ABSTRACT
Ethics is concerned with morally right ways of acting, with the promotion of benefit and the avoidance of harm to the individuals with whom one has dealings. Whenever we have dealings with other people, ethical considerations are in play. Since research into one’s own practice involves working with other people, ethical considerations are unavoidable. This chapter takes you through the main issues that you need to be concerned about, shows some of the pitfalls involved in not taking ethical issues seriously, and ends by discussing the usefulness, as well as the limitations of research ethics guidelines. Initially, taking account of and responding to ethical constraints on one’s
research can seem like a daunting challenge. Can your students ever be suitable subjects for research, even as collaborators, when one’s primary purpose as a lecturer is to benefit them? The benevolence of the lecturer, the imperative to do the best for his or her students, must surely be the overriding consideration. And, if that is so, what room is there for the possibility of using, or collaborating with one’s students as subjects for one’s research? While benevolence is central to the teacher-student relationship, this does not
mean that lecturers cannot do anything to improve their students’ learning. We need to distinguish between the ethical constraint of benevolence and the epistemic one of a lack of knowledge as to the most effective ways of teaching and learning. And, on the latter subject, nearly every lecturer will admit at least a degree of uncertainty as to the most effective methods that could be employed, and therefore, to the duty (again suggested by the requirement of benevolence) to improve, wherever possible, the learning of his/her students.
