2. What power relationships need to be taken into account in
negotiating roles, permissions, and involvements by various
participants in your work? Are there issues of gender, race, culture,
and status differences that need to be especially taken into account?
3. What concerns might students have about your work and their
participation in it? What choices do they have if they are
uncomfortable?
4. Does your campus have an Institutional Review Board? What
expectations exist about IRB review of projects in the scholarship of
teaching and learning? Is this unfamiliar ground for you, Where can
you turn for information?
Methods
5. What methods will you use in your investigation? Whose
consent, permission, cooperation, involvement or collaboration will be
required by these methods? What are the best ways to seek this
consent, permission, etc., and what point(s) in the work? How can
roles and permissions be negotiated and renegotiated over time?
6. How can students be involved in your investigation? Might
they play a role in gathering and analyzing data? How can the project
be made educationally valuable for students?
Results and
the Presentation of Results to Various Audiences
7. Whose perspectives will be represented in the work? How can
various perspectives be honored? What special concerns do you have
about representing individuals or groups who have less power in the
educational system?
8. What negative or embarrassing data can you anticipate
emerging from your scholarship of teaching and learning, and who might
be harmed as a consequence? How can you create a context for
understanding “bad news”? How, in particular, can examples of work by
students who are novices, or who are struggling with the new material,
be treated with respect?
9. Who will see the results and products of your work? What
conclusions might be drawn by various audiences: About student? About
teaching? About your department, discipline or campus? About higher
education? About you? How is your choice of medium (e.g., video)
related to these concerns?
10. How can contributions to your work by various participants
(including both colleagues and students) be acknowledged and/or cited,
while maintaining confidentiality where appropriate?
Reflection
and Development
11. Whom can you talk to about the above questions? How can you
create occasions for discussion and reflection about them with
colleagues?
12. What are you learning from your project that can inform future
practice related to ethical issues in the scholarship of teaching and
learning?
This list is an excellent introduction into some of
the very real and profound ethical issues faced by educators who take
their teaching seriously. However, it interesting to note that
concern for the possibility of causing harm to learners does not
figure prominently into this list of questions. There appear to be
more questions dealing with what is needed to get the experiment or
research accomplished than in dealing with the various ways in which
the subjects of the experiments can be harmed. Yet it was and is the
possibility of harm to human beings that generates the need and the
legal requirement for a review process and the legally mandated IRB’s.
Hutchings considers that ethical issues are not
resolvable and that they produce a context for expressions of what we
care about, what we value (Hutchings, 16). The discourse that ensues
upon discovery of the issue and concern and reflection over it is
somehow in itself sufficient for resolution of whatever dilemmas may
exist.
While she claims that the SOTL presents ethical
issues that are new to many faculty she offers a suggestive listing
that indicates an odd sense of what is an ethical issue in the first
place.
Is it
necessary to have permission to use excerpts from student papers, or
data from their exams, in my scholarship of teaching and learning?
If so, what
kind of permission is appropriate, and how should it be secured?
Should I (must
I?) submit my project design to the campus Institutional Review Board
(IRB), which monitors work with human subjects?
Do I need
their informed consent to begin my work? To publish it?
The
scholarship of teaching and learning calls on us to “make teaching
community property” (Lee Shulman’s phrase), but what are the
appropriate boundaries between public and private?
Who owns what
goes on in the classroom?
Who benefits,
and who is at risk, when the complex dynamics of teaching and learning
are documented and publicly represented? (Hutchings, p 1)
Some of these are, to be sure, involved most
directly with issues about what the “good” of education is, but others
are also most clearly about what the law requires or the regulatory
guidelines to be observed as established by regulatory bodies. None
of them deal most directly with the basic issues out of which are
generated the concern over research with humans in the first place.
According to Hutchings, people understand and deal
with ethical issues by mapping themes, clarifying contexts and
providing examples. (Hutchings, p 2) There is no single way to deal
with the issues or resolve the dilemmas encountered, but there is in
the discourse an increase in awareness and reflection that serves as a
resource for educators facing ethical issues and that appears as the
only valued outcome of the discourse as morally correct decisions are
ruled out from the start.
“…[E]thical
issues often do not lend themselves to definite answers…and there can
be no one-size-fits-all rules. Like other aspects of the scholarship
of teaching and learning, its ethical dimensions are shaped by
discipline, context, and purpose. What’s needed most is not, then, a
set of rules but a process of reflection, self-questioning, and
discussion.” (Hutchings, p 2)
Hutchings
describes the seven contributors of cases, as well as any educator who
takes ethics seriously, as individuals who have:
Respect for the students
Commitment to advancing the profession of teaching
Thoughtfulness about resolving what are essentially
competing goods (Hutchings, p. 4)
For Hutchings ethics has to do with the core
dilemma of competing goods and the “dilemmas of fidelity” as expressed
in the work of Helen Dale and others. (Dale, Helen. “Dilemmas of Fidelity:
Qualitative Research in the Classroom.” In P. Mortensen and G. E.
