Certified Adult Educators ´ Attitudes towards Continuing Education

It is evident nowadays that continuing education has emerged as a necessity to educators of every kind and especially to those who educate adults. Educators have recognised the importance of continuing education and they actively motivate and teach their students how to be engaged in continuing education programs. But are they themselves really interested in being involved in continuing education programs? In order to answer this question, we have decided to investigate attitudes of certified adult educators toward continuing education. The purpose of this study is to identify attitudes of the 220 certified educators of Vocational Training Centres (K.E.K.) in the prefecture of Thessaloniki and to identify their approaches to different learning styles, as well as to assess their general interest in continuing education. More specifically, in the present research confirmatory factor analysis was applied aiming mainly at the construction of a model that estimates educators ’ opinions in regard to continuing education and its elements. The structural model that resulted from the analysis of data confirms the existence of five factors relative to the values of the following: continuing education, certification of adult educators, use of different teaching methods, learner’s personal satisfaction and finally, participation in adult education programs