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Ethics and educational research: philosophical perspectives
Ethical codes: Issues
Codes of research ethics raise, however, as many questions as they appear to answer. Among the issues discussed in the literature are the following.
There is a sense in which the very existence of ethical codes and the kind of institutional procedures reflected in governance arrangements within all universities and research institutes today (see eg those for the London Institute of Education at: http://www.ioewebserver.ioe.ac.uk/ioe/cms/get.asp?cid=13449&13449_0=9083 ) reflect a failure of morality or a breakdown of what one might suppose to have been the traditional processes of socialisation into an ethical research culture in higher education. (See on this a suite of papers by Torrance , Bridges and O'Hanlon to be presented at the 2007 BERA conference – to follow). One might hazard explanations for such a breakdown rooted in the rapid growth and diversification of higher education and hence dislocation of the research culture; the pressures on research productivity including the demand for successful bids for research funding; the heightened public accountability of universities; the growth of ‘the audit society' (brilliantly portrayed in Power, M. 1997 The audit society: Rituals of verification, Oxford, Oxford University Press); the increasing power of university bureaucracies, which themselves expanded to meet these audit requirements; and, as Torrance argues, the concern of these not so much to protect research participants from harm which researchers may cause but to protect universities from being sued. There are then interesting sociological explanations to be had as to how and why ethical codes might have become such an important feature of university research life.
Philosophers have, however, always drawn an important distinction between legality and morality (as well as contesting it from time to time), see Lyons , D. (1984) Ethics and the role of law , Cambridge CUP and Ras, J. 1981 The authority of law: essays on law and morality, Oxford, OUP. They have also argued that properly moral action can be motivated only by the belief that a particular course is right and the will do to do what is right. For reading on this broadly Kantian approach to ethics go to http://www.rsweb.org.uk/ethics/kantian where there is a rich on-line resource both of Kant's own writing and commentaries. Doing something because the law or a particular regulatory framework says you must, doing it because you are told by your manager to do it, doing it to save yourself from trouble may in particular circumstances be legitimate reasons for doing things (provided they do not conflict with your underlying moral convictions), but they are not moral reasons: nor is action for which these considerations provide the motivation moral action. On this view, ethical codes may very well be deserving of our attention in so far as they represent some sort of collective consensus in a community of which we are members about how one should behave (so the way in which they are actually generated is of some significance) but they remain always subordinate to one's own moral judgement, which could lead one to more strenuous requirements or to different requirements from those imposed in the code.
Another limitation of codes is that they inevitably operate at the level of general principle. They cannot anticipate all the issues which might arise in every situation (though some of them seem to be of such a length that they attempt to do this!) nor can they anticipate the way in which predicted issues may actually confront one in their situatedness. As a result, the researcher cannot suspend her personal moral judgement: the ethical code will not do all the work that is needed in practice even if it provides a framework. Helen Simons' and Robin Usher's (2000) edited book ‘Situated Ethics in Educational Research published by Routledge Falmer offers interesting illustration of this issue, but is disappointing from a philosophical point of view since it ignores almost the entire philosophical literature on situational ethics (and their limitations) and excuses itself on the grounds that ‘any attempt to theorise situated ethics would be an impossible and self-contradictory enterprise' (p2). There is in fact a substantial philosophical literature theorizing ‘situation ethics', some of it in the tradition of Christian ethics which interprets goodness in terms of the application of the single imperative of love to situations of moral choice. See e.g Fletcher, J. (1997 Second revised edition) Situation ethics: the new morality , Westminster , John Knox Press and also Davitt,T. (1979) Ethics in the situation , Marquette University Press.. Nel Noddings, whose writing is more familiar to many in educational research, applies a similar approach in her writing about care as a central ethical and educational principle. The full text of her Caring: a feminine approach to ethics and moral education , Berkley, University of California Press is available on-line via Google Scholar (as indeed are some of her other writings).
Robert Burgess's paper ‘Grey areas: ethical dilemmas in educational ethnography' provides a nice example of a researcher having to work out some general principles among the surprises that actual practice throws up. (Burgess, R.C. 1989 ‘Grey areas: ethical dilemmas in educational ethnography' in ed. R.C.Burgess The ethics of educational research , London and New York, Falmer). Richard Pring also uses described examples to bring home the point that ‘It is impossible to conceive of a moral life without implicit reference to a set of principles that are embodied within moral practice. But that does not mean that one can, as it were, read off from that code or those principles what exactly one should do on any one occasion' (Pring, R. 2001 ‘The virtues and vices of an educational researcher' Journal of Philosophy of Education 35:3 pp 407-422 and also re-issued in McNamee, M. and Bridges D. (Eds) The ethics of educational research , London Blackwell). This leads Pring not merely to reaffirm the importance of individual moral deliberation but also the cultivation of those qualities which might be captured in the notion of human virtue (on which there is further discussion on this site: see Academic virtue)
The issues relating to the ethical codes and related issues are also discussed in a series of articles prompted in particular by some writing by Robin Small. These include the following:
Small,R. (1998) ‘Towards an unprincipled ethics of educational research', Australian Journal of Education, 42:1 pp103-116.
Burbules,N. (1998) ‘Principle and process in the ethics of educational research', Reply to Robin Small, Australian Journal of Education ,42:1 pp 116-23.
Small, R (2001) ‘Codes are not enough: what philosophy can contribute to the ethics of educational research' in Journal of Philosophy of Education 35:3 pp 345-360 and also re-issued in McNamee, M. and Bridges D. (Eds) The ethics of educational research , London Blackwell).
See also
Bibby, M. (1997) ‘Using a code of research ethics' Educational Philosophy and Theory , 15:1, pp 49-64.
Chapter 2 of Homan R. (1991) The ethics of social research , Harlow, Longmanis also focussed on ethical codes and their limitations.
A slightly different angle on some of these issues is provided by discussion of research ethics not so much in terms of compliance with rules, regulations or ethical codes, but rooted rather in the character and formation of the researcher and in the kind of personal and professional integrity which they bring to their work – in their particular (perhaps academic) virtue. This is the focus of discussion in another part of this site. See Academic virtue.
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