Education Research Ethics

Mindfulness is a burgeoning field of study and practice within mental health care and medicine. Yet ethical codes, and the philosophy of the therapist-client relationship, differ greatly between disciplines, and even more between those disciplines and mindfulness-based approaches. The potential for ethical dilemmas is therefore significant.

The book breaks new ground by taking a focused look at an ethics derived from contemporary clinical mindfulness practice itself. What does a secular ethics of mindfulness look like? Who is competent to work therapeutically with mindfulness, and how does one delimit areas and levels of competence? How do clinicians ethically understand the therapist-client relationship from the therapeutic position of mindfulness? And how do clinicians respond when the necessary restraints of their professional role and ethics code come into conflict with the mindfulness-based relationship and therapeutic position?

This book makes a vital contribution to the understanding of ethics as the cornerstone of mindfulness-based practice, and will be of interest to all those involved in delivering mindfulness-based interventions, including psychologists, counselors, spiritual directors, occupational therapists, physicians, nurses, and educators.

Can science tell us what’s objectively true? Or is it merely a clever way to cure doubt – to give us something to believe in, whether it’s true or not? In this essay, I look at the pragmatist account of science expounded by Charles Sanders Peirce in his 1877 essay, ‘The Fixation of Belief’. Against Peirce, I argue that science does not come naturally to our species, nor does the doubting open-mindedness upon which its practice relies. To the extent that science is successful in ‘curing’ doubt, it’s because it tracks the real state of the world; and I argue that Peirce himself – his pragmatist narrative notwithstanding – is implicitly committed to this view as well.

Our understanding of the cross-cultural aspects of personal epistemology is limited. In particular, cross-cultural comparisons of elementary school teachers’ and students’ personal epistemology have received very little theoretical or empirical attention. The current chapter aims to examine German and U.S. elementary schools in terms of their philosophical and practical similarities and differences in personal epistemology. Both theoretical and empirical work will be reviewed to support a more holistic model of personal epistemology, the Educational Model of Personal Epistemology. In light of this model, we discuss our expectations for differences and similarities in the epistemic climate of elementary classrooms in the U.S. and Germany. Drawing from this discussion, we suggest that researchers should approach cross-cultural research in personal epistemology from a more holistic standpoint, employ a diversity of methods, and obtain a solid understanding of the educational context under study. Regarding educational implications, we propose a possible fusion of the educational philosophies held in the U.S. and Germany concerning the implementation of teacher training and classroom education. Finally, we recommend that fostering evaluativistic thinking (i.e., a way of knowing that focuses on the evaluation and decision-making among differing viewpoints) should be a main goal for education starting at the elementary level to ensure students’ future roles as productive citizens in Western societies and stress the role of the teacher in this endeavor.

Suport de curs elaborat în cadrul proiectului „Etică şi integritate academică de excepţie în cercetarea ştiinţifică şi actul didactic”; implementator: Universitatea Ştefan cel Mare din Suceava, cu sprijin financiar din partea FDI2018, Domeniul 5, Îmbunătăţirea calităţii activităţii didactice, inclusiv a respectării deontologiei şi eticii academice. Cod proiect: CNFIS-FDI-2018-0545.
Etica cercetării se bazează pe o serie de principii, dintre care cele mai semnificative sunt reprezentate de onestitatea obținerii şi prezentării rezultatelor, nonvătămarea subiecților umani, respectarea autonomiei subiecților şi principiul beneficienței.
În cadrul ştiinţific, teoriile existente, care au un număr ridicat de adepţi, vor avea tendinţa de a fi instituite ca un mainstream şi apoi, utilizând instrumentul ,,controlului colegial” sau al evaluării colegiale, de a dicta asupra rezultatelor, nu doar asupra metodei. Metodologia însăşi face parte din corpusul teoretic al unei paradigme, ca atare controlul metodologic instituie un control al temelor cercetării şi, implicit, asupra rezultatelor, raţionalizând ce este şi ce nu este ştiinţific. Adevărul ştiinţific capătă caracterul unui construct social. Fiind o mediere a interpretărilor, adevărul ştiinţific trebuie supus unui control etic. Care este însă atitudinea etică recomandabilă, într-un univers ştiinţific care se constituie tot mai mult din ,,semnificaţii” decât din ,,cunoaştere sistematică”?

