ABSTRACT
In this chapter, we address ethical considerations for conducting research when adopting a Designs for Learning approach. We build the chapter around the Learning Design Sequence model to address and discuss ethical dilemmas and challenges such as the formal ethical research approval process and professionals’ and researchers’ roles. Further, we identify and discuss issues with regards to gaps between research and practice, such as when findings from educational research studies target the research community rather than the professional community. Some of our considerations are general, applicable to several kinds of research, and some specifically concern research using a collaborative approach, where researchers and professionals (in our case teachers) conduct research together. We describe the potentials when adopting a multimodal approach, where taking into consideration a broad range of communicational resources helps to do justice to the work of professionals in complex contexts. We discuss aspects related to the institutional framing of the teaching, the transformations that take place during teaching, and the roles that the researcher(s) and participants (e.g., teachers and students) may play during the research.
