Should I stay or should I go? - How choice to become an upper secondary schoolteacher are structured

When choosing higher education there are several questions that the choosing individual needs to consider: What to study? Where to study? Why study? These questions include choices that are, by necessity, in the centre of attention for presumptive students. Choices are, to a large extent, structured and limited by different determinants such as social background, geographical origin, gender, former school experiences and educational skills. In this paper I investigate what the choice to become an upper secondary schoolteacher is structured by. I claim that the educational choice is an ongoing process through the whole educational programme and not just situated before and in the beginning of the education. This claim pushes for investigation of student choices from (at least) the start to the finish of their education. In this study 10 students has been interviewed for three occasions during their education with focus on their social and educational biography. By interviewing them repeatedly, it’s possible to capture and understand the very essence of their choices, what those are structured by and also track down and explain transformations in choosing. The theoretical notion of habitus is used to understand how the educational choices are structured. In this context habitus is evolved from an analysis were divided and unified habitus represent two opposing poles of different ideal options determined by choice. One option is to use education in a function of leaving the individual social and geographical background and the other is to use it to stay in that very background. The upper secondary schoolteacher vocation can actually contain both options despite background – a detail that can be explained by socially structured, more or less consecrated, images of what an upper secondary schoolteacher socially represent.