An Ethical Approach to Practitioner Research

Dealing with Issues and Dilemmas in Action Research

Anne Campbell, Susan Groundwater-Smith, Anne Campbell, Susan Groundwater-Smith

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2007
• Print ISBN: 9780415430876
• eBook ISBN: 9781134085156
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Practice based research is burgeoning in a number of professional areas. An Ethical Approach to Practitioner Research covers a comprehensive range of issues and dilemmas encountered in practitioner and action research contexts. While principally focused upon practitioner inquiry in education it takes account of, and acknowledges that others engaged in professional practice such as in legal, nursing and social care contexts, face similar issues and dilemmas. It aims to stimulate ethical thinking and practice in enquiry and research contexts.

Following moves to promote professional learning and development in the workplace, there is an increase in the number of practitioners engaging in action or inquiry based learning in the workplace supported by university staff or consultants, as evidenced in the emergence of professional learning communities and learning networks. There are many tensions inherent in relationships between practitioners and academics in terms of the setting of the research agenda, the policy implications that may flow from it and the right to publish outcomes. Negotiating that relationship requires ethical probity where each party recognises, understands and respects mutual responsibilities. The book explores this through a wide variety of roles from those of academic researchers, consultants and teachers to professional practitioners as researchers and, importantly, students and children. It therefore illustrates a number of differing perspectives about ethics and research which are allied to those roles

Drawing on the expertise of international researchers and academics from America, Australia and Europe, the book provides invaluable support to the novice researcher and illuminates some of the more intricate issues for the more experienced research practitioner.Packed with detailed and thought-provoking examples this book contains both theoretical analyses of ethical matters and offers practical advice to practitioner and action researchers across the fields of schools hospitals and community and family settings.

Chapter 1

Introduction

Anne Campbell and Susan Groundwater-Smith

The origins of this book are located in the professional relationships between the editors and authors and their quest to investigate ethical issues in practice-based research and inquiry. In October 2005 the editors convened an international gathering in Liverpool, UK, the International Colloquium on Ethics in Practitioner Research: An International Conversation, to which all but one of the authors of this book contributed a paper. Caroline Leeson’s chapter was based on a paper presented at the International Practitioner Research Conference at Utrecht in the Netherlands in November 2005 from which the editors identified her work as essential to the book. It is hoped that the book will make a contribution to what is now an increasingly important area of discussion and debate in the practitioner research communities of education, health and social care.

During the period of the International Colloquium in Liverpool in 2005, the authors demonstrated their commitment and passion to ethical issues and dilemmas by engaging in serious debate and questioning a number of important concerns such as: whether anonymity for respondents and participants is always necessary; the sensitivities involved in working with young children or vulnerable young people or adults; the benefits and problems of collaborative research with participants; roles, relationships and power in research; stakeholders, accountability and responsibility within research ventures and projects, especially within commissioned research projects; and the complex issues involved in informed consent. The group developed shared understandings and learned much from each other’s differing contexts, as described below.

The foci in the book move through policy and practice and consider a variety of roles: academic researchers; consultants; teachers; professional practitioners as researchers and, importantly, students and children. It therefore illustrates a number of differing perspectives about ethics and research which are allied to those roles. It is distinctive in that it brings together issues and ideas about practicebased research from a wide-ranging international context in a substantial book.

Practice-based research is burgeoning in a number of professional areas. While this book is principally focused upon practitioner inquiry in education, it takes account of and acknowledges that others engaged in professional practice, such as in legal, nursing and social care contexts, face similar issues. Although not all practice-based research, often characterised as action research or action learning, is qualitative in nature, the dominant methods adopted by practitioners do fall into that category. There already exist many texts that guide practitioner inquiry in the use of a range of research methods, and which address ethical issues, often in relation to validity, robustness and trustworthiness questions. However, such works do not take ethics as their central or major theme and do not relate them to practitioner inquiry. The purpose of this book is to draw practitioner–researchers’ attention to the many ethical challenges and dilemmas that they will face when undertaking their investigations.

