The Profession of Education-chapter- Ethics and Pedagogic Research

The idea of teacher-as-researcher raises several important issues. Foremost among these are the questions concerning the relationships between research and practice, and the role of Institutional Review Boards in pedagogical experimentation and the ethical responsibilities of the researcher. If teachers are obligated to research effective pedagogical methodologies in the classroom, to what degree is their research subject to review by IRBs and beyond that subject to ethical review?

The majority of American colleges and universities employ Institutional Review Boards to monitor clinical, medical, and psychological experiments to ensure the well-being and safety of human subjects. Indeed, federal law demands IRB evaluation of all federally-funded research.

These concerns for human subjects find their roots in events like the Tuskeegee Syphilis Study, research studies in Nazi Germany, and even the psychological studies of researchers like B.F. Skinner and Stanley Milgram. To address these issues, legislators passed the 1974 National Research Act. This law created the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical Behavioral Research, which was responsible for detailing the ethical obligations of researchers. The product of this commission, the 1979 Belmont Report, continues to serve as the foundation for IRB decision making.

The Belmont Report defines the role of IRBs, the risk-benefit considerations of human subject research, the guidelines for selection of human subjects, and the criteria of informed consent.[i] Perhaps most significantly, it identifies the basic ethical principles of human subject research: respect for persons, beneficence, and justice. It also delineates the distinction between practice and research, and identifies the types of research subject to IRB review.

This latter distinction is especially important in the context of pedagogic research. Recognizing the need to distinguish between formal research and variations in standard clinical practice, the authors of The Belmont Report argue that while both formal research and clinical practice were “experimental,” only formal research demands IRB review:

“The fact that a procedure is ‘experimental’ in the sense of new, untested or different, does not automatically place it in the category of research. Radically new procedures of this description should, however, be made the object of formal research at an early stage in order to determine whether they are safe and effective. Thus, it is the responsibility of medical practice committees, for example, to insist that a major innovation be incorporated into a formal research project.”[ii]

On these grounds, any “experiment,” be it a research project (and subject to IRB review), or a novel teaching method, is subject to certain, very specific ethical obligations. And while these obligations will be discussed at length in the following pages, it is important to note that foremost among these obligations is the duty to communicate our “experiments” to others in our profession. In formal research, this communication takes place primarily in professional journals. Yet the ethical obligations of all experimenters necessarily include communication, whether it is in professional journals or in correspondence and dialogue with other professionals.

At this point, it becomes important to understand the distinction between formal research (which requires IRB review), and experimental practice (informal research not requiring IRB review, but carrying with it certain ethical obligations). The Belmont Report defines “research” and “practice” as follows:

…[T]he term ‘practice’ refers to interventions that are designed solely to enhance the well-being of and individual patient or client and that have a reasonable expectation of success….

…[T] term ‘research’ designates an activity designed to test an hypothesis, permit conclusions to be drawn, and thereby to develop or contribute to generalizable knowledge…Research is usually described in a formal protocol that sets forth an objective and a set of procedure designed to reach that objective.”[iii]

On these grounds, informal research in the classroom regarding methodologies and curricula is 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).

Yet the lack of Institutional Review Board supervision over informal educational research does not absolve researchers from proceeding ethically. In fact, the lack of IRB review makes the awareness of the ethical issues inherent in classroom research even more important. As the rapidly growing literature on action/practitioner research and pedagogical ethics clearly shows, pedagogic ethics is becoming a central element in the debates over effective teaching.

At least since the 1989 publication of The Ethics of Pedagogical Research,[iv] one of the most persistent trends in discussions of the ethics of pedagogic research is the emphasis on a “case-study” approach. This approach to ethics rightly attempts to move beyond the abstract generalizations of traditional ethics, and to help provide insight into the nature and nuance of ethical issues by offering case-studies (or “narratives”) in the effort to illuminate the complex moral landscapes of ethical decision-making.

