Panel: Broadening the Discussion of Ethics in the Interaction Design and Children Community

Interaction Design and Children (IDC) as an academic field, and as a community, has a responsibility to engage with the many and diverse ethical challenges that arise from work that concerns the creation of digital technology for and with children – both in terms of research and industry contexts. This panel builds on a short history of similar events at previous conferences and aims to foster and strengthen the debate about ethical conduct and moral responsibilities in IDC. In this year’s panel, we seek to broaden the discussion by collecting ethical concerns, issues or dilemmas from within the community to be discussed at the conference. To this end, we will issue an open call for input that will be publicised via the usual channels. The organisers then will synthesise the responses and facilitate the discussion and debate at the panel

Assistive robotics: research challenges and ethics education initiatives

Assistive robotics is a fast growing field aimed at helping healthcarers in hospitals, rehabilitation centers and nursery homes, as well as empowering people with reduced mobility at home, so that they can autonomously fulfill their daily living activities. The need to function in dynamic human-centered environments poses new research challenges: robotic assistants need to have friendly interfaces, be highly adaptable and customizable, very compliant and intrinsically safe to people, as well as able to handle deformable materials. Besides technical challenges, assistive robotics raises also ethical defies, which have led to the emergence of a new discipline: Roboethics. Several institutions are developing regulations and standards, and many ethics education initiatives include contents on human-robot interaction and human dignity in assistive situations. In this paper, the state of the art in assistive robotics is briefly reviewed, and educational materials from a university course on Ethics in Social Robotics and AI focusing on the assistive context are presented.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

The ethics of secondary data analysis: learning from the experience of sharing qualitative data from young people and their families in an international study of childhood poverty

This working paper focuses on secondary analysis, an aspect of research practice that is sometimes assumed to pose few ethical challenges. It draws in particular on the experience of a collaborative research project involving secondary analysis of qualitative data collected as part of an ongoing international longitudinal study, Young Lives (www.younglives.org.uk), and sets this alongside a wider review of regulatory guidance on research ethics and academic debates. Secondary analysis can take many forms, and bring many benefits. But it is more ethically complex than regulatory frameworks may imply. Whether or not data are publicly archived, ethical considerations have to be addressed, including responsibilities to participants and the original researchers, and the need to achieve a contextual understanding of the data by identifying and countering risks of misinterpretation. The considerations raised here are intended to aid ethical research practice by supporting planning and reflection – for primary researchers who are planning to archive their data, as well as for researchers embarking on a qualitative secondary analysis. Not least, our experience highlights the importance of developing and maintaining trusting relationships between primary and secondary researchers

Introducing Preservice STEM Teachers to Computer Science: A Narrative of Theoretically Oriented Design

This paper narrates the process of designing a curricular unit that serves to introduce preservice science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) teachers to computer science (CS) education. Unlike most literature that focuses on results and findings, this paper explains how a justice-centered approach to CS education informed decisions about the theoretical underpinnings of curricular design choices. Situated in issues related to the gentrification of Austin, Texas, the described curricular unit explores how the increased use of CS and growth of the technology sector are having a direct impact on the historically marginalized residents of East Austin. Connected by a theme that maps are both a form of data visualization and political artifact, the described curricular unit uses CS as a tool to: critique the macro-ethics of politics and society; provide a CS learning environment that can be responsive to the multiple social identities of students; and connect CS to larger struggles for justice and liberation.Educatio

The interpretive approach as a research tool : inside the REDCo project

This contribution shows how the author’s interpretive approach to religious education was used as a theoretical and pedagogical stimulus and an empirical research tool by researchers in the European Commission Framework 6 REDCo (Religion, Education, Dialogue, Conflict) Project. The origins and development of the interpretive approach, from its roots in the ethnographic study of children from religious backgrounds, are summarised, and an account is given about how its key concepts were used to frame a checklist of questions for REDCo researchers dealing with both empirical research methodology and pedagogy. Examples and case studies are presented illustrating how the approach was used by REDCo researchers as a methodological tool for empirical research, a pedagogical tool or stimulus to pedagogical clarification and a tool for meta-analysis and theory development

