How Satisfactory is Distance Education for Pre-Service English Language Teachers?

Abstract

Several national and international higher education institutions had already started offering distance education to their students; however, the global outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic in the first quarter of 2020 accelerated this process and educational institutions at all levels had to switch to distance education in line with the precautions taken by the governments. It can be argued that neither the educational institutions nor the teachers/instructors and students were well-prepared for such a swift shift. Therefore, the aim of this study is to identify distance education satisfaction levels of pre-service English language teachers by shedding light on the variables that may have an influence on their perceptions. A mixed methods research design, involving 122 pre-service English language teachers studying at a state university in Turkey, was employed within the study and both qualitative and quantitative data were collected and analyzed. For the analysis of the quantitative data, descriptive statistics, independent samples t-test, one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) and Mann-Whitney U test were utilized. Likewise, qualitative data was analyzed via content analysis. The results of the analyses indicate that the implementation of distance education is regarded as satisfactory in some respects and unsatisfactory in some other respects. It can be hypothesized that the specification of these aspects will possibly help both educational institutions and teachers/instructors design and implement their distance education operations more effectively since the opinions and perceptions of the students as to the implementation of distance education are revealed within the study.