Risks to informed consent in pedagogic research

Originally published in Journal of Perspectives in Applied Academic Practice, 2013.Stierer and Antoniou (2004) have described Pedagogic Research (PR) as primarily teachers undertaking research into aspects of their own teaching and learning. Consequently, those undertaking PR often occupy dual roles of teacher and researcher. Likewise the subjects being studied are often the researcher’s own students and thus also occupying dual roles of student and participant. The purpose of this article is to highlight the potential risks to valid, informed consent inherent in the nature of pedagogic research itself; due to the dual roles mentioned above and the blurred boundaries between practice development and PR. Whilst inaccurate or incomplete information for decision making is an obvious risk to informed consent, the risks to voluntary participation can be more subtle. Reference is made to a documentary analysis of feedback provided to applicants by a research ethics committee reviewing pedagogic research. Whilst this is not a research report of that study, it provides empirical evidence to support the arguments made in this article. The article concludes that the greatest risk to valid informed consent is the lack of awareness among practitioner-researchers of the risks to voluntary participation this type of research holds. The author highlights the role for academic developers in highlighting these issues on professional development programmes and to the wider academic community. It is also recommended that a clear institutional position on when teacher/researchers need to apply for ethical approval could also be useful, particularly if flexibility is built in to allow for informal discussions with the Chair of the REC

The role obligations of learners and lecturers in higher education

This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Journal of Philosophy of Education, 2012, 46(1), pp. 14-28, which has been published in final form at http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9752.2011.00834.x. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance With Wiley Terms and Conditions for self-archiving.The current discussion of consumerism in higher education focuses largely on what the providers are obliged to do for the consumers, fuelled by the rising tuition fees. This framework does not always sit comfortably with lecturers in the context of a learning and teaching relationship, as it appears to ignore the reciprocal obligations lecturers and learners have to one another. The purpose of this paper is to offer an alternative view of what lecturers and learners are obliged to do in the learning and teaching relationship, if learning is to be effective. The claims made in this paper are as follows: in higher education, both learners and lecturers have moral role obligations; these moral role obligations are derived from the functions of the roles being voluntarily undertaken by each party; therefore, by ascertaining the functions of a learner and of a lecturer, both a descriptive purpose and a normative purpose will be revealed for each; using moral role obligations as a basis for the student/lecturer relationship offers a less contentious alternative to the consumerist model. This paper demonstrates, using Aristotle’s function argument, that defining the function of an entity (in this case a role), has both a descriptive and normative purpose. It then briefly outlines possible definitions for the roles of learner and lecturer in higher education. Having made a claim (albeit a tentative one) to define the functions of learner and lecturer, recommendations are made on how these role obligations can be utilised to create an effective learning relationship

Scenario-based evaluation of an ethical framework for the use of digital media in learning and teaching

nterest in educational podcasting, audio feedback and media-enhanced learning, in its various forms, has grown due to the increased access academic staff and students have to new technologies. The benefits have been widely reported in the educational development and disciplinary literature on learning technology, mobile learning, digital age learning, and assessment and feedback. However, such literature focuses more on what can be done, rather than if it should be done. Hargreaves (2008) signals the need to balance ethical risk in the creative curriculum with actions that maximise beneficence, especially within the context of a sector that espouses to develop critical skills in learners. In a world of constantly developing technology, it is not always easy to appraise the implications of a pedagogic innovation. As practitioners concerned with academic development, our aim is to facilitate academics to reflect on their practice from a variety of perspectives, and we felt that an easy–to-use ethical framework could assist academics to identify potential ethical problems. The Media-Enhanced Learning Special Interest Group (MELSIG) is a UK network of academics, developers and learning technologists. They identified the need to consider the ethical risk associated with using digital media in response to examples described in recent literature, and ideas generated by its community. It was as a result of discussions at MELSIG that this collaborative work began. The three members of MELSIG were joined by a colleague with an interest in ethics but who was relatively inexperienced with new technologies. When this work began we looked primarily at digital media, but it is considered that such a framework can be used to appraise the use of other new technologies in learning and teaching. This paper will begin by giving a brief explanation of ethics, as a discipline, and the approach to ethics which underpins this framework. We will then discuss the results from a scenario-based evaluation of the framework, undertaken by the four authors. Following this evaluation, the framework is now being evaluated by a wider community of practitioners, on real examples, and continues to develop as it is exposed to wider use. However, it is considered that the initial scenario-based evaluation raised some interim findings that will be of interest to a wider audience

Experiments with Buddhist Forms of Thought, Action and Practice to Promote Significant Learning

While scholars have considered the centrality of teaching in Buddhist traditions and the rich pedagogical resources Buddhism has to offer academic courses on the topic, less attention has been paid to the ways in which Buddhist pedagogy might be applied to the overall structure of course design. This article addresses the challenges of presenting the richness and complexity of Buddhist traditions while also encouraging students to experientially engage such traditions in ways that promote transformative learning. It proposes using Buddhist pedagogical principles, together with a model of significant learning (Fink 2013), to design a course according to the Three Trainings in Wisdom, Ethics and Meditation. Framing the course as a series of experiments in Buddhist forms of thought, action, and practice highlights the critical perspective common to both Buddhist and academic approaches and helps maintain important distinctions between Buddhist traditions and popular secular practices. This article describes specific experiments with Buddhist ways of reading and analyzing classic and contemporary texts, films and images, together with experiments in Buddhist methods of contemplative and ethical practice, in an introductory course in order to help students see how forms of suffering that concern them might arise and be stopped or prevented from a Buddhist point of view

A comparative study of the perceptions of professional staff on their contribution to student outcomes

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis Group in Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management on 14/8/2014, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/1360080X.2014.936093This journal articles examines the perceptions of professional staff on their contribution to student outcomes

Ethical issues in pedagogic research

This presentation discusses the ethical issues identified by a research ethics committee (REC) over a three year period. The REC deals exclusively with proposals for pedagogic research. The purpose of the research was to identify the nature and frequency of ethical concerns expressed by the REC, in order to improve guidance for future applicants

I-LEEP Newsletter Volume 2, Issue 1

https://digitalcommons.lasalle.edu/ileep_newsletter/1004/thumbnail.jp

The Value of Process in Racial Equity Work: Reflections from a Faculty Learning Community

This article explores how one higher education faculty learning community engaged in reflective practices in pursuit of their commitment to the inclusion of anti-racist content and pedagogy across their multidisciplinary curriculums. As a key initial step in engaging in this collaborative, cross-disciplinary work, they set out to consider collective definitions of key terms that are deemed critical to anti-racist pedagogy. This group engaged in a collaborative exploratory process to explore definitions and understanding of the following terms: whiteness, racism, race, racial equity, racial injustice/inequity, white supremacy, and anti-racism and document the reflective process by which the determination took place. Themes among the definitions and dynamics within the group process are identified and analyzed. The discussion focuses on the challenges and learning within the reflective process and the implications for faculty learning communities and for the anti-racist preparation of professionals in education and mental health contexts