Understanding preservice teachers’ (PSTs) classroom preferences offers the potential to inform school hiring and reduce early career turnover. This large-scale qualitative study (n = 2,798) explores rich PST responses to the open-ended survey item: “Describe a classroom setting in which you would enjoy teaching.” Results indicate three categories of characteristics (classroom setting, pedagogical strategies, and student characteristics) and from those categories, two contrasting profiles. Flexible PSTs focus more on implementing their perception of effective pedagogy in any context. Rigid PSTs believe certain school, classroom, or student characteristics would facilitate their success. Categories meaningfully varied by certification level but not by gender or ethnicity. Findings advise teacher education to prepare PSTs toward effective pedagogy and district screening characteristics for improved hiring.

了解职前教师（PST）的课堂偏好可以为学校招聘提供信息并减少早期职业流失。这种大规模的定性研究（ñ= 2,798）探讨了PST对不限成员名额调查项目的丰富回应：“描述您希望在其中享受教学的教室环境。” 结果表明三个类别的特征（课堂设置，教学策略和学生特征），从这些类别中得出两个截然不同的特征。灵活的PST在任何情况下都将重点放在实现他们对有效教学法的认识上。严格的PST相信某些学校，教室或学生的特征会促进他们的成功。类别随证书级别而有意义地变化，但不随性别或种族而变化。调查结果建议对教师进行教育，以使PST朝着有效的教学法和地区筛选特征作准备，以改善招聘条件。