“Thinking about drinking tea but not drinking tea”: Pre-service English teacher education during the COVID-19 pandemic in Turkish EFL context

Abstract

This phenomenological research aimed to investigate the reflections of 34 pre-service English teachers and 31 lecturers on distance education during the COVID-19 pandemic in Turkey. An online interview form was employed as data collection tool. The participants were sent the online form to collect their reflections on their online learning/teaching experiences during the pandemic. These reflections were analysed using phenomenological research steps. At the end of the analyses, distance education was found to be useful for improving the participants’ technological literacy skills and delivering theoretical courses. However, it was found to be inappropriate for practical courses such as teaching practicum and community service practices. Furthermore, the participants used various metaphors to define their online teaching/learning experiences like emergency exit, one-sided mirror, frozen lake, growing in a cage, driving a car, and sky. The participants mostly did not receive any training before using the online platform. In light of the findings, it can be claimed that necessary arrangements should be made to improve the quality of online learning platforms and both pre-service English teachers and their lecturers should receive training to benefit from distance education more effectively. In this way, pre-service English teachers can be better prepared for their future teaching in case of distance education.

Introduction

The breakout of the COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in drastic changes in educational settings including higher education institutions and a need for working from home has emerged (Johnson et al., 2020). Thus, due to its flexibility of time and place, distance education was adopted during the pandemic by many educational institutions (Daniel, 2020). In this vein, an increasing number of research studies have examined what kind of online platforms are used, what kind of challenges and benefits distance education offers and what can be future implications in the post-pandemic era (Adedoyin and Soykan, 2020; Cutri et al., 2020; Johnson et al., 2020; Priyo Atmojo and Nugroho, 2020).

During the pandemic, face-to-face education was replaced with online platforms (Egielewa et al., 2022; Johnson et al., 2020; Mishraa et al., 2020; Priyo Atmojo and Nugroho, 2020; Sepulveda-Escobar and Morrison, 2020). In this regard, ICT (Information and communication technologies) skills of pre-service teachers and teacher educators played a crucial role in their adaptation to distance education (Ali, 2020; König et al., 2020). Accordingly, reflections of stakeholders in different educational settings were explored. To illustrate, Egielewa et al. (2022) conducted a comprehensive study with the participation of 1134 students in Nigeria regarding their perceptions of online learning during the pandemic. The students were from universities, polytechnics and colleges of higher education, and completed an online questionnaire. It was found out that the participants did not favour online learning and preferred face-to-face education for the post-pandemic era. Their dissatisfaction mostly resulted from poor Internet infrastructure and lack of electricity.

In the relevant literature, pre-service English teacher education has occupied a prominent space and a number of studies have focused on the reflections of pre-service English teachers and lecturers in different contexts since they were also involved in distance education during the pandemic. For example, Zou et al. (2021) investigated 181 university teachers’ and 213 students’ opinions about EFL (English as a Foreign Language) online teaching and learning during the pandemic using questionnaires and semi-structured interviews in Mainland China. The participants were found to be mostly positive about online teaching and more training was emphasised for delivering effective online courses.

As for Turkish EFL context, ELT (English Language Teaching) students’ and lecturers’ reflections on distance education have attracted attention among the researchers. To exemplify, Türegün-Çoban and Kuyumcu-Vardar (2021) examined the perspectives of 40 senior ELT students and four instructors on distance education during the pandemic via a questionnaire and semi-structured interview form. The findings revealed various positive and negative opinions. While the participants stated no difficulties in theoretical courses, they reported certain difficulties in their teaching practicum course. Their favourable opinions included time-space flexibility, reviewing lessons by recordings, self-paced learning, affordability, comfort, sharing a wide range of resources and instant feedback. However, their unfavourable opinions covered the issues of technical problems, applied courses, lack of social interaction, assessment and evaluation, workload, health problems and low motivation.

Based on the growing literature about distance education during the pandemic, there is still a need for further research studies to shed light upon the hidden dimensions of pre-service English teacher education. Therefore, this study aims to answer the following research questions:

• 1- What do pre-service English teachers and their lecturers think about the role of distance education in improving their technological literacy skills?

• 2- What are the reflections of the participants on the feasibility of distance education for conducting theoretical and practical courses?

• 3- What kind of metaphors were created by the participants to define distance education during the pandemic?

• 4- What kind of training did the participants receive about distance education?

• 5- What are the benefits and challenges of distance education according to the participants?

• 6- What are the recommendations of the participants to improve distance education?

