The purpose of this research is to collect empirical data about teachers’ perspectives on their teaching profession, so that we can develop teacher-led training programs. It has been acknowledged that professional development programs for teachers are more effective when teachers feel they learned what they wished to learn from the program (e.g. Darling-Hammond, Hyler, ＆ Gardner, 2017). However, many of the formal professional training programs are designed for the teachers to update their knowledge and skills that are identified by other than teachers, and that teachers’ voices are not reflected in the content of the professional development programs as much as they should be.

In Japan, the main approach to determine the content of the teacher training programs has been to identify what the educational policies and national curriculum newly expect teachers to do in the classrooms (e.g. Nonaka, & Wakita, 2022 ;Takagi, & Okubo, 2022; Yoshikawa, & Tsukamoto, 2022). As the policies and curriculum changes, new training programs are prepared, so that the teachers can fill the gap between how they are expected to perform according to the policies and curriculum and what knowledge and skills the teachers currently have. This approach is useful to update the teachers’ knowledge and skills, but the problem with this approach is that it prevents teachers from growing as professionals. Teachers’ needs should play an important part in the development of teacher professional development programs.

   Another issue that this research intends to address is the influence of gender on teachers’ training needs. The social problem behind this research focus is that there is serious gender inequity especially in the percentage of women in leadership positions Japan. Teaching occupation is not an exception. The percentage of women among principals in middle schools in Japan is only 7%, while 42% of teachers are women (OECD’s average is that 47% are women among school leaders and 68% are women among teachers). This means that women are 11 times less likely to be promoted to school leaders in Japan. One of the well-known reasons of much fewer women in leadership position is that women are less likely to desire to take the leadership positions. Socially expected gender roles prevent women from cultivating their motivation to take important positions in organizations. Typically, women tend to believe that they do not have enough skills to lead the group, they do not feel that others expect them be the leaders, and they worry that they will not be able to take care of their families as the leads need to work longer and have higher responsibilities (e.g. Shima, 2024). Given that teachers are in the society with the expected gender roles, female and male teachers may have different perceptions about their work as teachers and their skill levels. We will examine the influence of the gender role on teachers’ perception, so that we can gain important data about how we can make programs equally appreciated by all genders.

Hennessy-Hicks Training Needs Analysis (TNA) questionnaire and manual (2011) was adopted in our process of developing the online survey. TNA questionnaire has been widely used as a tool to determine the healthcare providers’ training needs (e.g. Holloway, Arcus, & Orsborn, 2018; Mwansisya, et al., 2021; Tsantili, Hadjidema, & Galanis, 2021). Our research team has modified it to the 35-item online survey to measure the teachers’ training needs. The 35-item survey is the list of 35 tasks that teachers may find important as teachers’ tasks, and they are classified into 6 categories: “research practices,” “communication and teamwork with colleagues,” “supporting other faculty and staff,” “administrative tasks,” “management of self and organizational growth,” and “organizational management skills”. For each item, the participants were asked to rate the importance of the tasks in the teaching profession (how much the task is important) and their abilities to accomplish these tasks successfully (how well they can perform the tasks well), with 7-point Likert scales. The TNA model suggests that teachers’ training needs is high for the tasks that teachers think important but do not think they are performing well (high-importance & low-performance). Teachers’ training needs are supposed to be low for the rest of the combination of importance and performance. That is, if the teachers think the task is important and that they think they are performing well, the teachers are satisfied with the current situation and do not seek training. Also, if the teachers think the task is not important, regardless of their current performance, teachers will not seek training. The total of 831 teachers, including elementary (23.0% of the participants), middle (34.5%), high (21.2%), and special need school (6.0%) teachers, participated in this research in 2023. These teachers were recruited from the teachers who have participated in the professional development programs offered by the National Institute for School Teachers and Staff Development. The teachers who are 40 years old or older accounted for 76.2% of the participants. In addition, 46.5% were school leaders, and 67.9% of participants were men.

The results show that there are little training needs among teachers in general. Teachers believe that all of the 35 tasks in the list are important, but they are handling them well. One of the interesting findings is that teachers are more confident about their knowledge and skills about tasks that they think are more important to do as teachers, r=.74. Regardless of gender or positions, all teachers believe maintaining good communication with colleagues is the most important tasks and that they are performing best. In contrast, the tasks that teachers are least confident are “Documenting one's practices and initiatives into reports and papers,” and “Use research to collect and organize specialized knowledge and information.” In terms of the effect of gender, the results show that women are less confident about their knowledge and skills about “research practices,” t(831)=2.33, p<.05, “administrative tasks,” t(841)=5.42, p<.05, “management of self and organizational growth,” t(831)=3.35, p<.01, and “organizational management skills.” t(838)=2.56, p<.05. In contrast, the tasks that women are as confident as men are those related to “communication and teamwork with colleagues,” t(840)=.37, p=n.s. “supporting other faculty and staff,” t(841)=.56, p=n.s.. Also, women in leadership positions were found to struggle more to manage their time effectively, compare to men. These results suggest that teachers’ roles are gendered. Men are more confident in their works, especially in terms of leading and managing the organization. Women have been practicing their works as care providers and thus their perceived abilities for their communication and support skills are as high as men. In conclusion, while we respect the teachers’ judgement about their training needs, it is critical to develop the training programs to tackle gender inequity.

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