The case study approach to ethics has an important role in moral deliberation, and it not our intention to dismiss the many important contributions made to the field using this approach. The case study approach is uniquely effective in raising people’s awareness of ethical issues, and to “get them thinking” about the complexities of ethical deliberation. Indeed, this approach is useful in many areas and disciplines.[v] Yet this approach, while generally effective in introducing issues and starting conversations, has its limits, particularly in the context of normative ethical theory. In other words, while it is important to raise awareness of the ethical issues inherent in pedagogic research, it is just as important to generate principles and guidelines to assist teacher/researchers in their practice.

As Robert Burgess rightly points out, inquiry into the ethics of educational research demands that “…philosophers, sociologists and psychologists involved in the study of education [should] bring together their expertise to focus on ethical questions in educational research.”[vi] Yet where Burgess lamented the lack of any investigation into the ethics of educational research in 1989, since then there has been a rapid (and much needed ) growth of academic inquiry into this importance facet of pedagogy. Yet still largely absent from these important debates are philosophers; those professionals trained in the historical and technical features of ethical inquiry.

Why? Part of the problem stems from philosophers themselves. Professional philosophy has, over the course of the last 50 years, tended to focus on logico-linguistic issues, as well as the epistemological questions concerning the philosophy of science. All of this has taken place at the expense of more “practical” philosophical approaches, and while the discipline itself is now experiencing a resurgence of applied philosophical inquiry, the tendency toward analysis remains strong.

Yet the absence of philosophers in the discussions of pedagogic research can also be explained partly by the hesitance of educational practitioners and researchers to make strong normative claims. There is a pronounced (and somewhat) justified hesitation on the part of academicians to tell people what they “ought to do,” especially given the increasing societal emphasis on cross-cultural recognition and respect.

This growing commitment to epistemic pluralism[vii] in the academy has had a profound influence on the nature and function of higher education. Above and beyond the challenges to the “canons” of history, literature, art, and culture, there have also been significant challenges to the methods and epistemological status of academic research.

Research in general is defined by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services as the “systematic investigation designed to develop or contribute to generalizable knowledge.” (quoted in Gray 1992; p. 341)

Classic scientific research is quantitative; that is, it produces numerical data, and it has long been considered the epistemological “holy grail” of the academy. The methodologies and numerical analysis of quantitative research lends it a high level of generalizability in its findings. Quantitative research provides analytically sound, repeatable observations, and extends from these observations our ability to anticipate or predict future events. In the social sciences, such research involves randomly selected subjects, control groups, the collection of numerical data, and the statistical analysis of that data, as well as the probability calculations which determine the generalizability of a finding.

Yet as the academy has shifted from epistemological monism to epistemological pluralism, the privileged epistemic status of quantitative research has been called into question. This does not mean that quantitative research no longer enjoys epistemological benefits. The rigor, repeatability, and statistical analysis of its method do indeed provide its practitioners with a level of certainty and generalizability typically unmatched in other forms of research.

Over the course of the last 100 years, the exclusive focus on quantitative research in the academy has been questioned. Most significantly, there has been a growing emphasis on “qualitative” research, or research which focuses on the collection of narrative data which are analyzed both linguistically and logically.

Qualitative research (also called “ethnographic,” “case study,” or “naturalistic” research) is not without its critics. As Eisner and Peshkin point out:

…[T]he tradition has denigrators who remain uncomfortable with a nonquantitative approach to research. At best, they are uneasy with what they view as a rival paradigm: They are reacting to the fact of competition. At worst they dismiss it as unworthy of the name of scholarship.” (Eisner and Peshkin 1990: p. 2)

Perhaps the most significant critique of qualitative research involves the issue of generalizability. Qualitative research studies are generally viewed by their detractors as lacking in objective methodological criteria, and are therefore too subjective to provide justifiable generalizable claims.

Defenders of qualitative research often argue that its generalizability lies not in its observations but in its logical method.(cf. Donmeyer 1990; pp. 175-201). In this sense, qualitative research is best understood as a specific method of inquiry, focusing not solely on data and statistical analysis, but on the “narrative,” personal experiences, and specific situations studied by sociologists, ethnologists, and educators. In other words, the generalizability of qualitative research lies in the logic of its method.

