Preservice teacher professional commitment: A conceptual model and literature review

Prior research on preservice teacher commitment focuses on the relation between commitment and various relevant factors. Its nature and how it originates, develops, and impacts preservice teachers' learning to teach and career choice have yet to be described clearly. Using Locke's Model of Work Motivation, this paper presents a conceptual model to explain the nature of preservice teacher commitment, illustrates its genesis and development, and analyzes how commitment impacts preservice teachers' learning to teach and career choice. Further, we conduct a literature review of empirical research on preservice teacher commitment to explicate the constructs and relationships embedded in the conceptual model and corroborate its viability. Finally, we discuss the implications of our new model from multiple perspectives. •This article proposes a preservice teacher Commitment Model.•The Model is built on Locke's Model of Work Motivation.•The article reviews 47 empirical studies about PST commitment.•The Model illustrates the genesis, development, and consequence of PST commitment.•The conceptual model and literature review are both firsts for this topic.