Perception of Teachers on Confidentiality Practice as Part of Their Legal and Ethical Responsibilities in Secondary Schools in Kogi State (Published)
The paper assessed the perception of teachers on confidentiality practices as part of their legal and ethical responsibilities in secondary schools in Kogi State. The study has two objectives, among which is to examine the perception of teachers’ understanding of confidentiality practice as part of their legal and ethical responsibilities. The research questions and hypotheses were formed in line with the study objectives. Survey descriptive research design was used for the study, and the population includes all the secondary school principals in all the six hundred and fifty (650) schools in Kogi State and six thousand nine hundred (6900) teachers, and three hundred (300) supervisors drawn from the Ministry of Education. Purposive sampling technique was used to select a sample size of forty (40) principals across the three senatorial zones and three hundred and three (303) teachers and 30 supervisors from the inspectorate unit of the Ministry of Education, given a total sample size of three hundred and seventy-three (373). The instrument was structured questionnaire titled Perception of Teachers on Confidentiality Practices (POTCP), was developed and validated by experts in the field of education. The reliability of the instrument was tested using Cronbach’s Alpha, and 0.80 coefficient value was obtained. Data collected was analyzed using descriptive statistics, mean and standard deviation, while the Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) was used to test the hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. The finding shows that teachers’ perception of confidentiality practices as part of their legal responsibility is very low, though the opinion of respondents differs in their responses, as it was shown in the hypotheses. The study concludes that teachers should be fully armed with the knowledge of confidentiality practices as part of their legal and ethical responsibilities. The study recommends that teachers without teaching qualifications should not be allowed to teach as they lack the ethics of the teaching profession, which includes confidentiality practices.
Keywords: Assessment, Confidentiality, Ethical, Legal, Perception, Teacher