Social studies teachers' competencies about Personal Data Protection Law

With the development of technology in the century we live in, people's communication, trade, shopping, business life, private life and even education life occur mainly in the virtual world. In order to carry out all these works, the need to share some of our personal data arises. At this point, the security of our personal data, which we have to share with people on the other side of the world whom we do not know and whom we will not even have the opportunity to get to know, has become a problem. The virtual world order has almost eliminated the age limit and has become a platform where everyone from seven to seventy is involved, where data is shared easily and often without thinking. Especially children and adolescents take part in this virtual space through social media for the purpose of having fun and communicating. Considering their purpose and age, they may be more generous than necessary in terms of data sharing, but they may be insufficient and uninformed about the security of the shared data. The problems caused by this situation can lead to very heavy costs in terms of consequences. It is important to raise awareness and inform school-age students in this sense. Especially with the distance education system, which has been included in our lives during the pandemic, the online education system was actually implemented for two years; with the end of the pandemic process, although we return to face-to-face education, distance education continues to be realized as alternative education somewhere in our lives. In this case, it is important that students act consciously about their behavior, speech and sharing in online education. In addition to parents, it is important for teachers to have the same consciousness and to inform students and to be role models at the point of raising awareness of students. In order to find solutions to all these problems, Personal Data Protection Law was enacted in 2016 in our country. It is necessary to be informed about the scope of the law in order to ensure the security of our data that we have to share. For these reasons, in our thesis study, we want to measure the competencies of social studies teachers about the Law on the Protection of Personal Data, given the importance of our teachers, who are the leading element of the education system, to have knowledge in the field of Personal Data Protection. In this research process, it is aimed to measure the competencies of social studies teachers in public schools affiliated to the Ministry of National Education in Bartın province social studies teachers working in the field of social sciences will be included in the study. In this study, case study method, one of the qualitative research methods, will be used. Criterion sampling, one of the types of purposeful sampling, will be used to determine the participants from whom qualitative data will be collected in line with the purpose of the study. Demographic information form, semi-structured interview form and event texts form will be used to collect the data. The measurement tool will be prepared by taking expert opinions. Content analysis method will be used to analyze the qualitative data obtained through semi-structured interview and event text completion form.