The relationship between lifelong learning tendency of religious officials and individual innovation levels

This study aims to investigate the lifelong learning tendencies and individual innovativeness levels of religious officials, and to examine them in terms of gender, age, marital status, place of duty, type of duty, seniority, tenure in the place they are located, graduation and whether they have received distance education or not. The study is in the relational screening model, which is one of the quantitative research methods. The universe of the study consists of 3379 religious officials working as Imam Hatip, Muezzin Trustee and Qur'an Course Instructor within the body of Samsun Provincial Mufti. The sample of the study consists of 1042 religious officials selected by random sampling method from the universe. The "Lifelong Learning Scale", the "Individual Innovation Scale" and the "Demographic Characteristics Information Form" developed by the researcher were used as data collection tools. The SPSS package program was used in the analysis of the data. In the analysis of the study, the t-test was used in the statistics performed to decipher the relationship between two variables, and the One-way ANOVA test was used in the analysis of more than two variables. When a significant differentiation was detected in the ANOVA test results and the distribution was homogeneous, the Tukey HSD Post Hoc test was used to determine in which groups this differentiation occurred. Pearson correlation analysis and simultaneous multiple regression analysis were performed to examine the relationship between lifelong learning and individual innovativeness. The findings of the study showed that the religious officials participating in the research had high lifelong learning tendencies, and their individual innovativeness levels were in the pioneer category. It was also found that there was a moderate and positive relationship between the lifelong learning and individual innovativeness levels of religious officials. In addition, when the lifelong learning tendencies of religious officials were examined according to demographic variables, it was found that there was a significant difference according to gender, marital status, type of duty, seniority, graduation and distance education or not, but there was no significant difference according to age, duty station region and tenure variables in their location. When the individual innovation levels of religious officials were examined according to demographic variables, it was found that there was a significant difference according to the gender, type of duty, seniority, graduation and distance education status of religious officials, but there was no significant difference according to age, marital status, duty station region and tenure variables in their location. In addition, a positive relationship was found between idea leadership, openness to experience and risk-taking and lifelong learning from the sub-dimensions of individual innovation, while a negative relationship was found in the sub-dimension of resistance to change.