Of significance is the relationship between the field-based practitioner– researcher and the academic researcher who may be acting as a research mentor and critical friend under the auspices of award-bearing courses or engagement in government- initiated projects. Following moves to promote professional learning and development in the workplace, there is also an increase in the number of practitioners engaging in action or inquiry-based learning in the workplace supported by university staff or consultants, as evidenced by the emergence of professional learning communities and learning networks. There are many tensions inherent in relationships between practitioners and academics in terms of the setting of the research agenda, the policy implications that may flow from it and the right to publish outcomes. Negotiating that relationship requires ethical probity where each party recognises, understands and respects mutual responsibilities. Not only that, but each may be governed by research ethics standards determined by their institutions. These may not always be compatible or serve the mutual interests of both parties. Furthermore each may be accountable to their institutions in different ways; the academic researcher is expected to contribute new knowledge to the field of study or discipline, while the practitioner–researcher is seeking to contribute to the practical knowledge of the profession. These may not necessarily be mutually exclusive, but institutional mores and norms will influence the aims and purposes of each. The boundaries may become even more blurred when the academic researcher is engaged in investigating his or her academic practice either internally or in conjunction with the professional field, or where the academic researcher is formally engaged as a consultant in a practice-based research project.

Within practice-based research there are also many issues that concern the consequential stakeholders, for example students in schools or patients in hospitals and clinics. How vulnerable are they? How well informed are they of the research and its purposes? To what extent has informed consent for the study been sought? How accountable are the practitioner–researchers to them? Are they themselves able to become partners in the research enterprise? These are but a few of the questions deserving consideration.

Of course practitioner–researchers will also have an audience that goes beyond their colleagues and those consequential stakeholders. Increasingly, practicebased research is making a contribution to the development of service-related policy in areas such as health and education. The ways in which results are published and disseminated have ethical implications in terms of access. Different writing genres, including reports, narratives, vignettes, case studies, all have their own conventions, many of which are not immediately explicit.

These are but a few of the practical issues. But there are also difficult epistemological issues regarding what counts as research and what may be the varying and competing knowledge interests.

This book is not primarily intended as a ‘how to’ text, but it will both provide invaluable support to the novice researcher and illuminate some of the more intricate issues for the more experienced research practitioner. It seriously addresses and makes problematic many issues that those engaged in practitioner inquiry will need to consider in their various contexts. One strength of the book is its capacity to draw upon the knowledge and experience of a range of well-recognised academic and practice-based researchers from the USA, the UK, Europe and Australia. It contains both theoretical analyses of ethical matters and offers practical and illustrative case studies.

Following this introductory chapter is Susanna Gorman’s chapter on managing research ethics. She reminds us that the governance of human research ethics in universities should be directed to harm minimisation ahead of institutional risk management and highlights how research ethics is in danger of being reduced to a way of managing institutional risk in the complex, cutting-edge activity of today’s research context. She provides a particular Australian perspective on the role and conduct of ethics committees and their relationship to researchers. Challenges for practice-based researchers are identified in the application of ethical principles. She also perceives the challenges for ethics committees of being ‘ethical’ themselves. Partnerships between researchers and research ethics committees can contribute positively to research design and enactment and she concludes with a consideration of the benefits for all of mutual, educational dialogue between partners.

Marilyn Cochran-Smith and Susan L. Lytle, in Chapter 3, have a wealth of experience of American practice-based research and they use this to illustrate dilemmas and tensions in the different positions of those in universities and schools with regard to a broad interpretation of practitioner inquiry. They justify practitioner inquiry as an ‘umbrella’ term for a number of inquiry formats. They argue for practitioner inquiry as a means of challenging a range of assumptions regarding learning and schooling. Necessarily such challenges produce complex tensions and dilemmas that have ethical consequences and as they put it, ‘When it comes to practitioner inquiry and university culture, “everything is ethics”’.