Kirsch (eds.),
Ethics and Representation in Qualitative Studies of Literacy.
Urbana, Ill.: National Council of Teachers of English, 1996.)
Hutchings also argues that educators must proceed
with no clear norms or rules to direct them or inform their moral
deliberations. What is needed in her view is “professional judgment,
which is developed at least in part through discussion with scholarly
and professional colleagues…” (Hutchings, p 8)
For Hutchings there is an “Ethic of
Inquiry” …that puts the emphasis not so much on the specific issues to
be grappled with but on a larger sense of professional responsibility
and aspiration that motivates and shapes the scholarship of teaching
and learning.”( Hutchings, p 14). Such scholarship enacts a
professional responsibility by calling on the inherent obligations and
commitments that come with the professional role- that is
To seek knowledge
To share what our investigations uncover
To contribute to the larger community of scholars and
practitioners
This is the ethic that Lee Shulman has
described as the “professional rationale “for the scholarship of
teaching and learning. According to Shulman, such scholarship of
teaching and learning
affords all
of us the opportunity to enact the functions of scholarship for which
we were all prepared. We can treat our courses and classrooms as
laboratories or field sites in the best sense of the term, and can
contribute through our scholarship to the improvement and
understanding of learning and teaching in our field. (Shulman,
2000: 50)
Institutional Review Boards and the Process of
Ethical Review
IRB’s exist to assist humans to achieve
the goal of minimizing or eliminating avoidable harm to humans. They
require that researchers consider potential harms and make every
effort to eliminate them. Risks are to be minimized and what risks to
humans that there are in a research design (not harms but risks
of harm) must be thought to be reasonable in relation to the potential
benefit for humans of the research being proposed. Informed consent
is required so as to not harm the autonomy of human beings. (See the
endnote for the federal regulation on IRB section 46.111)
The government of the United
States does not include much of pedagogic research with other forms of
research that are subject to IRB review. Why not? Informal
experimentation/research in the classroom regarding methodologies and
curricula appears to be exempt from federally-mandated IRB review.
Indeed, as the Code of Federal Regulations, Title 45, Part 46, 2001
states that “[r]esearch conducted in established or commonly accepted
educational settings, involving normal educational practices…” is not
required to submit to IRB review. This type of exempted research
includes evaluation of instructional strategies, instructional
techniques, educational testing, and even the collection of existing
data (provided that subject confidentiality is maintained). (See
endnote for the regulatory section 46.101)
Yet the lack of Institutional Review Board
supervision over informal educational experimentation/research does
not absolve researchers from proceeding ethically, a basic fact
rightly recognized by Shulman and Hutchings. In fact, we claim that
the lack of IRB review makes the awareness of the ethical issues
inherent in classroom experimentation even more important. As the
rapidly growing literature on action/practitioner research and
pedagogical ethics clearly shows, pedagogic ethics has become a
central element in the debates over effective teaching.
Educational institutions take a variety of stances
with regard to the federal regulations and their application to
educational research and thus the need for IRB’s. They are also in
flux with regard to exactly how to oversee pedagogic
experimentation/research in relation to IRB regulations and it can be
expected that there will come an emerging consensus as to what ought
to be required of educators conducting pedagogic research with human
subjects that might be codified through legislative action. For now
the applicability of the federal regulations and the need for IRB
review is treated differently according to institution and the type of
research being proposed. In order for educational
experimentation/research to be exempted form the regulatory
requirements it needs to be declared as such by an IRB. It is that
declaration that is most avidly sought. Some institutions appear to
have made blanket declarations concerning some forms of pedagogic
research and experimentation with humans so as to avoid the IRB
involvement entirely.
IRB is not a review of proposed research in
consideration of the ethical problems that might be involved. The IRB
is by statute and in practice seen as a legal requirement and
formality. For most educators doing pedagogic experimentation the IRB
review is a necessary formality for obtaining an exclusion from the
requirements otherwise posed on researchers working with human
subjects.
There is in this formal IRB review little or no
concern for the very basic principles which generate the positive
value for review in the first place. There is little or no concern in
current operation of IRB for the wide range of ways in which harm can
be caused to learners who are subjects of pedagogic experiments.
Pedagogic researchers hope for the exclusion from
further review or approval of their experimentation/research protocol
so that they can proceed with their work rather than for an expansion
of their ethical concern and expressions of their moral
responsibilities to those they are to serve and protect.
