Ethics and educational research: philosophical perspectives
Ethical codes: Examples
One kind of answer to questions about the obligations (mainly) and rights of educational researchers can be found in ethical codes produced by e.g. academic societies and individual research institutions. In these we can find a set of prescriptions for our behaviour – some of which are accompanied by sanctions if those under the authority of the organisation breach the established protocol. In institutional settings, in particular, these are typically over-seen by ethics committees.
These ethical codes provide a useful indication of the territory of research ethics as well as some substantive views about what precise obligations should bear on the researcher. We provide links on this site to a number of codes of research associations and of other institutions as well as examples of ‘principles and procedures' which researchers have used as a basis for approaching people with whom they have negotiated access to research sites or people they have sought to engage in the research.
The first four examples below offer the guidelines or standards of the British, Scottish and American Educational Research Associations and of the British Psychological Society
http://www.bera.ac.uk/publications
http://www.sera.ac.uk/docs/00current/SERA%20Ethical%20GuidelinesWeb.PDF
http://www.aera.net/AboutAERA/Default.aspx?menu_id=90&id=222
http://www.bps.org.uk/downloadfile.cfm?file_uuid=5084A882-1143-DFD0-7E6C-F1938A65C242&ext=pdf
AERA has also published a very interesting book whose authors include a number of leading philosophers of education: Strike,K.A, Anderson , M.S., Curren,R., Van Gael, T.,Pritchard, I. and Robertson, E. (2002) Ethical Standards pf the American Educational Research Association: Cases and Commentary , Washington , AERA. This clarifies the central intentions of the AERA Standards and explores and discusses issues raised by the standards as well as the broader role of codes of ethics and ethical obligations.
The British Economic and Social Research Council ethics framework is available at
http://www.esrcsocietytoday.ac.uk/ESRCInfoCentre/opportunities/research_ethics_framework/
The next example is of an institutional code – from the London Institute of Education. This site is interesting because it also describes the governance arrangements within the Institute for dealing with these matters. Go to the University of London Institute of Education website at http://www.ioe.ac.uk and type in ‘Research Ethics Homepage' into the search facility. Click on the first item in the list which then appears. This will take you to a very interesting set of materials concerned with research ethics and governance at institutional level.
The University of Ulster site has an interesting information document at http://www.unesco.ulster.ac.uk/pubs/SOE_Ethics.pdf . This includes references to other websites.
For those interested in a slightly more historical perspective on such codes may wish to refer to The Belmont Report (1978) – a prototype for many more recent codes. This was a set of guidelines issued by a National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research established by the US Congress and it had a wide influence on the development of ethical codes not only in the US but also in Canada , Australia and elsewhwere.
http://Ohsr.od.nih.gov/guidelines/Belmont
These ethical codes of academic and professional bodies and particular academic institutions are designed to deal with a wide variety of research in many different circumstances. Clearly any particular piece of research will be expected to meet the relevant requirements of these codes, but the researchers will also need to develop a protocol to govern the conduct of a particular piece of research in particular circumstances. Such protocols are illustrated in the section of this site on Research Protocols.
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