Lifelong learning and adult education in the information society: A study on teachers' professional studies

Licence's degree programs of education faculties have been organized by the Higher Education Council and subsequently an elective course named "Adult Education and Lifelong Learning" has been added. The developments in information and communication technology and the explosion of information have led to the 21st century being called the information society. The basis of production is knowledge and a well-equipped workforce is needed to provide knowledge production all over the world. In order to raise qualified individuals, information society members must learn continuously through in-service training. For this reason, the concept of lifelong learning has come to the fore in the information society. Lifelong learning also encompasses the adulthood period. To maintain the learning of adults, the education should be given according to the characteristics of adults. The term of adult education is also one of the titles related to the information society. The information society, lifelong learning, and adult education can be considered as an concept chain interconnected. The professional studies have been applied to teachers by the Ministry of National Education for many years. And, these studies are performed at the beginning, within and at the end of the academic year. As a result of the literature review, it has been noticed that professional studies are not analyzed within the scope of current terms including, information society, lifelong learning, and adult education. Hence, in this study, it is aimed to examine the professional studies by the perspective of teachers with the current terminologies of the 21st century. Answers were sought for the questions of how professional studies are affected by the transformations in the information society, to what extent they meet the need for lifelong learning and to what extent the activities applied in these studies coincide with adult education principles. Description, explanation and interpretation were used together in the study. Firstly, information society, lifelong learning, adult education were described by the participants, then the factors affecting these concepts were elucidated and professional studies were interpreted in relation to these concepts. Teachers' experiences and perspectives have been prioritized. The subject is thought to be suitable for phenomenological research design, one of the qualitative research methods. A study group of 20 volunteers was formed using criterion and snowball sampling methods. Data were collected using the semi-structured interview technique. In the data analysis, the interpretative phenomenological analysis method, which includes the fore information of the researcher, was used. From codes to categories, from categories to themes were reached. Views on information society, lifelong learning, and adult education were explained under the theme of "transformation", "continuity", "development", respectively.