Exemption from IRB review does not mean that the
pedagogic experimentation/research is exempt from an ethical review of
the possible harms and risks of harm that learners would be subject to
in the research being proposed. One of the central themes of this
book is the claim that each and every pedagogic experiment is fraught
with potential for harm and must be closely examined through a
framework of ethical decision making which makes apparent the moral
dilemmas involved in pedagogical experimentation.
Many discussions of ethics with educators center
around legal and practical concerns, and very few evidence substantive
reference to fundamental ethical principles, thus undermining the very
real concern educators have for for the learner/subject. The limiting
of concern to the legal requirements being met are evidence of
practitioners operating out of the codal model of the relationship of
educator to learner and researcher to subject. This limitation of
ethical concern often takes on a defensive posture, one generated more
for concern of the members of the profession or guild than for concern
over the well being of those served by the profession or guild: the
learner/subject. (See more on this in chapter three above.)
A review of the current literature on ethics and
pedagogic experimentation/research exhibits a reluctance to accept
that there are any norms that ought to govern the conduct of educators
and educational researchers. Some authors declare that problems and
moral dilemmas faced by such researchers have no solutions. In Robert
Burgess’ review of the literature in Ethics and Educational Research
(1989) he remarks that:
A common
theme to all these suggestions for handling ethical dilemmas in
research is the notion that there is no ‘solution’ to the problems
identified by researchers. Such a situation means that researchers
need to regularly reflect on their work so as to develop their
understanding of the ethical implications associated with social and
educational investigation. Inevitably, it will be found that ethical
dilemmas and their ‘solution’ will be problematic…(8)
How can it be that solutions would be problematic?
And as Burgess uses no qualifiers with his claim it would appear to
include any and all solutions. This conclusion appears to be at best
drawn from an observation of the current discourse and based on an
absence of any conceptual foundation within which ethical discourse
would have some normative material with which to work out solutions.
It should appear almost as obvious that any research with human beings
that had a substantial risk of harm should appear as a violation of
some basic precept or moral rule or ethical principle. Thus such
research should be deemed as morally unacceptable. But would such a
conclusion be “problematic” for Burgess? Burgess does not appear to
have any normative vocabulary with which to work to arrive at
non-problematic solutions. It appears as if such vocabulary is deemed
inappropriate for discourse about pedagogic research.
It must be noted that a solution to a moral dilemma
or the answer to an ethical question is not by any means one that
provides a satisfaction of the interests of all involved. Even
with a Utilitarian approach to moral decision making there is no
necessity to please every single person. A solution to a moral
problem is not at all one that makes everyone happy or pleases all.
Some non-philosophers writing in the field of
education appear to be willing to accept that the best that can be
done when confronting moral questions or dilemmas is to reflect
seriously on the issues presented by the situation, and then make a
decision as to the best course of action. There is no talk about some
basic set of principles of an ethical nature that one might want to
employ and apply to the situation or some core set of virtues to
realize.
Why all of this reluctance to talk
about basic ethical principles within the context of educational
practice? The authors believe that the foundation of this reluctance
regarding the development of normative ethical claims is not in itself
a bad thing. There is a very real need for a deep recognition and
respect of other moral perspectives, especially within the context of
the American Academy. However, it is possible to maintain (even
promote) respect for a plurality of moral perspectives AND develop
fundamental, guiding principles that most, if not all educators, can
come to some level of agreement on.
Talking About Ethics is not the Same
as Doing Ethics
Doing ethics involves careful and critical thinking
about basic principles of the moral good in a manner that leads to or
defends a position taken on some moral problem or dilemma. It
involves using the tools of philosophical thinking (logic,
epistemology, etc.) to better understand and resolve moral conflict.
On these grounds, ethical thinking and the attempt to provide a
resolution to moral dilemmas involves normative claims.
As a professional educator ethical discourse must
be conducted in order to bring about resolutions of moral dilemmas and
to provide guidance for others in similar situations. In this manner
the profession moves forward and establishes criteria and expectations
by which its members can be evaluated as to their performance. It
does not serve the profession of education to accept as being
sufficient for an ethical resolution simply to discourse concerning
moral decisions without some grounding in basic values and principles
that are shared by the members of the profession and that help to
define the group. Different people enter the discourse over the same
issue and may arrive at different conclusions as to the morally
correct decision and course of action to take. Differing discourses
can produce not only different but inconsistent and contradictory
conclusions about what is the most morally proper behavior. The
profession can ill-afford to maintain inconsistent and contradictory
conclusions about what is ethically acceptable behavior. Ethical
inquiry can serve to provide the guidelines and paradigms for members
of the profession. Accepting ungrounded discourse is to issue the
directive that “anything goes” in resolving moral quandaries as long
as one agonizes or at least deliberates over the matter. To expect
that moral discourse be grounded in common principles and values of
the profession is not to indicate that there is not a consideration of
the particular details of each situation that might figure in a
significant way in the critical analysis and reasoning as to the
morally correct course of action. Such considerations will lead to a
variation in conclusions reached, but any and all conclusions reached
would be consonant with the basic values, and thus not inconsistent
with or contradictory to other conclusions using the same values.