In pedagogic research, qualitative analysis has taken several forms. First, there are teacher/researchers who generate collaborative inquiry into their own methods and practices in the classroom and the community. Second, and stemming from the British pedagogic tradition, there is “action research.” Action research focuses on the reciprocity between theory and practice, and it emphasizes the attempts by educators to improve their teaching while developing a deeper understanding of their practice by contributing to the pedagogical developments in their respective fields.[viii]

Finally, both action research and teacher research are subsumed under the larger qualitative heading of “practitioner research.” As Jane Zeni points out, “Practitioner research, whatever its tradition, relies on qualitative or descriptive methods (e.g. participant observation, interviewing, journaling) rather than quantitative, statistical, or experimental methods. It typically results in a classroom ethnography or case study.” (Zeni 2001; p. 1).

Here is where the lack of philosophers becomes most problematic in the continuing conversations on the ethics of pedagogic research. Philosophers, using the methodological tools of their discipline (logic, argumentation, technical ethical theory, etc.) are best able to extend the findings of pedagogic research past the individual classroom and into public discussion and application, as well as surpassing the normative limitations of the case study approach.

As Burgess points out, philosophers tend to examine abstract issues, whereas social scientists are more likely to focus on specific circumstances. (Burgess, 1989 – p. 1) The normative limitations of the case study approach are most apparent when attempting to frame general principles and guidelines that should be used to guide ethical conduct in classroom research. As a century of applied ethics has demonstrated, to deal with ethical concerns we must take seriously the role of principles and generalizability, all of which goes well beyond the analysis and discussion of empirical data and case studies. An ethics of pedagogic research demands we pay attention to the underlying ethical principles of professional obligations of faculty members (as both teachers and researchers). And in that sense, it is the construction of a context-sensitive yet normatively significant framework of ethical guidelines becomes the crucial next step in the growing emphasis on the scholarship of teaching and learning. Normative discourse is possible once educators reflect and accept that they voluntarily assumed a dual set of responsibilities when they entered the profession and decided to perform research: they have both the fiduciary responsibilities towards their learners to benefit them and the basic responsibility of a human subject researcher to cause no harm. With these basic positive and negative responsibilities moral problems and dilemmas arising from pedagogic research, and particularly from the dual role of researcher/educator, can be productively considered and more satisfactory resolutions reached than through ungrounded discourse. It is here where philosophy can make an important contribution to the understanding of the ethics of pedagogic research.

How is this latter goal of teaching even better to be accomplished? It can be achieved only through research into the very enterprise of education: teaching. Some, if not all, of that research will necessarily involve a variety of forms of experimentation. When the experimentation involves human subjects there arise ethical concerns and foremost amongst them is the overriding duty to cause no harm. Be this as it may many, if not most, educators conducting such research appear to be little aware of or concerned with the ethical aspects of what they do when conducting pedagogic experiments with human subjects. Robert G. Burgess (1989,1) notes this by quoting and agreeing with the observations of Cassell and Jacobs (1987,1) that moral principles

Seem to have little relation to our daily activities as researchers, students, and practitioners…We do not wish to make this seem merely a matter of isolated choices in crucial situations. Much of our lives proceeds undramatically, and often our decisions are almost imperceptible, so that only with hindsight are we aware that our course of action had consequences that we had not foreseen and now regret…to improve ethical adequacy…we must consider not only exceptional cases but everyday decisions, and reflect not only upon the conduct of others but also upon our own action.

While the community of educators may have matured to the point where ethical considerations are now being discussed it may be quite a while before the ethical awareness that bears on everyday decisions takes firm root in the minds of professional educators.

