Perceptions of information technology teachers regarding information ethics in emergency remote teaching during the pandemic period

Due to the pandemic, many countries have made a mandatory transition to distance education in order to ensure the sustainability of education. Distance education, which was compulsory during this process, was referred to as emergency remote teaching in the literature, and digital access within the scope of education without testing may pose a risk to data security, which has made people worried. Therefore, informatics ethics education is ciritical in order to follow the ethics that may be encountered in the future. Teachers should ensure that they are prepared for the unknowns that may occur in the future. This can only be done by ensuring that people develop their own ethical foundations. The purpose of this thesis is to distribute the experiences and reveal the perceptions of Information Technologies teachers regarding information ethics in emergency remote teaching during the pandemic period. The research is conducted in the phenomenology pattern, one of the qualitative research methods. There is a semi-structured interview consisting of eight questions to collect data. The participants of the study consisted of 13 Information Technologies teachers who worked actively during the pandemic period in schools located in the south of Turkey. The data obtained was analyzed using the content analysis method. The data collection process consisted of analyzing the interview data after an interview, coding the data, and then interpreting the codes. It was found that Information Technologies teachers did not have sufficient caution regarding violations of intellectual property and confidentiality aspects of IT ethics. In addition, in emergency remote teaching during the pandemic period, teachers reported that students may violated accuracy, intellectual property and confidentiality and their IT ethics behaviours are influenced by parents, friends and teachers.