ABSTRACT
This chapter will focus on the questions of research integrity when conducting ethnography in a school community as a teacher-researcher. The double role with a wide network of relations with students, parents and colleagues, both in school and in academia, contains special ethical advantages as well as special ethical risks. Therefore, reflection is needed, not only as the final phase of the research project, but throughout the process. Having worked as a teacher-researcher in a Finnish comprehensive school for several years, the author finds the ethical principles of teachers guiding her work even stronger than those of researchers. Although having permissions to conduct her study, putting the local school values first and considering her relationality as a teacher towards students and teacher colleagues, she has several times redirected her research plans. These ethically important moments will be reflected as cases in this chapter. Ethical considerations concerning the students, the colleagues and the professional communities are discussed, as well as moments of reflection, and solutions on how to define the topics and design the methods when conducting ethnography in one’s own educational community.
