Transition to Distance Education during Covid-19 Pandemic: Opinions of Faculty Members and Pre-service Teachers in an English Language Teaching Department in Turkey

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the views of instructors and teacher candidates related to synchronous education during the pandemic at a state university in the department of English Language Teaching. The participants included 9 instructors, and 22 pre-service English teachers. Qualitative methods were adopted in this study: semi-structured interviews and an open-ended survey were used to collect data. Interviews with instructors revealed that drawbacks to synchronous distance education were more prevalent. Similarly, open-ended surveys administered to teacher candidates demonstrated that the participants were not satisfied with synchronous distance education even though they reported several advantages of it. Finally, implications were mentioned based on the results.