They can vary from the specifics but not from the basics and the
common values.
The ethical approach we are defending is a sort of
“principlistic contextualism,” one that recognizes the important
differences posed by specific individuals operating within specific
contexts while at the same time asserting that some basic ethical
principles can be seen to apply across a wide variety of situations.
On these grounds, the conversations of ethical discourse are rooted in
a recognition of some very fundamental ethical principles, ones which
have been developed as “points of navigation” for the promotion of
effective ethical deliberation and decision-making.
In chapter four the case was made that there are
norms governing the behavior of professionals and that those norms are
reflective of the values held by the society served by the profession.
The chief values
relevant to professional ethics are: governance by law, freedom,
protection from injury, equality of opportunity, privacy and welfare.
Norms for professional roles are to be justified by their promoting
and preserving the values of liberal society. -- Michael D. Bayles,
Professional Ethics , Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Inc., 1981.
p 5.
What are the common values of professional
educators as humans and as educators that help to define them as a
group and serve as the basis for making moral decisions and resolving
moral dilemmas? In a pluralistic society there are
undoubtedly a wide variety of values, but one of the most important,
and often-neglected in discussions of the principles of educational ethics, is most certainly
that education should not harm people. Educators, often hiding
behind a veil of beneficence, often do things that bring harm to their
students, whether the educator or the student is aware of it. These
harms range from the academic and intellectual to the psychological
and social. The
special obligation to cause no harm in the case of a professional
educator issues from two sources: the fiduciary relationship of the
educator to the learner and from the relationship of an experimenter
to the subjects of the experiment.
Within every educational context, there are three
fundamental “layers” of human interaction, each of which generates its
own unique sets of moral obligation. First, there are the duties and
obligations generated by the fundamental human equality of each and
every person involved in the situation. Echoing Kant’s practical
imperative, the fundamental equality of all human beings demands that
we treat others with respect and dignity, and refrain from harming
others, regardless of our “status” in the relationship.
Yet the emphasis on non-maleficence is but one
point in the constellation of pedagogical ethics. Educators qua
educators (as members of the profession) are also bound by duties of
beneficence. As we have argued above, educators are bound to act in
the best interests of their students, to promote effective learning,
and to fulfill the requirements of educational institutions regarding
democratic citizenship.
Finally, the third “layer” of interaction in
educational contexts is the relationship between experimenter and
subject. Here, besides the obligations of beneficence and non-maleficence,
there is an obligation on the part of the educator/experimenter to
maintain a commitment to responsible inquiry, and to the advancement
of the profession of education itself.
Primum non nocere:
First, Do No Harm
The concept of harm in pedagogy
has received little attention, yet it is one of the most significant
issues relating to the ethics of education. When people think of
“harm” in a classroom, they tend to think of physical abuse. Yet
there is a wide variety of potential ways educators can and do cause
significant harm to their students. If there is a change in a
pedagogic technique (research-experiment) or a new instructional
design utilized by an educator such changes could result in some
learners not doing as well as they may have had the change not been
made. Not doing as well as one could have constitutes a harm to the
learner and it can be manifested in a variety of ways. A partial list
of potential harms is offered below. Individual learners can experience more than
one of these harms from a single change in pedagogy. Before the
listing consider the following case:
A faculty member has been
offering instruction with a common instructional design for class that
incorporates the basic lecture format with a traditional short answer
objective items form of assessment. Now the faculty member wants
to introduce a change to determine what the difference might be in
terms of learning objective outcomes. The change involves having
the students make individual presentations in class and work in small
groups. Some of the members of class have problems with
communicating with others and some have performance anxieties and find
it very difficult to speak before others, even the smallest groups.
These earners do very poorly on the new assignments and as a result
receive poor grades and their final grades are less than they
generally get in classes using the more common lecture format.
These learners have thus suffered a lower grade, a lowering of their
GPA. Some withdrew from the class rather than needing to
experience speaking before a group. Those that withdrew will
need to take the class at another time with another instructor and
they have hade their progress to graduation impeded. So
something so simple as having students speak in class or work in small
groups can produce ill effects.
Now the partial listing of
potential harms is offered:
Academic
Intellectual
-
--failure to develop critical
thinking skills
-
--failure to develop information
processing skills
-
--failure to acquire new
knowledge
Social
-
--inability to function as a fully educated
member of a democratic society
-
--inability to realize socio-economic goals
(career, etc…)
Psychological
-
--decrease in self esteem
-
--increase in hostility to the
educator/institution
-
--negative impact on future educational success
(cf. Bluestone, 2004 on self-efficacy)
Economic
-
--loss of time
-
--loss of tuition
-
--student loans
Pedagogical Ethics: A Guide
for Practical Action
Given these potential harms to
learners, what is required of professional educators regarding their
educational practice and pedagogical experimentation? First, it means
that each and every educator “come to terms” with inherently ethical
dimensions of their practice, and that each one be willing to engage
in the difficult process of ethical evaluation and decision-making.
