Objective: the primary goal of this report is to introduce the research strand associated with the pre-service fundamental school teacher training programme at the University of Luxembourg. Below we provide a brief history of the Bachelor en Sciences de l’Éducation (BScE) programme; outline the evolution of the admission process over the last 10 years; brie y pro le pre-service candidates relative to admissions into the programme; and  nally provide a closer look at those admitted into the BScE programme over the past decade. In section 1, the substantive results focus on all candidates over this time period, and then only the admitted candidates in section 2.

Context: a recent report by the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (2016) sought to estimate the demand, or number of teachers needed, around the world to reach the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal 4, which aims to support inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities globally. To reach the goal, it is estimated that 24.4 million fundamental school teachers and another 44.4 million secondary school teachers are required to provide every child in the world access to education. This phenomenon of widespread teacher shortages around the world has led researchers to further investigate what motivates candidates to become teachers and what motivates them to remain in the job (see for example Watt et al., 2012). Likewise for Luxembourg: this is an important issue, which we seek to address with our research.