various educational establishments. Many students, both male and female, arrive at the course from various disciplines – often from professions that are considered more “masculine,” or more prestigious. This study examined the motivations behind such career changes among Arab students in Israel, taking into account their electives during high school, their bachelor degree studies, and their chosen speciality during teacher training. The findings reveal that the respondents’ personal inclinations, their desire for job and financial security and satisfaction, their gender and the socio-cultural context all influenced their career choice over time. These findings have ramifications for teacher training colleges – for those retraining to become teachers as well as for those for whom teaching is their first career choice – in that the curriculum should be designed to challenge the students, while recognizing the prior knowledge, skills, experience and professional identity acquired by retrainees in their previous professional capacity and integrating these into the course’s educational theory and practice. In addition, the teaching curriculum for students who chose teaching as their primary career choice should be structured around a varied, broad and dynamic core, to enable the students to avoid overly abrupt changes and integrate other disciplines into their studies, thus providing them with a foundation for other educational paths while preserving their original inclination and choice of teaching as their chosen career.

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