Second, this process of
decision-making and evaluation need not take place in a vacuum. And
while what follows is far from a comprehensive listing of the
decision-making process and principles at work in pedagogical ethics,
it can be seen as a rudimentary guide by which to navigate the
processes of ethical review.
1) Ethical Review of Proposed
Experiments with Human Subjects
In any pedagogical experiment,
the first step is to determine whether or not the experiment is likely
to cause harm to those human beings who are involved as the subjects
of the experiment. There are several things an educator can do
to reach a determination as to the possibility or degree of potential
harm. The most direct is to rethink the the proposed experiment
from the perspective of the student and consider the possible impact
of the experiment or the changes in pedagogic method or materials on
the learner and the learning. If there appear to be significant
risks of impeding the learning process for some students or the risk
of discouragement or the inducement to withdraw from the learning or
the class itself then the project would need to be seriously
reconsidered if not abandoned altogether if the risks were high and
the probability of harm was high. This would be the case
regardless of the potential value of what might be learned. If
the risks were not high and the probability of harm was low then they
would be weighed against the potential value of what might be learned.
Another indispensable and
invaluable part of the process of determining risk is to conduct a
search of the literature to determine if the experiment has already
been performed and if so, what were the outcomes. This sort of
thing is common place in medical research, a field that should provide
several paradigms for pedagogic research. This literature
search would include a search for similar experiments with similar
groups of learners (subjects). If it has already been done and
there were harmful outcomes then the repetition of the experiment
would not be morally condoned. If it has already been done
and there were little or no reported harmful outcomes then a
repetition of the experiment to confirm the findings would be morally
condoned. If it has already been done and there were
little or no reported harmful outcomes then the educator proposing the
project would need to reexamine the need for doing the research and
instead consider adopting the pedagogic innovation previously tested
and proven to be both effective and safe.
The second step in preparing for
a pedagogic experiment with human subjects is to determine whether or not the experiment is subject
to institutional review. In the appendix of this
volume there are excerpts of “The Belmont Report,” as well as references and
web-sites where educators can get more information on making this
determination. Also important are the policies and procedures unique
to each institution. And if the experiment does indeed fall under the
purview of IRB review, the next step lies in contacting the board
itself. They will then conduct a thorough review of the proposed
experiment.
However, the real work of
pedagogical ethics begins with step one and the review of the proposal
for potential harms even if an experiment in the classroom does
not need IRB approval. For too long, educators have “quarantined” the
ethics of education in the IRB office. Yet the ethics of pedagogical
experimentation involves some tough questions. Am I causing harm to
any of my students? How can I minimize the risk of harming my
students? Do the potential pedagogical benefits justify the potential
risks to my students? Does the proposed experiment maintain or
strengthen my professional obligations and commitments?
On these grounds, another
important part of the ethical review process involves investigation
and communication with colleagues. There is a huge growth in
literature on pedagogy, and researching the topic is relatively
painless, given the advances in internet technology. Also important
is communication with colleagues. Here the question becomes “have you
tried this?” Colleagues owe it to their colleagues to make
known the results, whether successful or otherwise, of their
experiments, large and small, formal and informal, funded and
unfunded. They owe it to them as fulfillment of their
professional obligations as professional educators. With the
results widely disseminated educators can have more fruitful searches
of the literature to better determine both the safety and efficacy of
the pedagogic techniques and materials they were thinking of using in
their own experiments.
2)Communication of Results of Pedagogic Research or
Experimentation
As a basic professional responsibility and a duty
towards education colleagues each educator who conducts research into
pedagogy has the obligation to communicate the results of that
research, whether it be a literature search and investigation or an
experiment in a classroom, formal or informal. The dissemination of
the results of that research can take place in a variety of ways and
to a variety of communities.
As members of two professions, post-secondary
educators encounter a dual set of responsibilities as educators and as
a members of a discipline. Often that dual set places a nearly
unmanageable workload upon educators so that there needs to be a
prioritizing of the responsibilities. At times, some members may
neglect the entire range of responsibilities for the other. The most
obvious cases of this occur at the level of pre- and post-secondary
education. Some post- secondary educators favor research and
publication within their disciplines to the near total neglect of such
work in pedagogy itself, while some in elementary and secondary
education focus on development of effective pedagogy to the neglect of
discipline related research.
