Abstract
Pandemic was announced on March 11, 2020 as a result of Covid-19 which first appeared in December 2019 and affected the world in a short period. Covid-19 pandemic which became the most important agenda of the world also affected the field of education as well as many other fields in this process. The decisions of transition to online education from a face-to-face education were taken in order to provide social isolation and decrease the virus contagion risk different periods depending on the course of the epidemic of Covid-19 pandemic process. However, it was seen that the applications stated by authorities were discussed from different perspectives and the applications became the agenda of the country in order to eliminate some barriers on transition to online education and to overcome the process with the least damage. In pandemic period, education-instruction process also became the topic of the columns in media outlets and various evaluations were made by columnists related to distance education and various aspects of the topic were discussed.
In this study, we try to find out the effect of Covid-19 pandemic on the field of education, management of pandemic process and the evaluation of digital transformation experienced on the columns published on the news sites of the following newspapers between 1 March - 31 December 2020: Hürriyet, Milliyet, Sabah, Sözcü and Yeni Şafak, which are among the highest general circulation in in Turkey and selected out of 10 prevailing newspapers. 153 columns related to online education process of columnists were analyzed with content analysis method. Within the columns the schools affiliated with Ministry of National Education were dealt with more compared to universities considering education-instruction procedures during pandemic process. Psychological effects of the process on students, management systems of Ministry of National Education and Higher Education Institution, High-school Entrance Exam and Higher Education Foundations Examination, the statuses of private schools, technical infrastructure insufficiencies and emergence of unequal opportunity in education topics were highlighted in the columns. Also, it was concluded that there is a consensus on the topic of online education cannot replace formal education.