Towards Professional Development: Training Needs Assessment of Primary School Theater Teachers in Greece

The purpose of this research is to investigate the professional training needs of theater educators, as they arise based on their views, who work in primary education. The fact that triggered the inception of this research was that studies concerning aesthetic education in Greece refer to all specialties (musicians, visual artists, theater educators). In some cases, research addressed in training needs that music educators or visual artist have, but not for training needs theater educators have. Consequently, the educational needs of the above specialties may converge in some areas, but, depending on the specialty, they differ in others. Additionally, until 2019, the Greek ministry of education considered the in job-training of theater educators a minor issue. For those reasons, emerged the importance of a research for the specialty of theater educators. In this context, therefore, a qualitative research was designed and conducted using a sample of thirteen theater educators, who work in primary schools in the prefecture of Heraklion, Crete. Semi-structured interviews were used to collect data and the results were analyzed by topic. The thematic analysis showed that there is an urgent need for training programs in certain areas.