Review of literature

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic and transition to online platforms, a number of research studies have been conducted to question the effectiveness and shortcomings of distance education and draw conclusions for the future of education in different contexts. For this purpose, various challenges of distance education have been illustrated in the relevant literature in terms of lack of student participation, connectivity problems (Mishraa et al., 2020), socio-economic inequality among students, quality of assessment, heavy workload of instructors, disharmony with practical courses (Adedoyin and Soykan, 2020), inadequate infrastructure and building rapport with students (Priyo Atmojo and Nugroho, 2020). In addition, lack of training on online assessment, dishonesty and misconduct were found to be the major concerns for assessment in higher education institutions (Montenegro-Rueda et al., 2021).

In line with these challenges, coping strategies of related stakeholders were also explored. In this regard, Nasri et al. (2020) examined coping strategies of teacher educators and student teachers from different departments in Malaysia. In this study, the teacher educators were provided a systematic support system to accommodate their needs by the Faculty and a help-desk team including experts in ICT was created to offer training and technical support. According to the findings, the student teachers displayed two coping strategies as interaction with content (lecturer-provided online material) and interaction with lecturers (asynchronous and synchronous communication). However, the lecturers mainly had difficulty in determining the most appropriate alternative form of assessment to evaluate their students. As a conclusion, TPACK acquisition (Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge) was highly recommended for teacher educators and student teachers to ensure sustainability in distance education in the long run.

In reply to the studies on distance education during the pandemic, pre-service English teacher education has attracted considerable attention among the researchers in different countries. For example, based on nine pre-service English teachers’ written reflections on online learning during the pandemic in Indonesia, Subekti (2020) identified inadequate infrastructure, teachers’ limited pedagogical skills and lack of social connections between students and teachers as the hindering factors. Still, combination of synchronous and asynchronous modes was reported to lessen the participants’ load and increase the effectiveness of learning. Similarly, Sumardi and Nugrahani (2021) conducted a case study on existing pedagogical strategies adopted in emergency remote teaching (ERT) during the pandemic at a university in Indonesia. The participants were 17 pre-service language teachers attending a microteaching course where English was the medium of instruction. Although ERT was appreciated to cope with the suspension of face-to-face education, lack of student discipline and limited teacher control over these students were reported to be the main challenges. In this regard, teachers were advised to refer to various instructional strategies to overcome negative student attitudes and increase the effectiveness of their teaching.

Apart from the afore-mentioned studies, perspectives of pre-service English teachers and their lecturers have been investigated in different countries such as Saudi Arabia, Hong Kong, Israel and Colombia. To begin with, Al Abiky (2021) examined the challenges of five pre-service English teachers teaching English in private schools or colleges in Saudi Arabia. It was revealed that the participants faced challenges in terms of content delivery, teaching styles, assessment and meeting different student needs. In this respect, effective integration of technology was suggested to improve teaching competencies in the future. Also, Yang M (2021) specifically focused on the online feedback experiences of five pre-service English teachers in Hong Kong during the pandemic. While the online feedback offered opportunities for interaction and collaboration with peers, it was found to be limited for extensive and immediate feedback. Additionally, as Donitsa-Schmidt and Ramot (2020) indicated, many teacher educators were caught unprepared and lacked the required coping strategies to manage distance education during the pandemic in Israel. However, one of the positive outcomes of the pandemic was the increased cooperation between higher education institutions and practicum schools since both institutions went through uncertainty and attempted to strengthen their relationships. Finally, Castañeda-Trujillo and Jaime-Osorio (2021) conducted a case study to explore the difficulties faced by English teacher educators while applying ERT during the pandemic at a state university in Colombia. In order to adapt to ERT, the teacher educators modified their teaching strategies and learnt to use such technologies as videoconferencing software and educational applications. However, they touched upon the difficulties of boosting pre-service teachers’ motivation, autonomy and interaction.

In light of the relevant literature, it can be claimed that students and teachers were caught unprepared while adapting to distance education due to their lacking digital competencies (Donitsa-Schmidt and Ramot, 2020; Trust and Whalen, 2020). For an effective implementation of online learning at universities, both pre-service teachers and their lecturers should be offered training to be well-prepared (Bao, 2020; Türegün-Çoban and Kuyumcu-Vardar, 2021). In this way, characteristics of distance education can be considered as an opportunity to rethink about traditional roles and practices of teachers and students (Flores and Gago, 2020) and online learning can shape the hybrid learning model in the future (Adedoyin and Soykan, 2020).

