Educational Technology Research Trends in Turkey: Investigating Graduate Theses in English Language Teaching

Osman SOLMAZ * 1 1 Dicle University, Turkey, osolmaz@dicle.edu.tr * Corresponding Author: osolmaz@dicle.edu.tr Article Info Abstract The goal of the present study is to investigate educational technology research trends across graduate thesis written in the field of English language teaching and learning between 2016 and 2020 in the context of Turkey. A total of 146 theses were examined by means of a descriptive content analysis methodology. The findings of the study demonstrated that the research focus of the theses was dominated by attitudinal studies and research exploring digital literacies and 21st century skills, while four groups of technologies were strongly prevalent across the theses, which were CALL resources in general, video-based materials, skill-based Web 2.0 tools, and learning management systems (LMS) and e-learning platforms. It was also found that the majority of researchers adopted mixed-methods approach, commonly employed survey, interview, and achievement tests as data collection tools, and frequently analyzed the data by means of quantitative analysis methods. Following the discussion of each finding within the context of both educational technology and English language teaching scholarship, the study concludes with several suggestions in the light of the results. Received: 12 December 2020 Accepted: 24 February 2021


Introduction
The rapid development of information and communication technologies has created new avenues for education including language teaching and learning contexts. The ubiquity of internet technologies, particularly mobile devices with internet service, provided opportunities for learners to engage in a multitude of literacy practices without spatiotemporal limitations (Kessler, 2018). These changes sparked a growing interest in educational technology research, which systematically addressed the integration and impact of technologies into educational contexts across the world (Yıldız, Cengel, & Alkan, 2020).
The high number of research exploring educational technologies facilitated an increase in review studies, in which different aspects of such technologies were analyzed (e.g., Chen, 103 Chen, Jia, & An, 2020;Strelan, Osborn, & Palmer, 2020). Such a comprehensive analysis of research in a particular topic can provide a deeper and clearer understanding of the phenomena investigated (Dirlikli, Aydın, & Akgün, 2016). A similar strand of research exploring the role of digital technologies has also emerged in the contexts of second language teaching and learning (e.g., Parmaxi & Zaphiris, 2016;Shadiev, Hwang, & Huang, 2017). However, there remains a dearth of research analyzing educational technology research trends in certain fields including English language teaching. Therefore, it is the intention of the present study to address this discrepancy through investigating the research trends across graduate theses with a focus on educational technologies, which are published between 2016 and 2020 in the field of English language teaching in the context of Turkey.
Digital competence training, pre-service teachers have improved in using information searching strategies, accessing information, evaluating the validity and reliability of information, organizing and storing information (Çebi & Reisoğlu, 2019). Digital competence trainings improved preservice teachers' skills of searching for information on the web (Ramírez-Montoya, Mena, & Rodríguez-Arroyo, 2017). The purpose of this study is to find out if there is any gap of teachers between their Online Education skills. We are residing in a planet where technology is contemporary in our life routines. Online Learning is one of the vastest revolutions in individuals' lifespans. They give mobility and excitement to its users that these modern technological devices become most significant part of many people's lives.
From online banking to watch the news on TV, we are confronting the progressions and affects that convey to our lives. Schools couldn't stay out of these online progressions and a wide range of classrooms had been altered, giving its place to virtual classrooms, from special spaces for the perusing of scholarly messages being delivered via social media platforms to sight and sound spaces, where the utilization of data and correspondence innovation had accomplished incredible significance in Online learning.

