Abstract:

Distance education is one of the education approaches that is used extensively by every education level with the global Covid-19 pandemic, although its historical past is very old. Therefore, in this research, it is aimed to determine the meanings that candidate teachers attribute to the concept of distance education with the mind map technique. Phenomenology, one of the qualitative research designs, was preferred in the study. In this process, the relevant experiences of the candidate teacher in the distance education process were examined. The research consists of 10 males and 9 females as candidate teacher studying at a state university in the 2022-2023 academic year. While determining the study group, an easily accessible sample was preferred. It was based on the voluntary participation of the participants in the research. Mind maps created by pre-service teachers regarding the concept of distance education were used as research data. Data were collected face-to-face and in a classroom setting between 46-120 minutes. The data were analyzed with content analysis in Maxqda 2022 program. As a result of the research, the meanings attributed by the teacher candidates to the concept of distance education were determined by the mind mapping technique. In the mind maps drawn by the pre-service teachers who actively participated in the distance education process, they included the disadvantages, advantages, tools, measurement-evaluation, learning-methods and techniques, education levels, stakeholders (those who use distance education) and the reasons for using distance education in their mind maps.

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