A Study on describing the field identity of educational communications

ABSTRACT A STUDY ON DESCRIBING THE FIELD IDENTITY OF EDUCATIONAL COMMUNICATIONS Cengiz Hakan Aydın Division of Communication Sciences Anadolu University Institute of Social Sciences, April 1999 Advisor: Prof. Dr. Murat Barkan Although educational communications has been accepted as an independent field of study for nearly 40 years, there is still no agreement on its conceptual definition and boundaries. This study was conducted by using the literature, and the experts' opinions to describe the field identity of educational communications. The researchers contributing to theoretical development of the field and practitioners developing products of educational communications in Turkey were selected to form the expert panel. Then, a three-stage Delfi technique was used to collect opinions of experts who have been geographically dispersed and hard to bring together. Data about the experts' opinions on both the different aspects of educational communications and the structure of the questionnaire were collected. The study has shown that opinions of the researchers and practitioners on these competencies, issues, and trends are similar except the "describing and introducing the field" category, and a few of the items. In the further analysis of the data, 16 professional competencies, 10 current issues, and 19 future trends were identified. m