Ethics and educational research: philosophical perspectives
Access and (Informed) Consent
Some of the most consistent principles running through codes of research ethics are to do with the conditions under which researchers may access a research site (eg a school, classroom, training centre or government office) or involve people in the research eg as people whose behaviour is observed or recorded or people whose views are elicited through interviews or questionnaires.
In general codes of conduct require that such involvement is:
- with their knowledge (ie the principles normally stand against covert research);
- with their consent (and sometimes they require that this is formally agreed and signed for); and
- that this consent is ‘informed' (ie, crudely, people know what they are letting themselves in for, the purpose and nature of the research, how it will be used and any potential risks involved. In some circumstances all this may be laid out in a written document which participants are asked to sign. [Example here]
These principles may create problems for researchers seeking to work with people who for one reason or another are deemed unable to offer what could properly be described as informed assent (especially where this might include a proper appraisal of the personal risks involved). These are commonly taken to include young children and adults with special learning needs, for example, for whom a proper proxy (eg parents in the case of children) will need to be agreed.
Experience of our authors with researchers eg in rural Laos and Ethiopia also indicates that anything resembling a formal contract (still worse a written document) will immediately give participants the impression that the researcher is trying to impose some new tax upon them or to fiddle them out of their property. In such settings a more traditional ethos of trust linked to knowledge of the researcher through family or kinship ties tends still to be the preferred basis of such a relationship – and western researchers may need to be sensitive to the fact that not all parts of the world have yet been submerged by the legalistic ethos which has come to pervade the West . Linda Smith, herself an indigenous New Zealander, describes wonderfully the issues on which a researcher might need to satisfy a Maori community in order to gain access:
‘Is her spirit clear? Does he have a good heart? What other baggage are they carrying? Are they useful to us? Can they fix up out generator?' (Smith,L.T. 1999 Decolonising methodologies: research and indigenous peoples , London, Zed Books p.10).
The principle of informed consent and its implications for ‘gatekeepers' – with particular reference to children's involvement in research -- is explored more fully by Roger Homan in
Homan,R. (2001) ‘The principle of assumed consent: the ethics of gatekeeping' in Journal of Philosophy of Education 35: 3 pp 329-344 and reissued in eds McNamee, M. and Bridges, D.(2001) The ethics of educational research , London , Blackwell. See also on this chapter 4 of Homan, R.(1991) The ethics of social research , Harlow, Longman and chapters 4 and 6 of Gregory, I. (2003) Ethics in Research London , Continuum.
There are of course some particular issues concerning access, confidentiality and consent when children are involved in the research. We have not yet found any specifically philosophical discussion of these issues, but two general texts concerning research with children provide a useful starting point for consideration of the ethical issues (the Banardos one is especially informative on the legal as well as ethical requirements)
Anderson,P. Morrow, W. Ethics, Social research and consultancy with children and young people, Ilford, Banardos.
Aubrey,C. David, T. Godfrey R and Thompson L (2000) Early childhood educational research: issues in methodology and ethics , London , Routledge
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