An analysis of online privacy concerns of teacher candidates

Abstract

Examining the online privacy concerns of our prospective teachers who will raise our future generations is important in terms of determining and increasing the awareness levels of prospective teachers of the digital world and for the development of a conscious generation having this awareness while raising students. The definition of cyber space or virtual environments has further expanded; digital business applications, online services, online training systems, e-commerce sites, social media sites, and surely multiplayer video games have also been included in the definition. The definition of these digital spaces as virtual spaces creates questions as to how individuals exist in these places and how they travel in these places. This study, whose aim is to analyze online confidentiality concerns of prospective teachers in terms of various variables, consists of 92 teacher candidates who were studying in Necmettin Erbakan University of Konya in 2018-2019 academic year. In this study, where quantitative research was adopted, surveying model was used as a research method. The data collection tool was “The Online Privacy Concern Scale (OPCS)” developed. Descriptive statistics, Independent samples t-test and one-way analysis of variance were used during the analysis. It is found out that online privacy concerns of teacher candidates differ significantly in terms of mobile device usage times and classes. However there was no significant difference in online privacy concerns in terms of information and communication technologies usage levels, weekly Internet usage times, gender, department, age and mobile usage level.