When there is a need to analyze and disseminate the
results of pedagogic research, the dual set of memberships facilitates
the opportunity for communication as it offers two communities within
which the results may be made known: the community of the discipline
and the community of educators. Research into classroom pedagogy
should be disseminated to fellow educators in one's own department,
institution, and professional affiliates, and then (depending on the
nature of the experiment and the suspected validity or
generalizability of the results) to the entire community of educators
in the field of the experimenter, or at the level of education as the
experiment took place.
When there are no colleagues in the discipline of
the researcher at the institution where the researcher has been
conducting the research and teaching, the researcher/experimenter
should communicate the results to colleagues in the discipline through
intra disciplinary mechanism: publications and conferences. In any
case, the researcher should communicate the results to educators
teaching similar subjects to similar learners.
If an educator has substituted materials for those
in a textbook because the textbook materials were not achieving the
results intended for the learners and the substituted materials did,
then that information should be communicated to both the textbook
author and to colleagues who may be using the same textbook with
similar communities of learners.
If an instructor works with one class at 10 am and
then, believing that certain materials, illustrations, or exercises
were less effective than desired uses different materials,
illustrations, or exercises in another section of the same class
meeting at a later time and finds that there is a difference in its
efficacy not attributable to a mere change in time those results
should be communicated to colleagues within the discipline teaching
the same or similar classes where the results of the experiment might
have value in the consideration of colleagues working with similar
groups of learners.
3) Reconsideration of the Results of the
Pedagogical Experiment
After dissemination of the results of the research
or experimentation, there will be a response from the community to
which the results were communicated. The researcher/experimenter is
obliged to reconsider the results of the initial research and its
publication (if applicable), and to revise findings or conduct further
research and experimentation to answer critics if necessary, and
actively contribute to the inquiry and development of even more
effective pedagogies.
It is through an ongoing review of findings and
exchanges with colleagues that the strength and reliability and
generalizability of claims can be assessed and corrections made to
oversights and other forms of "mistakes". This is a
necessary part of the process that establishes what is "known".
This is the self correcting part of the process of research and
publication of results of research that advances knowledge.
Ethical Considerations and
Decision-making in Pedagogic Experimentation
In Chapter Six, we presented a
range of ethical issues associated with pedagogical experimentation.
These included the potential for harm to learners, considerations of
experimental design, informed consent, privacy, and the professional
obligations of the educator as both researcher and teacher.
As Shulman, Hutchings, and others
have demonstrated, pedagogical ethics is not so much concerned with
coming up with “right” answers, but in asking the right sort of
questions. They correctly identify some of the questions that
educators should be asking themselves when they experiment in the
classroom. A list of such questions is provided below. Before
representing these questions it is necessary to present the conceptual
framework and basic normative elements that will enable moral
discourse concerning these questions to reach solutions that will not
be problematic but instead well founded on basic principles that would
govern human action in the situations suggested by the questions.
The questions posed are posed to educators and to
educators who are also researchers and some who are also conducting
pedagogic experimentation with human subjects. As such they are
professionals who are to be guided by the obligations of professionals
and in particular the fiduciary responsibility that educators have
towards those they teach.
A recapitulation of a few basic points about the
the three sets of obligations is
in order as the responsibilities and obligations that are part of the
three simultaneous relationships that obtain between researcher and
subject provide guidance for moral decision making: Educators
do have three relationships to those they teach and
each generates its own unique sets of moral obligation.
First, there are the duties and obligations
generated by being a human being and the very least of these demands
that we treat others with respect and dignity, and refrain from
harming others, regardless of our “status” in the relationship. Primum non
nocere: First, Do No Harm
Second, educators qua educators (as
members of the profession) are also bound by duties of beneficence.
As fiduciaries , educators are bound to act in the best interests of
their students, to promote effective learning, and to fulfill the
requirements of educational institutions regarding democratic
citizenship.
Finally, as researchers and experimenters educators
have besides the obligations of beneficence and non-maleficence, the
obligation to maintain a commitment to responsible inquiry, and to the
advancement of the profession of education itself.
Now it is possible to reach
solutions to the questions posed below and to do so in a manner that
is not maximizing the problematic nature of those solutions by taking
the very basic obligations as are contained in the three relationships
with those of the human being as most basic or foundational and then
those of the educator, and finally, those of the researcher in order
of importance. Thus, and for example, the welfare of the individual
human being is not to be diminished for the sake of pedagogic
research.
With the rubric of the various
sets of responsibilities and the notions of individual. collective and
institutional responsibilities it is possible to arrive at answers to
ethical questions such as those posed immediately below and reach
conclusions as to what would be morally correct in many instances.
For some practical considerations the reader can look to chapter X and
a guide for practice. Chapter XI offers two sample case studies
with in depth analyses and sample "solutions".
