Examination of Teacher Candidates’ Lifelong Learning Competence and Basic Motivation Resources as Parts of Sustainability

The purpose of this research is to determine the level of teacher candidates’ lifelong learning competence and basic motivation resources and to examine the lifelong learning competence and basic motivation of teacher candidates in terms of some variables (gender and to be a university student or not). For this purpose, a quantitative study was designed. The research was conducted with 382 teacher candidates being educated in the pedagogical formation program at Trakya University. In this research, “Key Competences for Lifelong Learning Scale” and “Basic Motivation Resources Scale” were used as tools for measurement. As a result of the analyses, it was determined that the basic motivation resources of teacher candidates in all of the dimensions of the scale and lifelong learning competence of teacher candidates except from “communicative competence at a foreign language/s” sub-dimension of the scale are above average. In terms of gender variables, significant difference was found in the “communicative competence at a foreign language/s” sub-dimension of “Key Competences for Lifelong Learning Scale” in favor of male teacher candidates and, on the other hand, significant differences were found in the “the competence of learning to learn” and “the competence of cultural awareness and expression” sub-dimension of “Key Competences for Lifelong Learning Scale” in favor of female teacher candidates.