This article examines the ways in which problems of concealment emerged in an ethnographic study of a suburban bar, and considers how disclosure of the research aims, the recruitment of informants and elicitation of information was negotiated throughout the fieldwork. The case study demonstrates how the social context and the relationships with specific informants determined overtness or covertness in the research. It is argued that the existing literature on covert research and covert methods provides an inappropriate frame of reference with which to understand concealment in fieldwork. The article illustrates why concealment is sometimes necessary and often unavoidable, and concludes that the criticisms leveled against covert methods should not stop the fieldworker from engaging in research that involves covertness.

Background: Nurses engaging in research are held to research ethics standards. Research aim: Examine experiences, behaviors, and perceptions of nurses in Israel regarding research ethics and explore possible related factors. Research design: An original investigator-designed self-administered questionnaire measured five variables: (a) ethics in research, (b) encountered research misconduct during the course of one's studies, (c) the inclination to fabricate data, (d) the inclination to select or omit data, and (e) knowledge of research misconduct in the workplace. Additionally, demographic data were collected. Participants and research context: The questionnaire was completed by 151 Israeli registered nurses. 10.2% hold a PhD, 34 % hold an MA, 42.2% hold a BA, and 13.6% with no academic degree. Ethical considerations: The study was approved by the University's ethics committee; anonymity and consent of the respondents were respected. Findings: Registered nurses' level of studies achieved was significantly associated with a lower inclination to fabricate data, with one exception-PhD nurses were more inclined to fabricate data than nurses with a Master's degree. A trend was found in which a higher level of studies is associated with higher knowledge of research misconduct in the workplace. Discussion: Results indicate that nurses' perceptions of research ethics change throughout their academic studies, indicating a positive influence of level of studies, research experience, and work experience on ethics perceptions. Nevertheless, PhD nurses showed a greater inclination to actually select, omit, or even fabricate data than MA nurses. This may be related to pressure to publish. Conclusion: PhD nursing programs should include ethics training. Academic faculty members should serve as role models regarding research integrity. Research ethics deserves further emphasis on all levels of nurse education in Israel, as well as in the nurses' code of ethics and related documents. This may positively impact ethical research practices.

Innovation and the development of knowledge in the field of scientific research is increasing exponentially, but it continues to be disjointed. It makes it difficult to keep up with state-of-the-art and to be at the forefront of research and dissemination, as well as to evaluate empirical evidence in the area of academic excellence. Recent literature reviews are frequently lacking in thoroughness and rigor and are carried out in part rather than using a specific design. This descriptive-mapping review aimed to illustrate plagiarism and research integrity literature published over a 10-year period (2010 to 2020). To achieve this goal, literature reviews were conducted to obtain relevant articles and documentation on plagiarism and its potential impact in the academic and publishing industries. Methodical searches in specific databases such as Web of Science and Scopus, including the Google Scholar Search Engine, have been undertaken to ensure the accuracy of the results. Thereafter, descriptive mapping was used to categorize qualifying articles. Over 350 titles were collected from the searches, of which 129 complete works were published in various journals during the covered period. Finally, in this review, 35 papers were eligible for inclusion. The themes were enumerated in the scholarly articles. Findings revealed a dearth of scientifically credible and relevant literature on plagiarism issues, such as the phenomenon in the academic environment, its particular specific factors and triggering causes, and the impacts of the institutional policy interventions being enforced. Although the results provided background information for the creation of a realistic guide to avoid plagiarism incidences, robust empirical and evaluative studies should be planned to identify the real implications of preventing plagiarism to uphold the credibility of scientific research and evaluate the impact of ethical issues, practices, and policies suggested by organizations and industries.

Research is at once technical and transformative; political and personal. Conducting good research, like good teaching, involves a cyclical process called praxis, where theory, action, and reflection affect positive changes (Freire, 1970/2007). Historical time periods, research paradigms, and methodologies all coevolve—this course surveys multiple approaches to research on deaf education as the discipline changes in the 21st Century. The class exposes you to a diverse research corpus that explores interdependent relationships between quality teaching and ethical research. The class has two purposes. First, to help you understand and unpack the complex issues of contemporary deaf research; and second, to prepare you for conducting action research projects in your own classrooms. Together, they will assist you becoming an evidence- based educator. We will come to understand how context and positionality affect research design, data collection/interpretation, and ethical inquiry in deaf education research. The course design provides abundant opportunities for actively studying critical moments of change that have profoundly shaped deaf education research in local and global contexts. Considerable effort has been made to select textbooks and other contemporary readings that view deafness positively, including philosophical subjects like ethics and deaf epistemology. The broad theme for this course is: understanding research praxis.