1) Potential for Harm
How is to be resolved that any
new pedagogy might result in harm to some of the learners involved
with it or subject to it?
How is it justifiable to subject
learners to potential harm by requiring that they get involved with
sets of experiences with which they have no prior experiences?
How is it possible to arrange for
research subjects to withdraw from participation in a pedagogic
experiment when doing so constitutes harm or exposes them to further
harm such as a loss of credits or progress towards the next level or
grade?
How is it justified to continue
to use pedagogies that are indicated to be less effective, if not
harmful, than others that have been shown to be more effective?
If there is a control group
involved in pedagogic research and the experimental group is
performing better and learning more should the control group continue
on using what becomes more and more apparent as a lees effective
pedagogic technique?
2) Experimental Design and
Methodology
How are conflicts between the
role of educator-teacher and that of educator-researcher to be
resolved? Must the experiment be done? Must it continue the full
course of the original plan?
How does being a participant in a
pedagogic experiment influence what the learner does? Does it work
against establishing claims that the results are replicable under
similar circumstances of the learners without consideration of their
status as self conscious research subjects?
3) Informed Consent
How is it possible to obtain an
informed consent or its equivalent when there are no other options
available to the learner? There is only the one class?
How informed can informed consent
be with learners who are very young or unfamiliar with all the
implications of the work?
How consensual can informed
consent be when the educator-researcher holds so much influence and
power over the learner-subject?
How is it possible to obtain an
informed consent or its equivalent when the context is one of a total
institution wherein choices are severely limited and exercising an
option out of the research exposes the learner to loss of some benefit
or to some harm? Is it proper to require students to participate in
the research or to conduct research on themselves and their peers as
part of a course requirement?
How does informing learners that
they are part of an experiment influence their work and skew the
results that are meant to be generalized to all similar cases of
learners and not just to experimental subjects?
How much time and how many
resources should be devoted to research with a group of learners when
compared to continuing with the proven effective pedagogy already in
place? Does such research necessarily degrade or put at risk the
quality of the pedagogy already in place?
“The
class is a class first and a research laboratory second; the students
are students first and research subjects second. Under this view, and
change in course design or content to promote a research should be
subject to the condition that it at least not detract from the
educational value of the course. -- Peter Markie, quoted in ibid,
p. 29
4) Privacy and Confidentiality
How is the need to make public
the research balanced against the need to keep private the sources of
information?
How are the identities of the
learners to be safeguarded when the pedagogic technique being tested
has learners producing work that when the research is made public can
identify them?
How is a test site to be kept
confidential when the details of the testing site are relevant to a
careful and critical consideration of the finings and for any attempt
to apply the tested pedagogy in a similar setting? The details need
to be reported and yet doing so presents a possible exposure of the
test subjects.
How are reports of the failures
of learners or their initial starting points beset with difficulties
to be reported so as to not subject the learners to the psychological
harm caused by possible exposure and consequent embarrassment?
To what extent should the
learner-subjects be acknowledged for their contributions to the
research?
To what extent must the
learner-subjects be acknowledged for their contributions to the
research?
Under what circumstances is privacy to
be protected while still acknowledging the contributions made by the
learner –subjects? How is it possible to do both?
“Are
the transactions among students and faculty members, and the work that
students do in the classroom, a form of privileged communication,
analogous to the work of a therapist or lawyer? Or are they, in
Shulman’s phrase, ‘community property’” - - - Hutchings 2003, p.
31
5) Research Obligations
To what extent are educators morally
bound to conduct research into the literature of pedagogy before
attempting their own pedagogic experiments?
To what extent are educators morally
bound to conduct research themselves involving experimental projects?
To what extent are educators morally
bound to publish their experiences and findings with regard to
pedagogic developments and research efforts?
“The
‘pedagogical imperative’ includes the obligation to inquire into the
consequences of one’s work with students. This is an obligation that
devolves on individual faculty member, on programs, on institutions,
and even on disciplinary communities. Shulman 1992, p. vii
6) Research Strategies and
Techniques
How is informed consent to be
obtained in research involving surveys where the consent procedure
would not influence the responses of those surveyed
7) Paternalism
To what extent can an educator exercise paternalism
in the design, management and conducting of pedagogic experiments with
minors and the incapacitated.
In the next chapter there are a number of cases or
scenarios in which there are moral issues. They are presented in
terms of the responsibilities that are possessed by individual
educators, by the collective of educators or the faculty and by
educational institutions themselves. They are followed by a
guide to practice and then a chapter that takes two cases and analyzes
and resolves issues through an application of the basic notions of
responsibilities of professional educators as individuals and as
collectives.
End Notes
§46.111 Criteria for
IRB approval of research.