Importantly, the chapter also clarifies the various terms employed by the authors of the chapters. Coming as they do from different language groups and traditions necessarily they employ a range of terms and labels; thus those require explication. The chapter, by providing insights into specific cases, illuminates those tensions and dilemmas referred to earlier. Finally the writers challenge some of the norms that govern the role of researchers, teachers, writers and partners when inquiry is conducted as a joint enterprise within the field of practice.

It seems appropriate at this point, as editors, to allude to the variety of linguistic styles in this international collection of chapters. We have decided to retain individual, national terms and to be consistent within each chapter. For example the American spelling of ‘conceptualize’ will be used in Chapter 3 but the word will appear elsewhere as ‘conceptualise’. In this way we hope to accentuate and promote diversity as part of international collaboration. Having had the opportunity for extended conversations at the Liverpool colloquium we have engaged in serious debates and discussions about the ideas and terminology in the chapters and feel comfortable about not standardising spellings and terms. We hope it enriches the reading process and reminds us of the need for understanding each other’s cultures and contexts in a global research community.

Chapter 4, ‘Ethical issues for consultants in complex collaborative action research settings: tensions and dilemmas’, moves to look at an extended case study example from a large, innovative initiative promoting networked learning communities. The initiative, sponsored by the English government’s National College for School Leadership (NCSL), is the vehicle to discuss and explore issues for action researchers who work as consultants with schools over a sustained but temporary period of time. Chris Day and Andy Townsend contextualise the work in relation to the ethical roles and responsibilities of the research consultant inquiring with practitioners in the field.

The changing roles in partnerships between school and university personnel form the background for an exploration of five tensions in collaborative action research as follow: individual vs group; individual and school inquiry group vs networked learning community (NLC); school vs national policy initiatives; individual vs higher education (HE); and finally NLC vs the agenda of HE. The authors also identify eight dilemmas for consultants including power differentials, organisational and occupational professionalism and managing competing agendas. This is a lively chapter depicting some recent developments in England and the authors conclude that ‘consultancy, like teaching, is an inherently moral and ethical activity’.

Lesley Saunders in Chapter 5, writing in her capacity as Visiting Professor at the Institute of Education, University of London, England, responds to the overall theme of ethics in practice-based research with regard to the generic values intrinsic to teaching and research, respectively. She argues that research and teaching share the same fundamental values, purposes and processes, whilst acknowledging that there are deep-seated differences and divergences between teaching and research as professional practices. She uses two sets of principles to elaborate her argument: the professional values of teaching from the General Teaching Council for England (GTCe) and the professional values of research from the USA’s National Research Council. She provides an illustration of ideal typological contrasts between teaching and research in a useful table presenting teaching as activism and research as scepticism which relates to the discussion in Chapter 3 of the positioning of inquirers in schools and universities. However, in the end these positions are not offered as binaries, but as a tool for considering the overlapping contribution of each. She concludes that practitioner inquiry provides a site for the exploration and development of pedagogy as the constitutive professional practice of teaching.

Of particular appeal in relation to Chapter 6, ‘Transdisciplinary enquiry: researching with rather than on’, is the voice of the practitioner. Danny Doyle is a member of the National Teacher Research Panel in England (NTRP). This valuable perspective, drawing on the experience of a group of teacher–researchers, pays particular attention to the ethical demands of their work. A number of short scenarios is presented which highlight ethical challenges and dilemmas for practitioner–researchers such as: informed consent from children; the right to withdraw from a research project; and the thorny issues involved in confidentiality of respondents. He stresses researching ‘with’ rather than ‘on’ and suggests the use of ‘participant’ rather than ‘subject’ as an ethical stance with regard to recognising pupils’ and teachers’ contributions to research. He highlights sound and welldefended practices and poses questions that the teacher–researcher should consider. He concludes with the words of Lawrence Stenhouse: ‘Communication is less effective than community in the utilisation of knowledge’.

