Digital privacy awareness of teacher candidates

The aim of this study is to determine the awareness levels of teacher candidates regarding digital privacy. For this purpose, a causal comparative model was used to examine students' digital privacy awareness of teacher candidates in terms of gender, education program and grade level. The study group of the research consists of 285 teacher candidates studying at Anadolu University Faculty of Education. Demographic Information Form and Online Privacy Awareness Scale (OPCAS) were used to collect the data. IBM SPSS 24 program was used for data analysis. Kolmogorov-Smirnov and Shapiro-Wilk tests were applied to examine the normality of the distribution of the scores obtained from the ESAS, and it was concluded that the total score of the scale and the security factor were normally distributed, while the attention and communication and sharing factors were not normally distributed. Accordingly, a one-way ANOVA was conducted for the total score and the security factor to compare the digital privacy levels of the participants. Kruskal-Wallis test was used to compare the digital privacy levels of the attention, communication and sharing factor scores according to the programs studied and class levels, and Mann-Whitney U test and t-test were used to compare according to gender. According to the findings, it was seen that the digital privacy levels of the teacher candidates did not differ significantly according to the program and grade levels. However, in terms of gender, the digital privacy levels of teacher candidates differed statistically significantly and this difference is in favor of female teacher candidates. The results of the study were discussed on the basis of the related literature and suggestions for future studies and applications were presented.