ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the ethical problems that arose in qualitatively examining such a closed area of education and the subsequent dissemination of findings back to a traditionally ‘techno-utopian’ educational community. It offers a personal account of the ethical dilemmas encountered as a doctoral researcher when adopting a more questioning, qualitative approach to researching the state of educational computing in UK schools and colleges over the second half of the 1990s. Gaining research access to educational institutions is becoming a notoriously difficult affair. A fundamental clash between information and communication technology (ICT) research and ICT practice is, unfortunately, well-established within the teaching profession. The more competitive institutions wished to confirm their advantage whilst the less ‘well-endowed’ wanted ‘ammunition’ to press their governing bodies for extra investment in ICT. There is a certain arrogance in suggesting that students who are less than enthusiastic about ICT are ‘misconceived’, and a myopic determinism in believing that ICT will inevitably ‘take over’ education.
