The relationship between the lifelong learning tendency and the career development desire of primary school teacher candidates

The objective of the present study is to establish the relationship between the lifelong learning tendency and the career development desire of the students of Department of Primary School Education. This study in which the relationship between the lifelong learning tendency and the career development desire of the students of the Department of Primary School Education is examined is in a model of relational scanning. For this purpose, the lifelong learning tendency and the career development desire of the primary school teacher candidates are sought to be determined through data obtained from the scales. The primary school teacher candidates, enrolled at Bolu Abant İzzet Baysal University, Faculty of Education, Department of Elementary Education, Science Section of Primary School Education for the academic year of 2017–2018, constitute the universe of the research. 398 primary school teacher candidates constitute the study universe of the research. The scale form used in the study is made up of 2 sections. The scale form consists of the followings: in the first section, a personal information form for establishing the gender and year variables, and in the second section, the "Lifelong Learning Scale" for measuring the lifelong learning tendency of teacher candidates and the "Professional Tendency and Career Development Desire Scale" for determining their desire for career development. SPSS package program has been used in the analysis of obtained data. The normality of data has been tested and it has been concluded that the research data is not normally distributed. Therefore, non-parametric tests have been used in the analysis. Frequency and percentage have been used for the analysis of demographic information. In the first sub-problem, in order to establish the "lifelong learning" perception and "career development" desire, average standard deviation has been used. In the second sub-problem, in the analyses regarding whether or not the "lifelong learning" perception and "career development" desires of teacher candidates have meaningful difference according to demographic variables, Mann Whitney U and Kruskal Wallis Tests have been used. In the third sub-problem, correlation (Spearman Rho) analysis has been done towards whether there is meaningful relationship between the Lifelong Learning Scale and Career Development Scale. Lastly, in the fourth sub-problem, a simple regression analysis has been carried out as to what extent the lifelong learning tendency can explain the career development desire. In the present research, the following conclusion has been reached that the perception of lifelong learning of the teacher candidates is "partially suitable" in total and desires of career development is "highly much" in total. In totality of the perception of lifelong learning, teacher candidates' tendency level according to their gender shows a meaningful difference in favour of women teacher candidates and in favour of men teacher candidates for that of career development desire. While there is no meaningful difference amongst teacher candidates' lifelong learning tendency levels according to their years in deprivation in persistence and learning arrangement sub-dimensions, it has been concluded that there is a meaningful difference in favour of men in fourth year in total and in sub-dimensions of motivation, curiosity deprivation. There is no any meaningful difference amongst Planned Effort, Planned Insistence and Career Development Desire when teacher candidates' opinions regarding their desires of career development are analysed according to the variable of their year, however, there is a meaningful difference in favour of second year students in total in leadership desire sub-dimension. There is a positive, weak but statistically meaningful relationship between lifelong learning tendencies and career development desires. It has been established that there is a negative, very weak but statistically meaningful relationship between the sub-dimensions "deprivation in learning arrangement" and "leadership desire" of the "lifelong learning scale". The power of lifelong learning to predict career development has been found statistically meaningful. Lifelong learning explains 2,8% of career development. This result could be interpreted such that lifelong learning is one of the effects for career development.