As for Turkish EFL context, Öztürk Karataş and Tuncer (2020) explored the influence of emergency distance education (EDE) on language skills development of 118 pre-service English teachers during the pandemic. It was revealed that EDE was most beneficial for improving writing skill but least beneficial for improving speaking skill. This finding was caused by the fact that the participants used their writing skills for their assignments most of the time and writing turned into the new of communication rather than speaking which was ignored during the classes. In a similar vein, Kan and Özmen (2021) investigated perceptions of 402 pre-service teachers in different departments, including pre-service English teachers, towards distance education during the pandemic through metaphors. The participants were given the statement ““Pandemic period distance education is like …….; because……." and asked to complete it with their own words. The emerging metaphors were labelled as positive and negative. The metaphors of medicine, heroes, water, food and vitamins were the most cited metaphors. In addition, the participants referred to the metaphors of reading a book, refrigerator, rainbow, technical coach, friend, noise, rowing against the current, dream and torture. Finally, Çamlıbel-Acar and Eveyik-Aydın (2022) reviewed the views of 123 pre-service English teachers and 15 teacher trainers upon distance education in Turkey. The authors found out that about half of the pre-service English teachers displayed negative opinions about distance education whereas a high majority of the teacher trainers were either neutral or negative about it. While the advantages of distance education were attributed to such topics as time, energy and money saving and access to lesson recording, the challenges included various domains. For the pre-service teachers, the challenges were related to concentration problems, lack of motivation, limited interaction, poor Internet connection, assignment problems and inappropriate assessment. However, the teacher trainers reported lack of interaction, learners' reluctance to participate, increased workload, technical problems and assessment difficulties as the challenges. As for their recommendations, the teacher trainers suggested alternative distance education applications and technological training whereas the pre-service teachers suggested different teaching styles of their trainers, improving distance education platforms and using other distance education applications.

All in all, there are various research studies about ELT students’ and lecturers’ reflections on distance education during the COVID-19 pandemic in Turkish EFL context; however, these studies appear to be limited. Thus, the current study aimed to add a new perspective on distance education during the pandemic in Turkey by including both pre-service English teachers and lecturers and employing a phenomenological research design. The participants’ revealed their perspectives on distance education during the pandemic in terms of improving their technological skills, offering convenience for theoretical and practical courses, receiving institutional training for distance education, and benefits and challenges of distance education. The participants also referred to various metaphors to define distance education during the pandemic. In this way, the study aimed to give a more complete picture about distance education applications by examining the afore-mentioned aspects from the perspectives of both pre-service English teachers and their lecturers.

Methodology

Research design

The aims of the study were to investigate the reflections of pre-service English teachers and their lecturers on distance education during the COVID-19 pandemic and offer a deeper analysis of the phenomenon in question. Thus, the current study was defined by a phenomenological research design. A semi-structured interview form was employed as data collection instrument since it allowed for more involvement in the topic and created more space for discussion (Dörnyei, 2007). Phenomenological studies, which are one of the commonly employed qualitative research designs, aim to investigate humans’ lived experiences via their descriptions. In phenomenological studies, perspectives of participants are often gathered through interviews and based on participants’ statements, their experiences are analysed to reveal what they have in common about the phenomenon in question (Creswell, 2007, 2012; Creswell et al., 2007). Since phenomenological studies could be applied in various settings including educational settings (Yüksel and Yıldırım, 2015), the current study adopted a phenomenological research design to examine participants’ experiences at higher education institutions.

Participants

The participants were 34 pre-service English teachers and 31 lecturers from Turkey. The participants were chosen via convenience sampling, which made it possible to recruit participants from individuals available for the study (Mackey and Gass, 2005). Thus, the participants who were within easy reach were recruited for the study. The students were from the ELT department where the researcher was a faculty member and the lecturers were either the researcher’s colleagues or the faculty staff s/he followed through online academic platforms. First, the researcher got the official permission of the ethical commission of the university where the study was conducted to ensure that all procedures performed in this study involving humans were in accordance with the ethical standards. Additionally, participation was on voluntary basis and there was a consent form in the data collection tool. Each participant was coded as S for students or L for lecturers and assigned a number which indicated their order of participation with an aim to assure anonymity. Finally, they were given the institutional and contact details of the researcher in case of any questions or concerns.

As it is seen in Table 1, all the students were from the ELT Department at a state university in Turkey. 15 were juniors, nine were seniors, one was a graduate, four were MA students and five were PhD students. 20 were females and 14 were males. Their ages ranged between 21–35 and the average was 23,7. 12 indicated that they received distance education courses before the COVID-19 pandemic while 22 stated they did not receive any distance education courses before the pandemic.