From what source stems this duty to cause no harm to others and in this case to the subjects of the pedagogic experiment with humans? The etiology of a set of basic ethical duties out of the injunction to cause no harm will be examined at some length because there appears to be either an insensitivity to the full significance of the rather simple injunction or, worse yet, a lack of awareness that there is such an injunction and that it applies to educators in what they do daily and to what they do when they examine what they do: research into teaching methodologies.

Patricia Hutchings is a vice President of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. She is a director of the Carnegie Academy for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. Consider that in her work Ethics of Inquiry: Issues in Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, while she appears quite concerned with the ethical aspects of that scholarship, she recoils form any effort to delve into normative discourse and instead holds that thought and discourse will be sufficient for the handling of what she terms as ethical issues. She appears to focus attention in her listing of ethical issues away from that of harm to the learners onto other matters such as experimental design and ownership of materials. Beyond that she holds for no simple or singular answers as to the morally correct course of action and appears to think of ethical issues as involving competing goods so that agonizing of the decision and using reflective thought is sufficient for producing a acceptable decision as to how to act.

At best she offers some questions that she hopes will shape practice in the research into teaching and learning. She means to be suggestive and offers her listing freely and invites copying and adaptations and adoptions of it.

Here are the twelve questions and their headings as she has supplied them. (Hutchings, p 85ff)

1. What is the question or problem that you want to investigate, and why is it important enough to spend your own and others’ time and energy on it?

2. What power relationships need to be taken into account in negotiating roles, permissions, and involvement s 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?

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?

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?

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?

Note that concern for the possibility of causing harm does not figure prominently in this list of questions. There appear to be more questions dealing with what is needed to get the experiment or research accomplished than 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 (Hutchings, p 1) 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?

Should I (must I?) submit my project design to the campus Institutional Review Board (IRB), which monitors work with human subjects?

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 benefits, and who is at risk, when the complex dynamics of teaching and learning are documented and publicly represented?

Some of these are, to be sure, involved most directly with issues about what the “good” is but others are also most clearly about what the law requires or the necessities 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.

For 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.”

Pat Hutchings. 2002. “Introduction.” Ethics of Inquiry: Issues in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. (Pat Hutchings, ed.) Menlo Park: The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. p. 2.

Hutchings describes the seven contributors of cases to her volume as having produced work that is “highly ethical” in as much as they demonstrate that the authors evidence (Hutchings, p 4):

For Hutchings ethics has to do with the core dilemma of competing goods and the “dilemmas of fidelity” as in the work of Helen Dale.

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 holds 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” …” (Hutchings, p 14) “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.” Such scholarship enacts a professional responsibility by calling on the inherent obligations and commitments that come with the professional role- that is

This is the ethic that Lee Shulman has described as the “professional rationale “for the scholarship of teaching and learning. Such SOTL is work that:

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)

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.

(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.

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 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).

(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.

Yet the lack of Institutional Review Board supervision over informal educational research does not absolve researchers from proceeding ethically. In fact, the lack of IRB review makes the awareness of the ethical issues inherent in classroom research 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 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 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 research 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 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 research is exempt from an ethical review

Exemption from IRB review does not mean that the pedagogic 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. Far from it! Each and every pedagogic experiment is fraught with potential for harm and must be closely examined.

Most discussions of ethics with educators involves legal and practical concerns only and evidence no basis involving ethical principles or even concern 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. It is a defensive posture and generated more for concern over 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.

It is unfortunate to review the literature of ethics and pedagogic research to find that there is 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)

No solutions at all? Not to any of the dilemmas? Even when confronted with the dilemma of doing an experiment that may bring very useful information that could be used in many positive ways but would necessarily involve deliberately harming or even killing some innocent human subject? No solution?

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 agonize a bit over the decision to be made and then make some judgment for oneself 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.

Doing ethics involves careful and critical thinking involving basic principles of the moral good in a manner that leads to or defends a position taken on some moral problem or dilemma. Ethical thinking and resolution of dilemmas involves normative claims. As a professional educator ethical discourse must be conducted in a manner to bring about resolutions of moral dilemmas in such a manner that it would 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. How is the profession to maintain that inconsistent and contradictory conclusions about what is the most morally proper behavior can 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.

