ABSTRACT
The overarching ethical issue in teacher research involves the relationship between researchers and subjects. Academic literature about research ethics tends to make “protection” of “human subjects” its central focus. Traditionally, researchers have met ethical standards by obtaining informed consent, guaranteeing anonymity, and allowing subjects to opt out of investigations (Eisner 1991; Smith 1990; Lincoln 1990). Much of the debate that continues is not so much about the appropriateness of “privacy, anonymity and confidentiality,” as Lincoln (1990: 279) terms them, but about the difficulty of attaining them, particularly as the goals and foci of teacher research are likely to change as the work progresses.
