Nitel Sosyal Bilimler

Öz

The elimination of the physical space problem between the student and the teacher in distance education directly serves the purpose of minimizing human mobility and physical contact within the scope of Covid-19 measures. In addition to the benefit of minimizing the physical contact in question, the economic cost of distance education is low, it is easy to access and disseminate information, it provides lifelong learning opportunities, and also gives the right to education for individuals of all ages (Ağır, 2007). In addition to the expressed benefits of distance education, its limitations are inadequacy in lessons that require skill and practice, adaptation problems of individuals accustomed to traditional learning environments, preventing socialization (Akyürek, 2020); lack of communication interaction, loss of motivation, inadequacy of resources such as internet and computer, technical problems, insufficient socialization (Özgöl et al., 2017). Students' lack of experience, technology and infrastructure deficiencies, learning materials, lack of interest in learners, lack of interaction, lack of feedback, and deficiencies in the use of technologies such as computers and the internet (Attri, 2012) appear as limitations of distance education.
The purpose of this research is to reveal the opinions of school counselors/guidance teachers about the distance education process, which has become a necessity due to COVID-19, and to make suggestions as a result of the evaluations.
The research was designed in a case study pattern, one of the qualitative research designs, in order to examine the experiences of school counselors/guidance teachers working in public schools affiliated with the Ministry of National Education during the distance education process carried out due to the COVID-19 epidemic. A case study is a process of revealing comprehensive data about a situation determined within the scope of the research purpose (Yıldırım & Şimşek, 2013). Easily accessible case sampling, which is one of the purposive sampling strategies, was used to determine the study group of the research. In this context, it is aimed to collect data from school psychological counselors (guide teachers) who take an active role in the distance education process in order to evaluate the distance education process. The criteria used in determining the sample of the study; It was determined as working actively in the distance education process. Content analysis technique, one of the qualitative data analysis techniques, was used in the research data analysis.
According to the results of the research, the advantages of distance education services can be counted as ease of transportation, time flexibility, lower cost compared to education in real environments, and ease of application in daily routines (Table 6). With the emergency distance education employed with the epidemic, school counselors faced the difficulties of adapting to new education-teaching platforms and performing psychological counseling and guidance activities in virtual environments. These are the use of technology in the distance education process, the use of distance education tools such as EBA and Zoom, the lack of infrastructure in the programs used, and the difficulties experienced in the use of computer programs (Table 9). The disadvantages of distance education were found to be problems in internet connection and lack of interaction, low student participation, technical problems, infrastructure, and content material deficiencies (Table 7). An important finding of our research is that the majority of students experience a loss of motivation and cannot adapt to the new education model; As a result, the quality of education decreases, and the absenteeism of students increases (Table 5). Teachers cannot reach their students due to technological inadequacies, students experience internet problems in the region they live in, students cannot follow their lessons efficiently enough, and there are breaks in motivational understanding among students in this process (Table 5-9).
Distance education continues today as it was in the past. It is thought that its use will spread to wider areas in parallel with the developments in technology. In this context, it is necessary to increase the quality of interaction between learning environments and students and teachers. For this purpose, the infrastructure deficiencies of distance education should be eliminated by education administrators and decision-makers, computer and internet problems of students and teachers should be eliminated, and in-service training should be expanded for teachers to use basic technology and to use distance education tools effectively.