Ethics and educational research: philosophical perspectives
Accountability, ownership and control
Researchers can and do find themselves with wide ranging obligations….
- to their own colleagues and institutions
- to a wider academic community – their academic peers
- to participants in their research
- to those who have sponsored or purchased the research (the second of these is likely to entail tighter ownership and control than the first)
- to those with a direct interest eg in the school in which the research is being conducted
- to a wider democratic community
It is easy to see how these different obligations can set up difficult conflicts of interest and obligation which the researcher has to resolve. Does one expose the weaknesses of one's own institution to public gaze? Does one blow the whistle on unacceptable behaviour observed in a school to which one has been given admission on terms of confidentiality? Does one allow the purchaser of research to censor or distort results which they do not want to be put in the public sphere? Does one risk putting contract research colleagues out of work rather than accept a sponsor's attempt to impose all sorts of restrictions on the publication of research findings? There is a well established tradition of examination of at least some of these tensions, especially within the context of educational evaluation in which the political stakes are often high. MacDonald's advocacy of ‘democratic evaluation' offered an important and influential perspective on how they might be resolved. Some of this material is available in a recently established ESRC archive of case study research in education at [provide website reference] but there is also published discussion in MacDonald B and Walker R (1975) ‘Case study and the social philosophy of educational research, Cambridge Journal of Education, 5:1, pp 2- 11 and discussed in Simons, H. (1989) ‘Ethics of case study in educational research and evaluation' in ed R.G. Burgess The ethics of educational research , New York and London, Falmer Press.
David Bridges discusses in some detail the issues raised by the commodification of research and in particular a research environment in which government and commercial agencies see themselves as buying research. ‘I buy research like I buy a sack of coal' says one education officer (clearly living in a deprived rural area?) ‘and when I have bought it I expect to do what the hell I like with it.' (cited in Bridges,D. 2003 ‘Fiction written under oath?' Essays in Philosophy and educational research , Kluwer, Dordrecht p 154). A summary of his argument published first as Bridges, D.(1998) ‘Research for sale: moral market or moral maze' in British Educational Research Journal 24:5 pp593-608 and a few additional references to Theodore Roszak's stirring essay ‘ On academic delinquency' -- can be found here. Christopher Winch addresses directly some of the different political demands and hence forms of accountability which bear upon the contemporary educational research community in his paper ‘Accountability and relevance in educational research' (Winch C. 2001 ‘Accountability and relevance in educational research, Journal of Philosophy of Education 35:3 pp 443-460 – subsequently re-issued in McNamee, M. and Bridges D. (Eds) The ethics of educational research , London Blackwell. Click HERE for a synopsis of this paper.
See also chapter 6 of Homan, R.(1991) The ethics of social research , Harlow , Longman. This deals with the related issues of ownership, contracts and publishing.
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