Teachers said helping youngsters was the best reward

Most however do not feel their ongoing training needs are being fully met.

More than one in six - 17% - say they contributed financially to their own "professional development" last year.

They told researchers for the General Teaching Council for England they wanted more emphasis on developing learners' initiative.

Collaboration

They also wanted to see greater use of their own professional creativity and informed judgement - but they considered it particularly unlikely that would happen.

Almost all thought it likely that online and technology-based learning would increase.

The findings come from a study by the National Foundation for Educational Research, commissioned by the teaching council.

It surveyed 10,000 teachers, head teachers and deputies and 4,370 questionnaires were returned, a response rate of 44%.

Collaborative learning with teachers in the same school was the most common sort of professional development, mainly in staff or departmental meetings. This was much more common in primary schools.

Just over half did not provide support to trainee or newly qualified teachers - and although many would have been willing to do so, almost one in five would not.

The government, in its five-year plan for education published on Thursday, promised: "We will put more of a focus on teacher development by linking career progression to high-quality professional development, which will increasingly be school-based, with the best teachers coaching and mentoring others."

Tables

There was a preference in the survey for the school curriculum being developed in the classroom or within the school - rather than at local or national level.

As for government initiatives, only the national strategies - such as those in primary schools or in the early secondary years - and the investment in computer technology received any substantial support, the researchers said.

Performance tables came bottom of the list of things felt to help improve education in England.

Teachers were split on whether they felt there was an appropriate balance between using testing to support learning and using it to measure what children had learned.

Career-wise, the "over-riding" message was that teachers carried on doing their jobs because of their commitment to the education of young people and their desire to increase pupil achievement and raise standards.

The teaching council's chief executive, Carol Adams, said of the survey: "What it demonstrates is a profession committed to delivering on its values, which puts the interests and needs of pupils at the centre of all that teachers think and do."