Exploring meaning-making in instructional technology: A phenomenological study of english language teaching students

The benefits that different technologies provide to the educational processes have been experienced by educators for years. The advantages hat teachers gain from computers, the internet, different software and technologies that change and develop every passing day have caused students to develop different skills and have also made it a necessity for teachers to be able to use these systems. As a result of these requirements, as a result of the studies of the Higher Education Council and the Ministry of National Education, which regulate higher education in Turkey, courses addressing technology education and the integration of technology into the course have been added to the process. This study aims to understand the technology-based meanings developed by teacher candidates taking the Instructional Technologies (IT) course. Within the scope of the study designed according to Husserl's phenomenology understanding, the study was conducted by 12 English Language Teaching undergraduate students and 3 researchers. It has been observed that the socio-cultural capital of the primary subjects of the study, English Language Teaching students, has shaped their lives along with their technological capital in the post-truth period. It has been seen that gods with high technology skills have created digital victims through digital world tools. It has been observed that people who were victims in the past can become resisters who engage in passive resistance against the digital world, while individuals who were not victims in the past but were aware of their victimization can become characters who actively resist the process. © The Author(s) 2025.