Table 1.

Students’ demographic details.

Category	Frequency
Level
Junior	15
Senior	9
Graduate	1
MA	4
PhD	5
Gender
Female	20
Male	14
Previous distance education experience
yes	12
no	22

As it is indicated in Table 2, the lecturers were all from ELT departments from 18 universities in Turkey. Six were from private universities and 25 were from public universities. 12 were Assist.Prof.Dr, nine were Prof.Dr, six were Assoc.Prof.Dr, two were Lecturer Dr and two were Research Assistant Dr. 19 were females and 12 were males. Their ages ranged between 31–67 and the average was 45,9. As for their teaching experience, three had 1/5-year teaching experience, four had 6/10-year teaching experience, three had 11/15-year, three had 16/20-year, 18 had 21-year and more teaching experience. 14 had administrative duties while 17 had no administrative duties. 12 had delivered distance education courses before the COVID-19 pandemic while 19 had no prior distance education experience. Finally, they delivered courses at different levels like BA (N: 29), MA (N: 21) and PhD (N: 11).

Table 2.

Lecturers’ demographic details.

Category	Frequency
University type
Private	6
public	25
Title
Assist.Prof.Dr	12
Prof.Dr	9
Assoc.Prof.Dr	6
Lecturer, Dr	2
Research assistant Dr	2
Gender
Female	19
male	12
Teaching experience
1/5-year	3
6/10-year	4
11/15-year	3
16/20-year	3
21-year and more	18
Administrative duties
Yes	14
no	17
Previous distance education experience
yes	12
no	19
Course levels delivered
BA	29
MA	21
PhD	11

Data collection procedures

Turkey decided to suspend all face-to-face educational activities throughout the country on 14.03.2020, three days after recording the first case of the COVID-19 pandemic (Eken et al., 2020). In this vein, higher education institutions in Turkey adopted distance education during the pandemic period. After this transition to distance education, university lecturers relied on online platforms to prepare self-recorded video lessons and course materials to be shared with students.

In this respect, the researcher reviewed the relevant literature to prepare a semi-structured written interview form (WIF) in English with an attempt to get detailed answers from the participants. Then, expert opinion was gathered from two academic staff from an ELT Department and two academic staff from a Psychological Counselling and Guidance Department about the data collection tool. Next, necessary layout, content, wording and editing arrangements were made in light of the expert comments and suggestions. The revised interview form was used as the data collection tool. The WIF included six question items about pre-service English teacher education during the pandemic in Turkey.

The study was conducted in 2020 academic year. After the legal permission of the ethical commission was gathered, the participants were sent the WIF link via their e-mails. The researcher contacted the pre-service English teachers and lecturers several times via email so it took about 7 months to collect the data. There were two different interview forms, one for ELT students and another one for ELT lecturers. The content of the WIF was the same for both groups except for some demographic features.

At the beginning of the WIF, the participants were given the consent form, title, scope and procedures of the study. It was explicitly indicated that participation in the study was completely on voluntary basis and involved no risks or requirements in any case. The participants were also ensured that their answers and identity would be kept confidential. Finally, the interviewees were assured about their rights to participate or withdraw at any time.

The data were collected after the academic term ended so that there were no power relations between the researcher and the students. Also, the students were not given any additional marks upon their participation and it was ensured that participation was purely on voluntary basis. In addition, their real names were anonymised to protect their confidentiality (Creswell, 2014; Oliver, 2003).

Data analysis

After the WIF was administered, written statements of the participants were subjected to phenomenological analysis procedures. There are some steps in a phenomenological research such as bracketing, intuiting, analysing and describing, respectively. In the bracketing step, the researcher identifies what to find and then intentionally puts these ideas aside in order to see the experience from a different perspective, namely the perspective of a participant who has lived the experience. In the intuiting step, the researcher pays attention to the meaning attached to the phenomenon in the preceding research. In the analysing step, the researcher refers to coding and categorisation. Finally, in the describing step, the phenomenon is described (Greening, 2019; Moustakas, 1994).

