STEM education has an important place in recent studies. With the COVID-19 pandemic, distance education applications have gained importance all over the world. STEM education applications have also turned into distance STEM education with the COVID-19 pandemic. The purpose of this study is to better understand STEM teachers' perceptions of online group education and how they perceive group education expectations. In this study, semi-structured interviews were conducted with secondary school STEM teachers. The interview was aimed at illuminating teachers' perceptions of the role and purpose of teachers, and students' expectations from a group science lesson. Themes arising from the thematic analysis of interviews were determined. The themes that emerged from the analysis are as follows: Teachers' perceptions of their teaching role, teachers' perceptions of students' psycho-social needs, and teachers' perceptions of students' educational needs. Promoting student interaction in online synchronous education was identified as a challenge. Besides, some discrepancies were observed between teachers' perceptions of students learning expectations and their preferred approaches, and it was found that students expect a didactic experience rather than an interactive one.