In Chapter 7, ‘Ethics in practitioner research: dilemmas from the field’, Nicole Mockler argues that the path to teacher emancipation through practitioner research does not come without considerable ethical challenges and dilemmas. She sees her chapter as a simple example of second-order action research and examines these dilemmas through the eyes of one who supports practitioner research. The writer adopts the notion of ‘critical incidents’ to make her case. She continues to develop perspectives raised by Day and Townsend in Chapter 4 and asks questions about the stories told in practitioner research. As with the chapter which follows, the lens being employed is that of storying. She asks, ‘Whose story is told? Who has the right to tell it? Are some stories privileged over others and whose stories make history?’. She continues by providing a section on theorising ethical dilemmas with a view to learning from dilemmas. She advocates moving from a ‘project’ approach to embedding an inquiry approach within teaching practice, towards ‘inquiry as stance’, as Cochran-Smith and Lytle in Chapter 3 argue. She also agrees that ‘everything’s ethics’ and promotes an holistic approach. She concludes, in tune with Saunders in Chapter 5, that the implications of ethical dilemmas are much broader than the context in which they emerge and that the work of teaching is ‘ethical work’ and urges conversation and critique.

Anne Campbell and Olwen McNamara take the notion of storying one step further and expand into using practitioners’ stories as stimuli for investigating and developing ethical issues in professional practice. Chapter 8 tackles a number of types of stories, fictional and hypothetical and positive and negative. It also discusses the use of fictionalised pen portraits to illustrate teachers’ professional lives and their attitudes towards professional learning. Campbell and McNamara raise ethical concerns regarding teachers’ experiences of teaching. They ask us to consider ways in which stories can act as provocations for academics and fieldbased practitioners alike to consider the ethical dilemmas inherent in the practice of fictionalising professional issues and experience. Issues raised in this chapter range from the power of narrative, biography and storytelling in depicting ethical dilemmas; anonymity or visibility of participants in research; and alternative ways of presenting data about professional identity. The authors advocate that theory and practice are brought together in an emancipatory fusion to promote ethical engagement in research.

While the preceding chapters have focused on the experiences of the academic and field-based practitioners, the two that follow draw our attention to the consequential stakeholders in inquiry, the students or pupils. Both Chapters 9 and 10 address the important perspectives of young people in practitioner research and the ethical challenges and dilemmas facing researchers. Susan Groundwater-Smith, in Chapter 9, considers the case for consultation with students and reminds us that listening to students is not a discovery of the twenty-first century by referring to Blishen’s 1967 competition asking children about the school they would like to attend. Two powerful case studies are offered, each one raising a set of ethical challenges that come about when young people become part of the inquiry rather than apart from it. She uses the experience of working with a coalition of schools to illustrate how students’ voices were central to the investigation of bullying in a girls’ school and how boys’ and girls’ perceptions of their teachers as learners could inform professional learning plans and advise school policy.

While young people are positioned as powerful voices, they are also paradoxically seen to be vulnerable in the ways in which their voices may be heard and used in relation to the various and competing accountabilities. She identifies a number of challenges and dilemmas: students’ right to say no; sustaining student voice and the need for dissemination and action. She advocates power with students not on students, a similar call to Doyle’s in Chapter 6.

Most chapters in this book have explored practitioner research in the context of education. Chapter 10 takes us on a somewhat different trajectory as it considers the ethical sensitivities associated with children in state care. Caroline Leeson in her chapter entitled ‘Going round in circles: key issues in the development of an effective ethical protocol for research involving young children’ urges us to promote sensitivity and robust ethical consideration in research with children. She traces a personal journey towards effective, ethical protocols for research looking at the levels of participation of children and young people in the decision-making processes of the care system. Her approaches demand a child-centred approach from the researcher and she details how she constructs ethical codes and protocols as she structures her research to facilitate the authentic voice of the younger child.