To act in accordance with the steps of phenomenological studies (Groenewald, 2004; Moustakas, 1994), the researcher first identified distance education as a phenomenon and aimed to investigate it from different people’s perspectives, namely pre-service English teachers and lecturers. In this vein, the researcher was a lecturer at the ELT Department of a state university in Turkey and participated in distance education during the pandemic. After the term ended, the researcher felt the need to gather pre-service English teachers’ and other lecturers’ views about distance education. Since the researcher was personally involved in distance education during the pandemic and came across some difficulties, s/he aimed to get a detailed picture of distance education from the eyes of pre-service English teachers and other lecturers. Then, relevant literature about pre-service English teacher education during the COVID-19 pandemic was reviewed and a semi-structured written interview form (WIF) was formed in light of the existing literature. After that, expert opinion was gathered from four academic staff at a state university in Turkey and the required revisions were made in light of their feedback. After the revision, the researcher formed the link of the WIF as it was an online interview form. Next, the WIF was administered to the participants to gather their reflections on distance education during the pandemic. Finally, the researcher analysed the textual data, identified recurring themes and noted some quotes for further exemplification. In this step, the researcher first found out the recurring themes, grouped them according to their similarity and categorised these commonly emerging themes to report textual descriptions of the participants (Fraenkell et al., 2012).

Results and discussion

The WIF findings are displayed and major findings are discussed based on the relevant literature. The quotations of some participants (S for students, L for lecturers) are also given to exemplify the findings.

Q1: do you think you have improved your technological literacy skills during distance education?

30 lecturers (96,8%) and 22 students (64,7%) stated that they improved their technological literacy skills via distance education during the pandemic. Only one lecturer (3.2%) and 12 (35,3%) students stated that they did not improve their technological literacy skills.

An inevitable part of online teaching/learning was to adapt to the new digital environment and this transmission required ICT skills and digital competence of stakeholders, which is also highlighted in the previous research (Ali, 2020; Adedoyin and Soykan, 2020; Donitsa-Schmidt and Ramot, 2020; König et al., 2020; Priyo Atmojo and Nugroho, 2020). However, what draws attention here is the difference between the students and lecturers in that there is a higher percentage of students who thought that online learning did not improve their technological literacy skills. This finding can be explained by the generation gap because the lecturers were mostly older than the students who can be seen as digital natives born into technology and who had different technological competence compared to the prior generation members in the society (Palfrey and Gasser, 2008; Prensky, 2001).

Q2: do you think distance education is applicable for theoretical and practical courses?

A high majority of the lecturers (96,8%) and students (79,4%) stated that distance education was applicable for delivering theoretical courses whereas 71% of the lecturers and 85,3% of the students did not find it applicable for practical courses. This finding is in parallel with the research finding of Türegün-Çoban and Kuyumcu-Vardar (2021) and can stem from lack of face-to-face interaction. Also, difficulty of bridging theory-practice gap (Adedoyin and Soykan, 2020) may have influenced participant perspectives. In this regard, S25 noted: “Yes, because I think that distance education is appropriate for our field ELT except for practical courses such as school experience.”

As for practical courses such as online teaching practicum, the participants foregrounded interaction opportunities and classroom dynamics of face-to-face educational settings and stated that human interactions could not be replaced by distance education (Brinia and Psoni, 2022; Koşar, 2021; Sepulveda-Escobar and Morrison, 2020). In parallel with previous findings (Hardiyanty et al., 2021; Sepulveda-Escobar and Morrison, 2020; Shinta and Aprilia, 2020), technological problems, lack of direct teacher-student interaction, classroom management, testing quality and lack of student attendance were the major challenges of online teaching practicum. Thus, practical courses were suggested to be conducted in face-to-face educational settings (Türegün-Çoban and Kuyumcu-Vardar, 2021).

Q3: Could you please complete the sentence below with your own words?

Both groups were given a sentence and expected to fill it according to their distance education experiences. The sentence was as follows: Distance education due to COVID-19 is like … because … A number of themes emerged in both groups since almost each participant approached it in a unique way. To exemplify, for lecturers, the distance education was like a remote control, a disaster after disaster, an emergency exit, a one-sided mirror, an obligation, the blind man’s bluff, a dog chasing a car, a medical kit, a flower, walking in a dark tunnel and teaching fishing in a desert. For instance, L5 stated: “…medical kit because it helps to deal with the urgent cases on the spot, but it can’t replace the urgency to go to the hospital.” This statement implies that distance education cannot replace face-to-face teaching. In addition, as L7 noted: “…playing an individual sport like tennis because most students just watch and do not participate.” This comment can be regarded as a criticism about lack of student participation and interaction. Finally, L18 reported: “…walking in a dark tunnel because you do not know if you are moving right or wrong: only trying to do your best” and this comment highlights the unpredictability of possible problems. In parallel with previous research, what lecturers tell us about distance education mainly consists of their complaints about adapting to an emergency case (König et al., 2020), lack of student motivation (Ali, 2020), attendance (Mishraa et al., 2020), and heavy workload (Adedoyin and Soykan, 2020).

