Primary School Teacher’s Need for Education

Globalisation and social changes in Slovenia, especially the formation of an independent country, adoption of the new constitution and implementation of a multi-party political system have caused changes in the education system as well (Bela knjiga o vzgoji in izobraževanju v Republiki Sloveniji1, 1996, p. 5). Razdevšek Puček (1997) indicated that a teacher’s need for education and constant professional training has unquestionably risen in the period of curricular reform that is with the implementation of the nine-year primary education programme and after it. In the theoretical part of this paper, we will show some basic changes in primary education system that came with the curricular reform and the fact that every school reform is undoubtedly connected with teacher education and goes side by side with changes in contents and methods of teacher training. We are going to pay a special attention to the demands that have influenced the need for teacher education since the basic aim of the research was to determine the extent to which (if any at all) teachers of the first, the second and the third cycle felt the need for further education that is the additional professional training and to specify the possible differences. While comparing the methods of education of teachers in the first, the second and the third cycle, we have also considered their age and level of education. Additionally, we were interested in what the most common obstacles teachers face are when they are deciding for education (limited time, costs, conditions imposed by the institution and age) and what the motives that influence their decisions for education are (promotion at workplace, desire for personal growth, level of education and need for knowledge). The research includes a non-random pattern of teachers in two primary schools in the municipality of Maribor. We used a descriptive and non-experimental causal method of empirical pedagogical research