Distance Social Studies Courses in the Pandemic Period with the Experiences of Teachers

The study aims to evaluate how distance social studies courses were conducted during the pandemic, in line with teachers' experiences. The semi-structured interviews were conducted with 14 social studies teachers working in various provinces of Turkey in this study, which was carried out with interpretative phenomenology design, one of the qualitative research methods. The data were evaluated by the content analysis method. The results show that social studies teachers perceive distance education as a system that allows using different materials and tools, maintaining education, learning technology, and eliminating the need for time and place. On the other hand, teachers expressed some limitations of distance education arising from the lack of internet and technological tools. In addition, the results indicated teachers mostly used direct instruction and question-answer methods for teaching during the distance education period, EBA, Zoom, and some Web 2.0 tools as educational technologies, and tests and question-answer methods for measurement and evaluation. Finally, many problems, gathered under the titles of technological-systemic, communication-coordination, student, family, and other in the distance education process were emphasized. When examining the experiences, all problems are seen to be related to the internet connection, access to technological tools, and how families play a role in their children's education. In this context, compared with other studies in the literature, it is possible to say that teachers working in different branches also experienced similar problems during the distance education period. Therefore, innovative applications that can be developed will be beneficial for all branches.