Inclusive research and inclusive education: why connecting them makes sense for teachers’ and learners’ democratic development of education

Following pushes from the disability movement(s) and increased interest in children and young people becoming involved in research concerning them, inclusive research is growing within and beyond education establishments. Yet this arena is alive with interesting and largely unanswered questions. This paper discusses some of them: What do inclusive research and inclusive education have in common? Where have the moves towards inclusive (participatory and emancipatory) research happened and why? How viable are the claims to the moral superiority of inclusive research? What kinds and quality of knowledge does inclusive research produce? Finally the question is addressed of what all this means for inclusive education, arguing that inclusive research has under-explored potential to reinvigorate inclusive education and provide new connections to democracy and social justice in education

Human computer interaction for international development: past present and future

Recent years have seen a burgeoning interest in research into the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in the context of developing regions, particularly into how such ICTs might be appropriately designed to meet the unique user and infrastructural requirements that we encounter in these cross-cultural environments. This emerging field, known to some as HCI4D, is the product of a diverse set of origins. As such, it can often be difficult to navigate prior work, and/or to piece together a broad picture of what the field looks like as a whole. In this paper, we aim to contextualize HCI4D—to give it some historical background, to review its existing literature spanning a number of research traditions, to discuss some of its key issues arising from the work done so far, and to suggest some major research objectives for the future

Note on recruitment as an ethical question: lessons from a project on asexuality

This short piece considers how participant recruitment can have ethical elements. With reference to a qualitative research project on asexuality we explore the challenges associated with recruiting from an emerging, and politically charged, identity group. In our attempt to broaden the representation of asexual stories we sought to recruit people who may not fully identify with the emerging term ‘asexual’ as a sexual orientation while also not equating this with a lifestyle choice of abstinence. This was attempted through crafting suitable recruitment materials via the use of the Mass Observation archive and expanded sampling criteria. Our efforts met with mixed success, on which we reflect. We conclude by suggesting how such ethical questions related to recruitment will remain ‘gaps’ in ethical regulation, calling for a greater reflexive approach from researchers about sampling criteria

Early-life neighborhood context, perceived stress, and preterm birth in African American Women.

Stressors from multiple sources, across the life-course, may have independent and joint associations with preterm birth (PTB) risk in African American women. Using data from the Life-course Influences on Fetal Environments Study (LIFE; 2009-2011) of post-partum African American women from Metropolitan Detroit, Michigan (n=1365), we examined the association between perceived stress and PTB, and effect modification by perceptions of early-life neighborhood social control and disorder. We defined PTB as birth before 37 completed weeks of gestation. We used Cohen's Perceived Stress scale, and valid and reliable scales of early-life (age 10) neighborhood social control and social disorder to quantify exposures. We estimated prevalence ratios (PR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI) with log binomial regression models- with separate interaction terms for perceived stress and each early-life neighborhood scale. We considered p < 0.10 significant for interaction terms. PTB occurred in 16.4% (n=224) of the study participants. In the total sample, perceived stress was not associated with PTB rates. However, there was suggestive evidence of a joint association between perceived stress and early-life neighborhood social disorder (p for interaction = 0.06), such that among women who reported high early-life neighborhood social disorder (n=660), perceived stress was positively associated with PTB (adjusted PR: 1.31; 95% CI: 1.05, 1.63). There was no association between perceived stress and PTB for women in the low early-life neighborhood social disorder strata (n=651) (adjusted PR: 0.95, 95% CI: 0.75, 1.21). There was no evidence that early-life neighborhood social control modified the association between perceived stress and PTB. Our results suggest that early-life neighborhood stressors may magnify the association between current perceived stress and PTB rates, in African American women. More research to confirm and explicate the biologic and/or psychosocial mechanisms of the reported association is warranted