The Perceptions of the Pre-service Education Students about the Status and Socio-cultural Beliefs about the Teaching Profession

The study sought to explore the perception of pre-service education students on the status and socio-cultural beliefs about the teaching profession in selected public and private universities in Kenya. Correlational research design and a concurrent mixed method approach was employed in this study. The respondents in this study were third and fourth year pre-service education students. from six selected public and private chartered universities in Kenya which had been in existence for the last twenty years and offering teacher education. Purposive, cluster and convenience sampling methods were used. Data were gathered by the use of questionnaires and interviews. In data analysis, frequencies, means, standard deviation, linear regression and Pearson product moment correlation coefficient were used. The pre-service education students were found to have a low perception of the status of the teaching profession and believed that teaching is a hard work which is emotionally draining, although they perceived teaching to be a profession that requires high levels of expert knowledge.