Literature Review
The present section lays out a brief review of the literature exploring educational technology trends in English language teaching and learning spaces within the context of Turkey. Considering the limited number of research in this particular area, the trends across the previous research in Turkish context are covered from two main perspectives: the research trends in the field of educational technology, and the syntheses centered on the trends in English language teaching.
Prior studies were synthesized in terms of both educational technology in general (e.g., Yıldız et al., 2020) and the use of educational technology particularly for language teaching and learning purposes (e.g., Parmaxi & Zaphiris, 2016) in a worldwide setting. A similar trend was followed for the scholarship in educational technology (e.g., Gökmen et al., 2017) and English language teaching in the context of Turkey (e.g., Özmen, Cephe, & Kınık, 2016). While some of the research explored the trends across the scholarship by mainly analyzing graduate theses (e.g., Uzunboylu & Kocakoyun, 2016), others synthesized research published in internationally indexed journals as well (Solak, 2014). It is also important to note that a majority of the scholarship conducting research synthesis was published in 2016 or later, which illustrate a recent picture of the trends in the scholarship.
Content analyses of the educational technology study trends in Turkey were performed in multiple studies including an early research by Göktaş et al. (2012), who investigated Turkish educational technology research published between the years of 2000-2009. The analysis revealed that educational environments and technology were frequently at the center of the research, while questionnaires and quantitative analyses were employed as data collection tools and quantitative analysis method, respectively. Similarly, an extensive content analysis, which focused on the articles published by Turkish authors between 1990 and 2011 in the field of educational technology (Küçük, Aydemir, Yildirim, Arpacik, & Goktas, 2013), showed that educational environments and technology, multimedia, and distance education were the most commonly studied subjects. Interviews and questionnaires were frequently adopted as data gathering tools, while sample participants often featured preservice teachers and other undergraduate students. Analyzing doctoral research in educational technology in the Turkish context, Durak, Çankaya, Yunkul, and Mısırlı (2018) found that interview, questionnaires, and scales were frequently used for data gathering purposes, and the participants often included university students. Unlike the previous research, mixed method was the most commonly used method in dissertations in educational technology. Another area of research concentrated on particular aspects of educational technology research such as distance education in Turkey. For example, Gökmen et al. (2017) analyzed research trends on distance education graduate research produced between 2005 and 2014, Durak et al. (2017) examined master's theses on distance education in higher education context between 1986 and 2015. Both studies showed that quantitative methodology was the most frequently adopted research design, while survey/questionnaire was the most commonly used method to collect data. In addition, both descriptive and inferential analyses were adopted for data analysis, which commonly gathered from undergraduate students and adults.
Given the focus of the present study on educational technology theses in English language teaching and learning, it is worthwhile examining research trends across the articles and theses published in the relevant field of study in the context of Turkey. Being one of the studies investigating the research trends across papers published between 2009 and 2013, Solak's (2014) synthesis revealed that quantitative method was employed the most, while the commonly preferred sample group was undergraduate students and 31-100 sample size was the most common group. In another study, Yağız, Aydın, and Akdemir (2016) reviewed research articles published in journals between 2005 and 2015, and found similar results in terms of research design, data collection tool, sample group and sample size. They have also noted that language acquisition/learning, language teaching, and teacher education were themes which were commonly investigated. In another research exploring the abstracts of English Language Teaching (ELT) research in a Turkish journal database platform, Cesur, Kök, and Aydın, (2018) found that teacher education, curriculum and teaching materials, and language teaching were frequently examined by researchers, undergraduates were the most common participant group, and sample size was 31-100 in the majority of the research. Finally, in their comprehensive review of Turkey-based ELT research, Aydınlı and Ortaçtepe (2016) showed that main topics of investigation were centralized around language learning and learners, English language teaching and language teachers, and in-service and pre-service teacher education/professional development.
The other research strand consisted of studies performing content analysis of master's and doctoral theses published in ELT scholarship in Turkey. In an early study, Kırmızı (2012) found language skills, teaching method, psychology and language teaching as the widely researched areas of study across master's theses. Examining doctoral research between 2009 106 and 2013 in ELT, İnal, Özdemir, Kıray, and Oral (2016) reported that classroom teaching and learning was at the center of attention in the majority of research, while theses often featured quantitative research methodologies and adult learners as sample groups. Exploring doctoral research in the same context, Özmen et al. (2016) found that multiple aspects of Teaching English as a foreign language (e.g., teaching language skills, certain variables such as learner and teacher) were among the commonly examined areas, while dissertations investigating young learners were reported to be quite limited. Finally, Şişman, Büyükkarcı and Özyurt (2019) documented the broad picture of the research trends across ELT graduate theses and reported that a) vocabulary and assessment were the most common choices as the topic of investigation, b) sample size in the research was often 31-60, and c) mixed method was the most preferred method. Several studies have also synthesized graduate thesis research by focusing on a particular aspect such as coursebooks and preparatory schools. To illustrate, Şimşek and Dündar (2017)

