The evaluation of trainees' opinions about the importance of public education centres in providing lifelong learning (sample of Bartin Public Education Centre)

The main purpose of this research is to evaluate by determining the trainees' opinions about the importance of public education centres in providing lifelong learning. In the research, the scanning model which provides presenting the current situation is used. The population of the research is composed of 287 trainees chosen by random sampling among the trainees attending courses opened in Bartın Public Education Centre in 2018-2019 academic year. As data collection tool "Determining the Place and importance of Public Education Centre in Lifelong Learning" survey developed by the researcher has been conducted. While analysing the data primarily, for all independent variables, frequency, percentage, arithmetic mean, standard deviation values called descriptive statistics have been calculated. To determine whether the trainees' opinions about the importance of public education centres in providing lifelong learning depend on their gender and their attendance to previous courses, Mann Whitney U test has been applied. ANOVA test has been applied to determine whether the trainees' opinions depend on their gender, and Kruskal Wallis H test has been applied to determine whether the trainees' opinions depend on their education status, profession, income status and the courses they have attended before. In the cases in which Kruskal Wallis H test is significative, Mann Whitney U test has been applied to specify among which groups the difference occured. In the result of the research, it has been seen that mostly women attend the courses opened by public education courses, in providing lifelong learning, the trainees' opinions about the importance of public education centres do not change significantly in terms of trainees' gender, education status, profession, income status and whether they have attended courses before or not. However, in providing lifelong learning, trainees' opinions about the importance of public education centres change significantly according to the courses trainees attend. Key words: Lifelong learning, Public Education Centre, course, trainee