The first part of the chapter gives an overview of teacher education and teacher professional development in Croatia, together with an empirical review of motivations for the teaching profession in Croatia, whereas the second part presents the results of the new study. The goal of the present study was to explore the role of personality and motivations for choosing teaching as a future career, in explaining achievement goals of student teachers in their teacher studies. Achievement goals are of particular importance for student teachers as learning is the core of their future profession. One could expect that their goals for their own learning would be congruent with their goals for teaching, as both could be conceptualised under the same theoretical framework (Butler, 2007). The sample included 197 third-year students enrolled in teacher education programs for classroom teachers in the three Croatian universities: University of Zagreb (57.1%), University of Rijeka (21.4%), and University of Zadar (21.4%). Instruments used were the Big Five Inventory (BFI ; John, Naumann, & Soto, 2008), FIT-Choice scale (Watt & Richardson, 2007), and Achievement Goal Questionnaire (Elliot & McGregor, 2001). Both personality traits and teacher motivations significantly accounted for the variance of all four achievement goals. Mastery goal orientation in teacher education studies was positively predicted by personality dimensions of agreeableness, conscientiousness and openness to experience ; and by social utility value motivations for teaching. Performance approach goals were predicted only by personal utility value of teaching out of all motivations. Taken together with personality variables, motivations for teaching independently contributed to the explanation of learning goals during teacher education studies.