The relationship between prospective teachers' lifelong learning tendencies and attitudes towards English course

The aim of this research is to determine the relationship between prospective teachers' lifelong learning tendencies and attitudes towards English course. This research was carried out with 475 (female=340, male=135) senior prospective teachers studying various majors at Bolu Abant İzzet Baysal University, Faculty of Education in the spring semester of 2016 - 2017 academic year. To measure the lifelong learning tendencies of the prospective teachers, "Lifelong Learning Tendencies Scale" developed by Coşkun Diker (2009) and to measure prospective teachers' attitudes towards English course, "Attitude Scale on Affective Domain in English Classes" developed by Gömleksiz (2003) were used. For the analysis of the data collected during the study, SPSS 23 Program was used. Through SPSS 23 Program the percentage and frequency values, the mean and standard deviation scores of the items in the scales were calculated, and Kolmogorov - Smirnov, Mann - Whitney U, Kruskal - Wallis H Tests were performed and Spearman Correlation Coefficient was calculated. The findings of the study revealed that lifelong learning tendencies and attitudes of prospective teachers towards English course are above the moderate level. While a significant difference was found in favor of female prospective teachers in gender variable according to the lifelong learning tendencies scale scores, a significant difference was found in favor of female prospective teachers in gender variable in "Usefulness" subdimension of the scale according to prospective teachers' attitudes scores towards English course. A significant difference was found in department variable in favor of prospective teachers studying in Turkish Education, Social Studies Education and Foreign Language Education departments according to the lifelong learning tendencies scores and prospective teachers' attitudes scores towards English course. While considering the variable of high school types of graduation, no significant difference was found among prospective teachers according to the lifelong learning tendencies scores, a significant difference was found in favor of Anatolian High School and Anatolian Teacher High School graduates in "Trust" subdimension of the scale considering the attitudes scores towards English course. The findings of the research indicated a significant, positive and a moderate level relationship between prospective teachers' lifelong learning tendencies and attitudes towards English course. Keywords: Prospective teachers, Lifelong learning, Attitude towards English course