Perceived adequate education in ethics: A way to tap into ethical SNS dilemma awareness?

Abstract

Teachers are role models when it comes to ethics both on- and offline. Teacher education aims to prepare preservice teachers for future on- and offline situations and issues that may be of ethical concern. Education in ethics is one way to work with awareness about ethics in Social Networking Sites (SNS) across different forms of social media. This study first investigates preservice teachers’ perceived adequacy of ethics education. Second, it investigates how perceived usefulness of ethics education relates to how aware preservice teachers’ report to be regarding own and others’ negative SNS experiences. The results show that preservice teachers perceive that education in ethics differs depending on how well it has prepared them for dealing with ethical issues in the teaching profession. Preservice teachers who felt that ethics education had prepared them well for ethical challenges as professional teachers, reported more awareness (conscious competence, known area) of personal negative SNS content than preservice teachers who reported education in ethics to be less useful. Ethics education that preservice teachers perceive to be useful is one way to connect to preservice teachers’ own negative SNS experiences. Connecting to how preservice teachers recognise and detect own negative SNS experiences can prepare preservice teachers for future ethical situations and issues as professional teachers.