As for the students, distance education was like being in coma, attending a marathon, securing the landing of a plane, driving a car, growing in a cage, thinking about drinking tea but not drinking tea, being stranded on an island, and sky. Again, these metaphors centre on the challenges more than the benefits. In this vein, S22 reported: “…like growing in a cage because you don’t grow exactly well”. This metaphor reminds the missing aspects of face-to-face classroom settings. Similarly, S26 indicated: “…being stranded on an island because we had never suffered from such problems before.” This metaphor reveals that distance education was new for the students and they were unfamiliar with distance education. Finally, S28 stated: “…sky because we can see it but we can’t reach or touch it; we stay where we are.” The final metaphor underlines lack of physical interaction since they could not see their classmates or lecturers in person and did not have hands-on experiences.

Similar to Kan and Özmen (2021), the participants referred to various positive and negative metaphors to reveal their attitudes towards distance education during the pandemic. However, the metaphors gathered in this study were different from their findings since there was no metaphor such as heroes, water, food, reading a book, refrigerator, rainbow, rowing against the current or torture.

Q4: did you receive any special training for distance education by your university?

18 lecturers (58,1%) and 29 students (85,3%) stated that they did not receive any training for distance education by their universities. The students seemed to be more in need of training about how to make the best use of the distance education compared to the lecturers. Lack of training seems to be one of the commonly cited aspects in distance education (Bao, 2020; Trust and Whalen, 2020). In this study, the limited training for lecturers (N: 13, 41.9%) was mainly offered via videos, postings, seminars, online workshop, technical team support, manuals and a very brief online meeting whereas the students (N: 5, 14.7%) were offered guidance via leaflets, videos, online pdf, faculty’s Instagram stories and the website of the university.

Q5: what do you think about the benefits and challenges of distance education?

The participants were asked about the benefits and challenges of distance education during the pandemic. Table 3 shows the findings for the lecturers while Table 4 shows the findings for the students.

Table 3.

Benefits and challenges of distance education according to lecturers.

Benefits	Challenges
Practicality	Lack of body language
Space flexibility	Lack of evaluating student feelings
Online communication skills	Spending a lot of time for reading assignments
Learner autonomy	Lack of training
More attendance	Connection problems
Discovering new modes of communication	Checking learning outcomes
Helping inhibited students to take part	Assessment
Discovering new applications	Conducting exams
Cost effectiveness	Changing teaching methods
Safety	Inequity among students
Time-saving	Computer problems
Working from home	Lack of interaction
Adaptation skills	Lack of student motivation
Increased ICT skills	Increased workload
	Lack of hands-on activities
	Checking student understanding
	Lack of online micro-teaching experiences
	Lots of effort and time for preparation
	Lack of technological infrastructure
	Plagiarism in assignments
	Lack of student attendance
	Lack of technological knowledge

Table 4.

Benefits and challenges of distance education according to students.

Benefits	Challenges
Easier learning	Distractions at home
Flexible study hours	Uploading documents
Safety	Applying the tests
Convenience of studying from home	Internet problems - technological problems
Learner autonomy	Loaded course requirements
Getting higher grades	Missing teachers and friends
More research and reading	Less socialising
Time saving	Screen strain on body
Cost effectiveness	Sustaining motivation
Practicality	Unfair assessment
No travelling in the morning	Lack of understanding
Re-watching recorded lessons	Lack of training
No challenging assignments	Expressing oneself
	Ineffectiveness for practical courses
	Not asking questions about the exams
	Lack of instant feedback
	Family issues
	Less teacher-student interaction

Only two lecturers indicated that distance education had no benefits. Apart from this, it was found out that there were more challenges (f: 21) compared to the benefits (f: 18). For instance, L1 stated: “No doubt that it is time saving and practical, however, it is far from other communication tools like body language, understanding and evaluating the feelings of students.” Distance education was regarded to be flexible in terms of time and place but lacked the opportunity of using paralinguistic elements and checking student comprehension. In a similar vein, L6 noted:

Internet connection is a big problem. That is why I had to record my sessions all night till mornings. I was like a zombie, working at nights, sleeping during the day. My life turned into a hell. Otherwise, that is much better as I was not distracted by nothing, and I fully concentrated on teaching/lecturing

Internet connection and increased workload were commonly cited problems. However, working from home was appreciated thanks to lack of distractors. Finally, L6 complained about plagiarism in exams: “What bothered me was the student mentality, especially during the exams. Almost one third of 64 students plagiarised from some Internet sources unfortunately.” Since lecturers were unable to see what the students were doing behind a screen during exams, some students were likely to refer to cheating issues like plagiarism, which appears to harm the quality of online assessment.

