Abstract:

Today, teachers have to constantly improve themselves personally, professionally and culturally. In order to achieve this development, they should aim for lifelong learning from the pre-service period. From this point of view, the aim of this study is to examine the lifelong learning tendencies of pre-service teachers and to compare these tendencies in terms of gender, grade level, desire for graduate education and reason for choosing a department. This research is in the descriptive research model. The survey method was used in the research. The research was carried out with 357 preservice teachers determined according to convenience sampling method. Data were collected with the ““Lifelong Learning Tendencies Scale (LLLTS)” developed by Coşkun Diker (2009). Within the study, descriptive statistics were calculated to determine the pre-service teachers’ life-long learning tendencies. In comparisons non parametric tests were employed because of the normality of the data was not fulfilled. In light of the findings of the study, it can be argued that the pre-service teachers’ lifelong learning tendencies are low. It was determined that male preservice teachers’ lifelong learning tendencies had higher than female preservice teachers. It was determined that the perseverance score of the first grade teacher candidates were lower than the second and fourth grade teacher candidates. Lifelong learning tendencies of pre-service teachers a significant difference in favor of those who do not want to receive postgraduate education. Finally, it was revealed that the lifelong learning tendencies of the pre-service teachers who chose the department by taking into account the "Employment and working conditions" were higher than those who preferred it for "other" reasons. In the light of the findings obtained from the research, suggestions were made to improve the lifelong learning tendencies of pre-service teachers with courses and extracurricular activities in education faculties.

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