The investigation of teachers' lifelong learning skills in the context of updated key competencies

In the age of change, rapid changes in information have created the need for individuals to constantly improve themselves in the personal and professional field, to keep up with the change and to catch up with innovations. The reflection of these innovations in the field of education has revealed the concept of lifelong learning for individuals. Undoubtedly, it is extremely important for teachers, who are one of the most important stakeholders of education, to have lifelong learning skills, in terms of raising lifelong learning generations in order to prepare individuals for the innovations of the age. The purpose of this research is to examine the level of teachers' lifelong learning skills and these skill levels in the context of updated key competencies in terms of various variables (age, gender, branch, education level, professional seniority). The data of the research, which is in the descriptive survey model, was obtained by applying the Lifelong Learning (Updated) Key Competencies Scale developed by the researcher to the teachers. The study group of the research consists of 246 teachers who were selected by convenience sampling method among the teachers working in Niğde in the 2021-2022 academic year. The data obtained from the Lifelong Learning (Updated) Key Competencies Scale were analyzed with the IBM-SPSS 25 statistical program. The normality of the data was checked with the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test. Since the data did not show normal distribution, Mann-Whitney U and Kruskall-Wallis H tests were used in data analysis. According to the results of the research, teachers' perceptions of lifelong learning skills are at a high level. While teachers' perception levels of lifelong learning skills do not differ significantly according to age, gender, professional seniority variables, they differ significantly according to branch and education level variables.