Only five students stated that distance education had no benefits. The rest focused on the challenges (f: 19) more than the benefits (f: 13), which is similar to the lecturers. To illustrate, S5 reported: “For the benefits, study hours are very flexible and I can watch the lessons lots of times. As for the challenges, the Internet speed can create problems in live lessons.” Though distance education offered the flexibility of re-watching recorded lessons, Internet problems during live sessions seem to have affected student participation. S33, differently, indicated: “It makes learning more autonomous but it lacks classroom environment and student-teacher interaction.” Because distance education required students to take more responsibility for their own learning, it may have facilitated learner autonomy. However, it seems to lack group dynamics of a face-to-face classroom. Finally, S12 stated: “I didn’t have to travel early in the morning, which is a benefit for my side. The challenges include connection problems and screen strain for my eyes and brain.” The convenience of studying from home was appreciated but spending more time with online platforms might have caused various physical issues for some students.

When the responses of lecturers and students are compared, it is seen that both groups focused on the challenges more than the benefits. The common benefits in both groups, which showed similarity with the previous research, included flexibility, time and space convenience (Çamlıbel-Acar and Eveyik-Aydın, 2022; Daniel, 2020; Türegün-Çoban and Kuyumcu-Vardar, 2021), practicality and working from home (Johnson et al., 2020). Additionally, the lecturers seemed to enhance their competencies in terms of online communication skills, new modes of communication and ICT skills while none of these aspects were mentioned by the students. This difference can be explained by the generation gap between the two groups in favour of the students being digital natives (Palfrey and Gasser, 2008; Prensky, 2001).

As for the challenges, again there were several common aspects in both groups. Echoing previous studies, these common aspects included loaded course requirements, unfair assessment, conducting exams (Adedoyin and Soykan, 2020; Al Abiky, 2021; Çamlıbel-Acar and Eveyik-Aydın 2022), Internet connection problems (Çamlıbel-Acar and Eveyik-Aydın 2022; Trust and Whalen, 2020), lack of interaction (Subekti, 2020), lack of hands-on activities for practical courses (Sepulveda-Escobar and Morrison, 2020) and sustaining motivation (Priyo Atmojo and Nugroho, 2020; Türegün-Çoban and Kuyumcu-Vardar, 2021). The participants also mentioned difficulty of getting used to distance education (Johnson et al., 2020), inequality among students, low level of technological knowledge (Adedoyin and Soykan, 2020), lack of student attendance, eye damage, lack of instant feedback (Priyo Atmojo and Nugroho, 2020) and lack of student discipline (Castañeda-Trujillo and Jaime-Osorio, 2021; Sumardi and Nugrahani, 2021) as the other challenges.

Q6: What do you think about the aspects that need improvement for distance education?

Based on the challenges of distance education, the participants stated that distance education should be improved in terms of infrastructure, less student number in classes, Internet connection, providing required equipment, offering training, qualified assessment, stricter rules for attendance and more student-teacher interaction. In this regard, L8 indicated: “Developing tools for online tests, providing computers and Internet access to students who do not have these.” L8 seemed to be concerned about the quality of online testing and suggested different tools in distance education. Also, the inequality among the students was emphasized since some students might have lacked the access to the Internet or technological tools during the pandemic. Additionally, S6 reported: “Voice systems should be improved since most of the time we had problems. Also, the system was sometimes so slow and frequently gave errors, especially while uploading documents.” Distance education tools were stated to be ineffective due to infrastructure issues since some students encountered voice problems during the lessons and had difficulty while uploading their online assignments. Finally, L16 noted: “New perspectives, media literacy and education programs or seminars are needed.” In this comment, an in-house training programme is highlighted to facilitate the transition to distance education. Therefore, higher education institutions are expected to offer training and guidance for both students and lecturers.

Some of these suggestions show similarity with the previous research in terms of enhanced infrastructure (Ali, 2020; Priyo Atmojo and Nugroho, 2020), Internet connection (Priyo Atmojo and Nugroho, 2020), quality of assessment (Adedoyin and Soykan, 2020), Internet facilities (Priyo Atmojo and Nugroho, 2020), varying online materials (Johnson et al., 2020), and more training (Bao, 2020; Johnson et al., 2020; Trust and Whalen, 2020).