Methodology
The present study investigated educational technology theses and dissertations written in the area of English language teaching and learning in the context of Turkey from January 2016 through September 2020. The study adopted a descriptive content analysis methodology, which allows researchers to analyze the collected data to classify the content with respect to general tendencies, emerging themes and trends through a descriptive approach (Yıldırım & Şimşek, 2013). The selected theses were systematically analyzed to demonstrate certain characteristics, and methodological trends of educational technology theses conducted in connection with ELT scholarship in Turkey.

Data Collection
The present study comprised master's theses and doctoral dissertations in the intersection of educational technologies and English language teaching and learning. As part of the data collection, graduate theses were gathered through the online electronic thesis database of the Turkish Council of Higher Education (TCHE). The following criteria were devised for the present study; a) The thesis had to be published in the field of English language teaching and learning between 2016 and 2020 (by September), b) The focus of the research had to be related to a single or multiple aspects of educational technology within the context of Turkey, c) The thesis had to be publicly accessible through TCHE's thesis database. The selected theses were identified through the online database's advanced search tool, which allowed the researcher to reach the complete list of master's and doctoral theses published in the department of English language teaching. In order to avoid missing a relevant thesis, the advanced search was performed multiple times as there were institutional variations in terms of thesis categorizations (i.e., English Language Education Department, English Language Department, English Language Teaching Department, English Language Teaching). Following the identification of approximately 700 theses according to the first criterion, a total of 149 works featuring an educational technology were found to comply with the second criterion. Finally, three theses were excluded as they were not publicly accessible in the online database system. As a result, a total of 146 theses were used.

Data Analysis
A combination of coding frameworks was utilized for data analysis in the present study. While one of them (Güler & Taş, 2020) was employed as it was exclusively used for the analysis of theses in pre-school science education research, the other one (Yağız, Aydın, & Akdemir, 2016) was preferred for the fact that it was adopted for the examination of publications in the field of ELT. Given the focus of the present study on theses, an adapted version of the coding framework used by Güler and Taş (2020) were selected as the chief analysis method (Table 1). The parameters used in the study were based on both exterior (place of completion, year, type), and content (research and technology focus, research design, data collection tools and analysis, participant groups and sample size) features of the examined theses. Each thesis was investigated through the use of the adapted parameters and presented in multiple formats such as frequency and percentage following the process of analysis.

Findings
This section features the presentation of the findings by means of the tables created following the analysis of master's and doctoral theses examined in the present study. The findings are presented in accordance with the coding framework and shared in two main categories: Exterior characteristics and content features.

Findings Related to Exterior Characteristics of Theses
The findings are presented with respect to exterior characteristics of theses in this section. As frequency and percentage of theses indicated in Table 2, the data comprised of 126 master's theses (86.3%) and 20 doctoral dissertations (13.7%) conducted across 28 different higher education institutions. A great number of ELT postgraduate theses (f = 62) featuring educational technologies were conducted at three universities (Bahçeşehir, Çağ, Çukurova) with a combined ratio of 42.46%. A total of 82 theses were published by twenty-two state universities, which corresponds to an average of 3.72 theses per university, while the remaining 64 theses were conducted at six foundation universities, corresponding to an average of 10.66 theses per university. The fact that there are more master's theses is not surprising considering the relative scarcity of ELT doctoral programs compared to master's programs in Turkey. The number of educational technology-related ELT theses being high at certain universities is likely to be associated with the relevant expertise possessed by the faculty in those institutions.  Table 3, which displays the distribution of the examined theses by year, showed that the highest number of theses (f = 50) were completed in 2019. The overwhelming majority of the research conducted consisted of master's theses (f = 46), while the highest number of doctoral dissertations (f = 9) was achieved in 2018. As seen in the table below, the frequency of the total number of theses indicated that the number of research investigating educational technologies followed a relatively upward trend, which featured a major increase in master's theses in 2019. Given the fact that the last quarter of 2020 was not covered in the present study and the potential delays in graduate research due to COVID-19 outbreak in Turkish higher education context, it can be argued that the research exploring the technological phenomena in English language teaching and learning settings might follow a similar or potentially an upward trend more vertically when the epidemic outbreak is successfully under control.

