Analysis of Lifelong Adult Education in Eskişehir

Information is the primary thing among the arguments going out of date in the quickest way nowadays. Science and technology develop in such quick way; not only forty years old information loses its validity but also even five years old information does so. In a world where information loses its up-to-dateness in such quick way, lifelong learning appears before us as a concept whose importance increases day by day. With an approach related with person, society and employment, lifelong learning is defined as every kind of learning activity in which the person participates during its lifetime in order to develop its knowledge, skills and interest. This concept has been on the popular agenda for many years in the developed countries and more importantly it has been applied into real life situations. And it is even known that more than half of the education budget is spent for the education of adults in United States of America. Even if the concept is not new for Turkey, it is not seen as a widespread application and it is carried out very far away from today’s conditions. The aim in lifelong learning is not to get the people who have no job or want to change their profession to gain a new profession but also to renew their knowledge continuously. However, when looked into the practices in Turkey, it is seen that the aim is mainly toward employment instead of renewing knowledge. In this study, it is targeted to discuss the practices in Turkey within the framework of Eskişehir platform and to develop a profile of a successful adult education at the level of the city. In the study carried out over the institutions operating under the title of vocational courses, the answers for the questions like “Which knowledge do people in Eskişehir want to learn?“How and through which methods do they want to learn this knowledge?” will be sought. It is also aimed in the study to survey demographic map of the city and to measure the satisfaction of the townspeople so far by detecting it. Within this framework, first the demographic data will be scanned and expectations, possibilities and desires will be revealed with the questionnaires that will be applied to the people of the city. While the persons’ satisfactions are measured with the second level questionnaire administered to course attendees who took a course for a period and are currently taking a course, the opinions of the practitioners (course managers and teachers) will be collected with an interview protocol. The successful cases will also be examined during the study. In this project both quantitative and qualitative research approaches will be used to evaluate of town people about lifelong learning and training. At the same time, this study has a priori quality from the point of a further study in which the importance of certification will be examined in terms of companies and institutions.