Conclusion and implications

This study aimed to find out and compare pre-service English teachers’ and their lecturers’ reflections on distance education during the COVID-19 pandemic in Turkey. It has been concluded that the challenges of distance education outweighed its benefits and face-to-face education was preferred for delivering practical courses. Thus, it seems that there are still lessons to be taken from distance education during the pandemic in terms of delivery of instruction, assessment, teaching practices and staff training for probable future circumstances.

This study results bear some similarities and differences with the previous research. For instance, the pre-service English teachers in the current study mostly indicated that they were unfamiliar with distance education and did not receive any training due to the quick transition. Also, they did not find distance education useful for their practical courses. These findings aligned with the study of Al Abiky (2021). However, the findings of the current study contrast with those of Zou et al. (2021) because in their study, a high majority of the participants had participated in online teaching/learning activities and received different lengths of training whereas in this study the participants were expected to adapt to distance education without initial training.

Lecturers and students appeared to be caught unprepared for distance education and were expected to adapt to this emergency case by changing their teaching/learning practices (Donitsa-Schmidt and Ramot, 2020; Trust and Whalen, 2020). Despite some challenges, this unique experience was likely to add a different dimension to their digital competencies (Ali, 2020; Adedoyin and Soykan, 2020; Donitsa-Schmidt and Ramot, 2020; König et al., 2020; Priyo Atmojo and Nugroho, 2020). Therefore, their increased digital competencies can guide them how to teach and test, cope with unpredictability and develop problem-solving skills in similar cases.

Another issue is related to participating in practical courses because distance education was found to lack teacher/student interaction and body language use. In this respect, face-to-face education can be preferred for practical courses such as teaching practicum (Brinia and Psoni, 2022; Koşar, 2021; Sepulveda-Escobar and Morrison, 2020) in the post-pandemic era. However, some theoretical courses can be delivered online due to its flexible and cost-effective features.

Distance education during the pandemic has the potential to pave the way for hybrid settings for teacher training institutions in the long run to increase readiness of pre-service English teachers in case of unexpected circumstances (Kızıldağ and Tuncer, 2022). Thus, providing training seems to be the backbone of transition to distance education as it can facilitate adaptation of stakeholders. For the future of teacher education, hybrid teaching approaches can be employed and virtual classrooms can be integrated (Türegün-Çoban and Kuyumcu-Vardar, 2021). To reduce their teaching fears, pre-service English teachers can be introduced to technology-based simulated environments to arrange their teaching practices in accordance with distance education applications (Sasaki et al., 2020)

As for recommendations, the need for improving Internet facilities and infrastructure was emphasized and students were suggested to be involved in online learning during their pre-service teacher education. Additionally, administrators of higher institutions were advised to return to face-to-face education after the pandemic due to the unfavourable opinions of the students (Egielewa et al., 2022). In this way, pre-service English teachers can become more equipped with required teaching competencies, coping strategies and problem-solving skills in case of distance education in the future. In other words, they can learn how to drink tea and help their future students to get the same taste behind a screen because if they are familiar with distance education, they can assist their students to learn more effectively. As one of the pre-service English teachers stated, teaching/learning via distance education was like thinking about drinking tea but not drinking tea because they did not breathe the atmosphere of a real classroom setting. If you cannot taste tea, looking at it far away may not satisfy your expectations and there might be something missing. Therefore, pre-service English teachers should be exposed to distance education so that they can gain consciousness about how it feels to be a student or a teacher in distance education and how to act accordingly.

Limitations and suggestions for further research

This study is limited to a small group of pre-service English teachers and their lecturers in Turkey so the findings cannot be generalised for other countries due to context-bound differences. Thus, future studies can involve a larger number of participants from different departments and countries to conduct a comparative study and inform cross-cultural studies. Also, this study employed an interview form but future studies can make use of various data collection tools to triangulate data. Finally, this study included university students and lecturers as participants and future studies can be conducted with different stakeholders such as parents, administrators and technical staff to offer a more comprehensive picture about the complexities of distance education during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Author Biography

Çağla Atmaca is an Assoc. Prof. Dr at Pamukkale University (PAU), Faculty of Education, English Language Teaching (ELT) Department. She is also deputy head of the department. She graduated from Pamukkale University in 2011 with the highest degree at the Faculty of Education. She worked as a research assistant and got her MA and PhD degrees at Gazi University ELT Department between 2012–2016. She has delivered various BA, MA, PhD courses at PAU ELT Department since 2017. She got national scholarships for MA and PhD degrees and was involved various national and international projects. Her fields of interest are teacher education, educational technology, discourse analysis, media literacy, second language acquisition, and intercultural communication.

ORCID iD

Çağla Atmaca https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7745-3839