Findings Related to Content Features of Theses
The findings with respect to content characteristics of the examined theses are presented in this section. The findings stem from the analysis of content-related areas such as  of the studies are also generally in line with the predominantly examined areas in educational technology research, which are reported as educational technology and environment and multimedia (e.g., Göktaş et al., 2012;Küçük et al., 2013). However, the number of research focusing on distance education is low compared to the research trends across the educational technology scholarship (e.g., Küçük et al., 2013).   Küçük et al., 2013). The finding regarding skill-based Web 2.0 tools also concurs well with the previous studies as language skills are frequently examined across ELT graduate thesis research (e.g., Şişman et al., 2019). What is perhaps surprising is that the investigation of socio-interactive web technologies such as social media and gamifying/augmented reality tools are almost non-existent across doctoral thesis research. As for Table 6, the research design of the theses displayed that the majority of researchers adopted mixed-methods approach as their preferred method of investigation (64.38%, f=94). Explanatory sequential design and convergent parallel design were among the most commonly adopted methods. Mixed-methods approach was found as the most popular research design across both categories of theses, and it was employed in as high as 75% (f=15) of doctoral theses. According to the statistical results, quantitative research method was adopted in 23.02% (f=29) of the master's theses, while only 14.29% (f=18) of the master's theses featured qualitative method. Only a quarter of the doctoral theses employed either quantitative (f=3) or qualitative method ( Table 7, which shows the distribution of master's and doctoral theses by data collection tools, illustrated that three tools were the most commonly employed means of collecting data in both types of theses: survey/questionnaire (27.78%, f=105), interview (24.87%, f=94), knowledge/achievement tests (20.90%, f=79). Following these data collection tools, reflection papers or journals (e.g., teacher diary notes) and observation / field notes (e.g., screen capturing recordings) were commonly used as a means of gathering data for the research. The data were collected through participant work (6.35%, f=24) as well, which featured documents such as online peer feedback comments, participants' lesson plans, assignments, learner essays, blog posts, and discussion forum posts. These findings are in tune with the literature, in which survey/questionnaire, interviews, and achievement tests were commonly reported among the preferred data collection tools (e.g., Durak et al., 2018;Göktaş et al., 2012;Solak, 2014)  As displayed in Table 8, the gathered data were analyzed by means of quantitative (i.e., descriptive analysis and inferential analysis) and qualitative analyses. Quantitative analysis was the most preferred data analysis method across both master's theses (59.84%, f=149) and doctoral theses (62.5%, f=30). While descriptive analysis was more commonly adopted than inferential analysis in master's research (36.55, f=91), inferential analysis was employed more in doctoral theses (35.42, f=17). The types of inferential analyses that were statistically run in all types of theses consisted of non-parametric tests (e.g., Wicoxon Signed ranks, Mann Whitney U, Kruskal Wallis, Kolmogorov-Smirnov, Shapiro-Wilk tests), t-tests (e.g., paired sample, independent sample), ANOVA/ANCOVA, and regression analysis. The collected data in the theses examined were qualitatively analyzed in a relatively high percentage for both master's research (40.16%, f=100) and doctoral theses (37.50%, f=18). The means of qualitative analysis across both types of theses often featured content and thematic analyses, which were followed by other methods such as constant comparative analysis.
However, only a limited number of research (f=10) adopted digital qualitative analysis tools for the purpose of data analysis. MAXQDA (f=6) was the most popular qualitative data analysis software, which was followed by NVivo (f=2) and Atlas.ti (f=2). Research syntheses in the literature generally support these findings (e.g., Göktaş et al., 2012) although some studies reported a balance between descriptive and inferential analyses unlike the present study (e.g., Durak et al., 2018). Considering the predominance of the quantitative research across the analyzed research, it is not surprising to see quantitative analysis methods being employed more than qualitative analysis.  The research trends across the examined theses were analyzed by means of sample groups and sample size as well (Table 9, Table 10). Undergraduate students, commonly including preparatory class students (e.g., medicine, engineering), were frequently involved in a high number of master's thesis research (40.14%, f=57). Other participant groups included in-service EFL teachers, university-level EFL instructors, and secondary and high school students. Faculty members (0.70%), early childhood students (0.70%), parents (0.70%), and documents (0.70%), were the least chosen populations. University-level students (i.e., undergraduate students and pre-service EFL teachers) were included in more than threequarters of doctoral thesis research (77.26%, f=17). The remaining participant groups across doctoral theses were in-service EFL teachers (f=2), university-level EFL instructors (f=1), high school students (f=1), and others (f=1). The frequently preferred sample sizes were groups of 31-100 (49.33%, f=72), 101-300 (21.23%, f=31), and 11-30 (18.49%, f=27) in both master's and doctoral theses, which also provided insight regarding the preferred research designs.
Findings regarding participant groups (i.e., undergraduate students) and sample sizes (i.e., 31-100 participants) concurred well with the findings from the literature, particularly in the field of ELT (e.g., Cesur et al., 2018;Solak, 2014;Yağız et al., 2016). The fact that young learners were included in the research in a limited way was also present in the previous research syntheses (e.g., Özmen et al., 2016). Therefore, it can be assumed that ELT research with an educational technology focus follows the similar trends of ELT studies with respect to sample groups and sizes.

