An investigation of Turkish efl teachers' work alienation during the COVID-19 pandemic

The world has been getting through a global crisis due to the outbreak of coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic that does not seem to be resolved soon. Among many fields that were affected negatively due to the pandemic, the education field has got severe damage that casts a long shadow despite the precautions and innovations taken to mitigate the impacts of the pandemic. Therefore, in a world where distancing from people is the new normal, the concept of alienation experienced by English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teachers became an area of concern for this study. The motive of this study was born from the puzzle of how the pandemic affected EFL teachers' work alienation and what is the extent of their alienation levels. A mixed-method approach was adopted for the sake of this study. The work alienation scale was distributed to 160 EFL teachers working at primary, secondary, and high school to get a general understanding of teacher alienation, and the same sample did 18 interviews to gain better insight from teachers' perspectives. The data was analyzed using The Statistical Package for Social Sciences software program (SPSS), and the interview data were coded and categorized into themes. The results indicated that EFL teachers experience work alienation in relatively low levels regarding demographic variables and the subdimensions of alienation. Nevertheless, the interview data revealed thought-provoking examples of the severe effects of the pandemic. The findings also suggest the importance of experience in the field regarding work alienation.