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? There may be many but one of them is certainly that education should not harm people. 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.

There are such principles and such values that do exist and are operative in human intercourse and social organization. In human societies harming an innocent and non-threatening person is considered as a wrongful act. It is a moral breach. It is morally incorrect. There are reasons for this judgment. There are a variety of basic ethical principles to support the judgment that harming innocent people is a violation of the principle of the good. Whether as a utilitarian whereby it is almost always a violation of the principle of the good to deliberately harm no less than to do so in a nonchalant fashion or as a Kantian where it is always a breach of the categorical imperative to treat people as a means to end and an end that is not in their own interest or as a Rawlsian where such harms violate the basic notion of justice, such gratuitous acts of harm are immoral acts. Such an act is one of the few that will immediately come to mind as a counterexample to the claims of the post modern moral relativists that there are no universal ethical principles. In what societies are deliberate acts of harm acceptable behavior? Where is it thought to be morally correct to harm other members of one’s own society who are not threatening one’s well being in any way?

From yet another perspective the source of the duty or moral obligation to cause no harm issues from the basic relationship that humans have with other humans and the duties consequent thereto that are recognized the world over in the norms of civilized life and set as a one of the foundation stones for civil society. And once again it must be reiterated that the special obligation to cause no harm in the case of pedagogic experiments 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.

What harms can an educator bring about with the learners? There are a whole host of them that become fairly obvious upon reflection. That the question of “What possible harm is there in conducting teaching and when attempting to improve upon the effectiveness of that teaching?” can so often be raised in earnest when the topic of pedagogic harm is first brought up bespeaks an indifference to the moral aspect of the relationship of teacher to learner that is so than it is more than a little disturbing and is an index of the level of moral development of the community of professional educators.

If there is a change in a pedagogic technique or a new instructional design utilized by an educator such changes could result in some learners not doing s well as they may have had there not been that change made. To not do as well constitutes a harm to the learner and it can be manifest in a variety of ways. The following is a partial list and single learners can experience more than one of these harms from a single change in pedagogy.

--negative impact on future educational success (cf. Bluestone, 2004 on self-efficacy)

1) Ethical Review of Experiments with Human Subjects Prior to Conducting the Experiment

Whether formal or informal research there is both a common core of concern and additional concerns specific to the mode of research.

2) Communication of the Results of Pedagogic Research or Experiment

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 most educators are members of two professions they encounter the 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 time some members may neglect the entire range of responsibilities for the other. The most obvious cases of this occurs 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 and some inn elementary and secondary education focus on development of effective pedagogy to the neglect of discipline related research.

When there is a need to 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 institution 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 the teaching then the researcher/experimenter should communicate the results to colleagues in the discipline through intra disciplinary mechanism: publications and conferences. Else wise that researcher should communicate the results to educators teaching similar subjects r 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 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 Research

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 and possibly to revise findings or conduct further research and experimentation to answer critics. refine the findings, or further the inquiry and development of even more effective pedagogies.

[i] The Belmont Report. 1978. http://ohrp.osophs.dhhs.gov/humansubjects/guidance/belmont.htm p. 1

[ii] ibid, p. 3

[iii] ibid.

[iv] Burgess, R. G (ed.). 1989. The Ethics of Educational Research. London: Falmer Press

[v] Hutchings, Pat. Using Cases to Improve College Teaching: A Guide to More Reflective Practice. Washington, D.C.: American Association of Higher Education, 1993.

[vi] Burgess, ibid, p. 1

[vii] “Epistemic pluralism” entails the claim that knowledge and truth are not the product of one “privileged” perspective (i.e. science, the church, etc.), but that “truth” can be generated from many different perspectives (art, literature, cultural, etc.). It is also important to not the a commitment to epistemic pluralism does NOT entail a commitment to relativism – individualistic or cultural.

[viii] This distinction between “teacher/researcher” and “action researcher” is found in (Zeni 2001; p. xiv).

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