(a) In
order to approve research covered by this policy the IRB shall
determine that all of the following requirements are satisfied:
(1) Risks
to subjects are minimized: (i) by using procedures which are
consistent with sound research design and which do not unnecessarily
expose subjects to risk, and (ii) whenever appropriate, by using
procedures already being performed on the subjects for diagnostic or
treatment purposes.
(2) Risks
to subjects are reasonable in relation to anticipated benefits, if
any, to subjects, and the importance of the knowledge that may
reasonably be expected to result. In evaluating risks and benefits,
the IRB should consider only those risks and benefits that may result
from the research (as distinguished from risks and benefits of
therapies subjects would receive even if not participating in the
research). The IRB should not consider possible long-range effects of
applying knowledge gained in the research (for example, the possible
effects of the research on public policy) as among those research
risks that fall within the purview of its responsibility.
(3)
Selection of subjects is equitable. In making this assessment the IRB
should take into account the purposes of the research and the setting
in which the research will be conducted and should be particularly
cognizant of the special problems of research involving vulnerable
populations, such as children, prisoners, pregnant women, mentally
disabled persons, or economically or educationally disadvantaged
persons.
(4)
Informed consent will be sought from each prospective subject or the
subject's legally authorized representative, in accordance with, and
to the extent required by
§46.116.
(5)
Informed consent will be appropriately documented, in accordance with,
and to the extent required by
§46.117.
(6) When
appropriate, the research plan makes adequate provision for monitoring
the data collected to ensure the safety of subjects.
(7) When
appropriate, there are adequate provisions to protect the privacy of
subjects and to maintain the confidentiality of data.
(b) When
some or all of the subjects are likely to be vulnerable to coercion or
undue influence, such as children, prisoners, pregnant women, mentally
disabled persons, or economically or educationally disadvantaged
persons, additional safeguards have been included in the study to
protect the rights and welfare of these subjects.
§46.101
To what does this policy apply?
(a) Except
as provided in paragraph (b) of this section, this policy applies to
all research involving human subjects conducted, supported or
otherwise subject to regulation by any Federal Department or Agency
which takes appropriate administrative action to make the policy
applicable to such research. This includes research conducted by
Federal civilian employees or military personnel, except that each
Department or Agency head may adopt such procedural modifications as
may be appropriate from an administrative standpoint. It also includes
research conducted, supported, or otherwise subject to regulation by
the Federal Government outside the United States.
(1)
Research that is conducted or supported by a Federal Department or
Agency, whether or not it is regulated as defined in
§46.102(e), must comply with all sections of this policy.
(2)
Research that is neither conducted nor supported by a Federal
Department or Agency but is subject to regulation as defined in
§46.102(e) must be reviewed and approved, in compliance with
§46.101,
§46.102, and
§46.107 through
§46.117 of this policy, by an Institutional Review Board (IRB)
thatoperates in accordance with the pertinent requirements of this
policy.
(b) Unless
otherwise required by Department or Agency heads, research activities
in which the only involvement of human subjects will be in one or more
of the following categories are exempt from this policy:1
(1)
Research conducted in established or commonly accepted educational
settings, involving normal educational practices, such as (i) research
on regular and special education instructional strategies, or (ii)
research on the effectiveness of or the comparison among instructional
techniques, curricula, or classroom management methods.
(2)
Research involving the use of educational tests (cognitive,
diagnostic, aptitude, achievement), survey procedures, interview
procedures or observation of public behavior, unless:
(i) information obtained is recorded in such a manner that human
subjects can be identified, directly or through identifiers linked to
the subjects; and (ii) any disclosure of the human subjects' responses
outside the research could reasonably place the subjects at risk of
criminal or civil liability or be damaging to the subjects' financial
standing, employability, or reputation.
(3)
Research involving the use of educational tests (cognitive,
diagnostic, aptitude, achievement), survey procedures, interview
procedures, or observation of public behavior that is not exempt under
paragraph (b)(2) of this section, if:
(i) the human subjects are elected or appointed public officials or
candidates for public office; or (ii) Federal statute(s) require(s)
without exception that the confidentiality of the personally
identifiable information will be maintained throughout the research
and thereafter.
(4)
Research involving the collection or study of existing data,
documents, records, pathological specimens, or diagnostic specimens,
if these sources are publicly available or if the information is
recorded by the investigator in such a manner that subjects cannot be
identified, directly or through identifiers linked to the subjects.
(5)
Research and demonstration projects which are conducted by or subject
to the approval of Department or Agency heads, and which are designed
to study, evaluate, or otherwise examine:
(i) Public benefit or service programs; (ii) procedures for obtaining
benefits or services under those programs; (iii) possible changes in
or alternatives to those programs or procedures; or (iv) possible
changes in methods or levels of payment for benefits or services under
those programs.
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@copyright 2004 by S. Kincaid and P. Pecorino