Conclusion and Suggestions
The present study aimed to investigate English language teaching and learningrelated educational technology theses for the period between 2016 and 2020 through a descriptive content analysis methodology. The theses were examined to illustrate research trends across both master's and doctoral theses in the context of Turkey and to shed a light on the broad picture of the field as well as paving the way for the future research and the policymakers. The findings indicated that the research focus of theses was attitudinal studies and research examining digital literacies and 21 st century skills. It was found that four groups of technologies were strongly prevalent and these technologies were CALL resources in general, video-based materials, skill-based Web 2.0 tools, and learning management systems (LMS) and e-learning platforms. The findings further revealed that the majority of researchers employed mixed-methods approach, frequently employed survey, interview, and achievement tests as data collection tools, and often analyzed the data by means of quantitative analysis method. In the light of the present study's results, the following suggestions should be taken into consideration for future studies: The educational technology research is growing quickly in the field of English language teaching and learning in the context of Turkey, which necessitates further research synthesis and analysis including periodicals in national and international indices. In addition, content analysis might focus on a specific aspect of educational technology (e.g.,

Journal of Computer and Education Research
Year 2021 Volume 9 Issue 17 102-124 118 social media technologies, interactive web tools) or a language area/skill such as pronunciation, which is considered as one of the least studied areas in the EFL context (Arıkan & Yılmaz, 2020).
Based on the findings of the research synthesis regarding the limited number of qualitative methodology-oriented research, it is recommended that some future studies could adopt qualitative research techniques more in the examination of technology-enhanced English language teaching and learning practices. Besides, researchers should investigate the educational technology-related phenomena in ELT settings through longitudinal studies, which would further the knowledge in the scholarship. Given the dominance of quantitative data collection tools (i.e. questionnaires) in the field, it is also important that future studies rely on naturally occurring classroom data (İnal et al., 2016), which would enrich the results and provide a detailed inside perspective to the phenomena examined.
As the content analysis indicated a high percentage of undergraduate students' involvement in the studies, future research should target young learners as well.
Considering the fact that children in Turkey are introduced to English as early as 2 nd grade in public schools, the number of research featuring young learners should increase and have more representation in ELT research in general as well (İnal et al., 2016;Solak, 2014).
Furthermore, other participant groups such as administrators and parents could be valuable to illustrate multiple aspects of technology use for second language teaching and learning purposes, thus yielding a wide range of results.
Regarding the topics of the investigation, the following areas are recommended for