Is Teaching a Lifelong Career? Reflections of English Teachers

This study aims to find out and compare pre-service and in-service English teachers’ preferences for choosing teaching profession and their opinions about whether teaching is a lifelong career. 308 pre-service English teachers and 50 inservice English teachers participated. The results showed that 240 pre-service English teachers and 44 in-service English teachers held positive opinions about teaching profession and thought that teaching is a lifelong career. However, 45 student teachers and 3 teachers held negative views. There were both similarities and differences between the pre-service and in-service participants in terms of their preferences for choosing teaching profession and their perspectives about teaching as a lifelong career. Some of the quotations of the participants are given to exemplify participant opinions because the participants were found to have various preferences for choosing teaching career like loving teaching, childhood dream, family encouragement, previous learning experiences, outer obligation or taking previous teachers as model