Investigation of the relationship between the prospective teachers' lifelong learning and communication skills

In this study, it has been examined the relationship between prospective teachers' lifelong learning and communication skills; and whether there is any difference in terms of these two structures according to the variables of gender, education type and department. The research is a descriptive study conducted in accordance with the scanning model. The study group of this research consists of 312 senior undergraduate students from Atatürk University, Kazim Karabekir Faculty of Education in the 2020-2021 academic year. These students have been selected from the senior students, who are 1023 in total. In this study, a 25-item communication skills scale, developed by Owen and Bugay (2014) and a lifelong learning scale consisting of 15 items, developed by Wielkiewicz and Meuwissen (2014) and adapted into Turkish by Engin, Körve Erbay (2017) have been applied to prospective teachers, participated in the research. The hypothesis test type for each factor has been chosen according to the conformity of the data to the normal distribution on the basis of demographic characteristics. Shapiro-Wilk test has been used for normality tests. In the selection of the hypothesis tests, the conformity of the score points to the normal distribution and the group numbers of the demographic variables have been taken into account and Mann-Whitney U test for two-group data; Kruskal-Wallis test for data with more than two groups have been used. Multiple comparison tests for multi-group data are based on Dunn's test with Bonferroni correction. Also, the Spearman correlation test has been applied to examine the correlations between the score points of the sub-dimensions. According to the results of the study, when the gender, education type and department variables of the individuals participated in the research and their communication principles and basic skills, self-expression, active listening and non-verbal communication, willingness to communicate, which are sub-dimensions of communication skills scale, are compared it has been observed that there is no significant difference. At the same time, it has been determined that there is no statistical difference between the gender, education type, department variables and the scores they got from the lifelong learning scale. It has been found a high level of positive correlation between the lifelong learning scale and the communication skills scale, and a moderate relationship between the lifelong learning scale and communication principles and basic skills, self-expression, active listening, non-verbal communication and willingness to communicate. In addition, it has been concluded that there is a statistically high positive correlation between communication principles and basic skills and self-expression, active listening and non-verbal communication, and willingness to communicate.