Classroom teachers attitudes towards distance education, their communication skills and empathic tendencies

The aim of this study is to examine the attitudes, communication skills and empathic tendencies of classroom teachers towards distance education in the distance education process, which has started to be used more actively with the COVID-19 pandemic. Relational survey model, one of the quantitative research methods, was used as the method of the study. For this purpose, the scales of classroom teachers' attitudes towards distance education, communication skills and empathic tendencies were applied to 266 classroom teachers (145 male, 121 female) working in Malatya province. Attitudes, communication skills and empathic tendencies of classroom teachers towards distance education were analysed with SPSS package programme. Independent sample t test, one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA), Pearson correlation and simple regression were used to analyse the data. In the study, it was concluded that the participants' attitudes towards distance education were at a medium level, their empathic tendencies were at a high level and their communication skills were at a high level in the research. It can be said that classroom teachers' attitudes towards distance education received the lowest score in the sub-dimension of limitations of distance education and the highest score in communication skills. No differences were observed in the variables according to gender. There was a difference between the respondents who participated in the course about distance education and those who did not participate in the survey in favour of those who took a course on communication, but no difference was found in other areas. Teachers' attitudes towards distance education, empathic attitudes and communication skills show that there are significant differences in the research in terms of their time on the internet. When the length of service and place of employment of classroom teachers are analysed, no difference is observed in any field. In other words, the length of service and the place of employment did not lead to any difference in the distance education process in terms of empathic and communicative skills. Differences were observed in terms of distance education process according to the education level of classroom teachers and no differences were observed in other areas. No difference was observed in classroom teachers regarding the grade level they teach. It was determined that there was a negative low- level significant relationship between the attitudes of the classroom teachers participating in the study towards distance education and their empathic tendencies, and a negative low-level significant relationship between distance education and communication skills. It was found that there was a positive and moderately significant relationship between empathic tendency and communication skills. It was seen that empathic tendency predicted the attitude towards distance education at a significant level, but communication skills did not predict the attitude towards distance education at a significant level. In this research, it is suggested that qualitative research design can be included in this research and the research can be carried out more comprehensively by conducting the research not only with classroom teachers but also with other branches, students and parents.