Identifying and prioritizing the educational needs of primary school teachers implementing the Shahab program

Shahab national program in Iran is currently administered with the aim of identification, guidance and support of supreme talents with the cooperation of national elite foundation and the ministry of education in all primary schools from fourth to sixth grades. In this program, teachers identify students in eight types of talents, including verbal, mathematical, artistic, spatial, motion-sports, social, religious culture, and experimental science, by grading student behavior checklists. Thus Given the key role of teachers in identifying students' talents, it is important to examine their educational needs. The present study was conducted to identify and prioritize the educational needs of primary school teachers implementing the Shahab program. The research method was a descriptive survey. The statistical population included all primary school teachers implementing the Shahab program in Najafabad of Isfahan, in the academic year of 2017-2018 (n=505). According to Krejcie- Morgan's table, 200 of the population were selected by stratified random sampling method as the sample size. The data collection tool was a 45-item questionnaire conducted by the researcher on teachers' educational needs for identifying eight types of talents on a five-point Likert scale. The questionnaire was developed using Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences and its application in the classroom. The validity of the questionnaire was confirmed by 5 educational specialists. The reliability of the questionnaire was calculated through Cronbach's alpha coefficient and the coefficient was estimated to be 0.93. The findings from this study using Friedman's statistical test showed that priorities of the educational needs of teachers implementing the Shahab program in identifying different talents are: motion-sports, spatial, social, artistic, experimental sciences, mathematics, religious culture and verbal, respectively. Due to the high average of educational needs in the field of identifying each of the talents, except for the talent of experimental sciences, there was no significant difference between the opinions of teachers.