Leeson discusses the ethical dilemmas she faced in raising what could be called traumatic and distressing issues for young children in her investigation. Similar to previous chapters – and a dominant theme of this book – the thorny issues of consent and confidentiality are raised. She argues that young children should be involved in research into difficult areas and should be active participants with a real voice that is listened to by researchers. These issues resonate with the arguments in Chapter 2 and suggest that ethical codes must be developed that permit action rather than stifle initiative.

The ethics of practitioner inquiry transcend national boundaries. Chapters in this book have highlighted concerns to be found as far afield as the USA, England and Australia. Coming from a European perspective in the Netherlands, Petra Ponte in Chapter 11 addresses praxis as the development of knowledge through independent and purposeful action, and links the ideological, the technical and the empirical areas of knowledge. She contends that action research in education is based on social theories and could be enriched by pedagogical theories. Ponte refers to ‘pedagogy as human science’. In developing praxis as an ethical framework for action research she identifies the following: the ethic of justice; the ethic of critique; the ethic of professionalism and the ethic of pedagogy. Ponte develops her idea of the pedagogical ethic through reference to thinking before and after the Perestroika period in Russia in the early 1990s. She concludes with a model for knowledge construction by teachers doing research but reminds us that the benefits should include the development of the relationship between the child, the school and society. Questions such as ‘What is a good society? And what is the place of young people in such a society?’ are raised in this chapter. The ultimate goal is seen to be to develop education that has a place for all pupils regardless of their social background or personal qualities.

In the penultimate chapter in this book attention shifts to practitioner inquiry in the tertiary setting. Lin Norton has long researched research upon teaching and learning in universities and the moral duty of the researcher to maintain ethical balance. The chapter raises questions of power and authority, control and disclosure within pedagogical action research in higher education. Questions of fairness and opportunity costs are raised and ways in which students that are at risk may be exposed. In addition there are matters associated with vulnerable academics who may be experiencing transition difficulties as they move into the higher education sector. It is not that these challenges are so very different to those raised earlier in the book but the change of setting serves to highlight their complexity. Norton also asks what happens when her research shows her institution or a student or a teacher in a ‘bad light’. She analyses research articles in her field to identify how ethical issues are dealt with in the literature and also describes how her research into improving essay writing can illuminate difficult issues involved in feedback to students.

In the concluding chapter to the book the major themes raised by its various authors are revisited. Some particular concerns regarding the changing environment in relation to the burgeoning of information and communication technologies are also considered.

It is our belief that this collective work arising from the Liverpool Hope University Colloquium is an important contribution to the ongoing conversation regarding ethics and practitioner inquiry around the globe.

Chapter 2

Managing research ethics

A head-on collision?

Susanna Gorman

In an increasingly nervous and litigious society, research ethics is in danger of being reduced to an easy means of managing institutional risk rather than something that is intrinsically valuable to the research process.

Ethics is not about simplistic solutions. It provides a framework for asking meaningful questions – and this, after all, is at the very heart of good scholarship.

Areas that have not traditionally been involved in academic pursuits have become part of modern universities rather than ‘trades’ or apprentice/cadet models of learning as in the pas...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Notes on contributors
• Foreword: In search of better times
• Acknowledgements
• Chapter 1 Introduction
• Chapter 2 Managing research ethics
• Chapter 3 Everything’s ethics
• Chapter 4 Ethical issues for consultants in complex collaborative action research settings
• Chapter 5 Professional values and research values
• Chapter 6 Transdisciplinary enquiry
• Chapter 7 Ethics in practitioner research
• Chapter 8 Ways of telling
• Chapter 9 Student voice
• Chapter 10 Going round in circles
• Chapter 11 Behind the vision
• Chapter 12 Pedagogical research in higher education
• Chapter 13 Concluding reflections