Practicum Students’ Views on Distance Learning via TV Broadcast for Secondary Schools

Abstract

Due to the outbreak of COVID-19 in late 2019 and early 2020 across the world, many countries turned to distance education platforms. By the beginning of March, 2020 Turkey also started TV classes for almost 18 million students of primary and secondary schools. This study aims to explore the extent to which pre-service English teachers auditing a distance English language course for secondary school students considered that the distance courses had achieved the course objectives, and perceived advantages and disadvantages in distance courses. The participants in the study were 60 pre-service teachers who attended a practicum study for the first five weeks of the 2019-2020 academic year spring semester. Since the classes in primary, secondary, and tertiary education were taught online for the rest of the spring semester, the practicum students were assigned to watch English classes taught on free TV channels which were also broadcast on the internet to let the students watch again at their own pace. The data were collected through three open-ended interview questions. Thematic analysis was used to analyze the transcribed data. The results indicate that, although teachers on the course agreed that TV courses were not able to achieve the course objectives, they mentioned advantageous and disadvantageous aspects of distance learning via TV broadcast and offered ways to improve it.