An evaluation of distance education during the Coronavirus 19 pandemic: the views of Turkish EFL teachers

Year 2021, Volume: 9 Issue: 11, 171 - 190, 30.04.2021

Mustafa Şevik , Zeynep Yucedag

Abstract

The coronavirus pandemic has a significant impact on the educational systems around the world. In this context, distance education has been considered as an alternative to maintain the education of students undisrupted. The aim of this study is to explore the views of EFL teachers working at secondary and high schools in different cities in Turkey about using distance education in EFL contexts. For this purpose, a qualitative research design was adopted and 40 Turkish EFL teachers took part in this study in the spring term of 2019-2020 academic year. The researchers developed and implemented an online questionnarie to collect the data and accessed all the participants through social networks. The study showed that the participants did not receive any kind of training on distance education and did not have any experience in distance education. The study also revealed that internet connection problems, absence of internet, lack of technological devices, technical problems and lack of technological knowledge about distance education were the most prevalent challenges for the participants. As a result, the current study suggests that; an immediate training on distance education should be organized for teachers; teacher suggestions should be taken into consideration; and a course on distance teaching should be included in pre-service teacher training program at universities.

Keywords

distance education, efl teachers, covid-19

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