L'objectif de cet article, dans le cadre de ce séminaire, est de poser les jalons d'une réflexion sur l'Ethique (la Bioéthique n'étant qu'une des composantes les plus étudiées actuellement) qui se base sur une approche chrétienne du sens de la personne comme un être entier indivisible, faisant de l'Ethique une partie intégrante de la Spiritualité en tant que Vie en Christ.
          En posant la problématique créée par une certaine ambiguïté au niveau du discours, des références ainsi que de la pratique, cette intervention veut proposer une optique ouverte: (i) revalorisant le discours sur le Corps, (ii) consolidant le référence aux sources comme vécues pleinement dans l'Eglise, Corps du Christ Un dans sa divinité et multiple par les charismes de ses membre, (iii) et redonnant à la Spiritualité son sens dynamique.
          Après avoir posé la problématique, cette intervention développera une lecture du sens du Corps, suivie d'une optique de l'unité intrinsèque de l'Etre, pour terminer sur la façon dont l'Ethique peut être vécue comme partie intégrante de la Croissance en Christ.

Cumhuriyet’in ve demokrasinin ideallerine dayanarak XX. yüzyılın başlarından itibaren yeniden kurumsallaşan, toplumsal olarak dönüşen ve inşa edilen Türkiye için önemsenen temel noktalardan biri iyi vatandaşın, ahlaklı yurttaşın nasıl yetiştirilebileceğiydi. Her anlamda yetişmiş insan potansiyeli eksikliğinin hissedildiği Türkiye'de; anayasal haklardan ahlaki ölçütlere uzanan geniş bilgi yığınına hâkim ahlaklı vatandaşın yetiştirilmesinin anahtarı ise eğitim olarak görüldü. Bu kitap, öğretim programlarında ve ders kitaplarında hem geçmişte ahlak eğitiminde ne tür yöntemlerin kullanıldığını açığa çıkartmakta hem de günümüzde nasıl bir ahlak eğitimi olması gerektiğine dair ipuçları vermektedir.

Ayrıca bu eser II. Meşrutiyet yıllarının da birikimini göz önünde bulundurarak öğretim programlarından, ders kitaplarından ve ikincil kaynaklardan hareketle Türkiye’nin tarihindeki ve eğitim düşüncesindeki iyi yurttaşın başka bir deyişle ahlaklı vatandaşın nasıl kurgulandığını açığa çıkartmaktadır. Türkiye'de ahlak eğitiminin ve eğitim düşüncesinin nereden gelip nereye gittiğine dair yön tayin eden bu eserin eğitim tarihi ve eğitim felsefesi üzerine çalışmalar yapan araştırmacılara katkı sağlaması beklenmektedir.

Ethical evaluation of genomic studies is increasingly emphasized as a method to solve ethical difficulties in research. Research ethics committees (RECs) however, have their own specific problems, and especially the renewed use of existing personal data and bodily material has created a need for further guidance (Arnason, Nordal, and Arnason, 2004; NBAC, 1999; Beskow, Burke, and Merz et al., 2001, ALRC, 2003). researchers, on the other hand, are concerned that ethical evaluation will impede important genomic research (Arnason, Nordal, and Arnason, 2004).

Any implementation of personalized learning and teaching through big data will have implications for research ethics. This chapter considers the research ethics implications in certain key regulatory documents and the scholarship on research ethics and learning analytics. Finally, the chapter provides guidelines for use by researchers and research ethics review committees-within the field of education in the South African context-specifically focusing on personalized learning and teaching through big data and learning analytics.

The promise of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to transform both how we think about ourselves and how we live our lives has remained in the realm of science fiction for centuries, since at least as far back as Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Only recently has AI rather suddenly started to deliver on that promise. Robots are caring for the elderly. Self-driving cars are on the roads. Elections have been won and lost due to AI personality profiling. Warehouse workers are being promoted and fired by autonomous algorithms. A moment of reckoning is happening in the technology sector. Researchers and coders are realizing that their jobs are not purely technical in nature. Governments and corporations are grappling with the social and ethical impact of AI. Regular people are waking up to the hidden effects technology is having on their lives. This chapter projects into the not-so-distant future to explore the societal changes AI is bringing, and to suggest some ways that education systems might adapt in the face of those changes. Students will need new skills and capacities to live in an AI future, and to steer AI in directions they may find more desirable.

The concept of distributed moral responsibility (DMR) has a long history. When it is understood as being entirely reducible to the sum of (some) human, individual, and already morally loaded actions, then the allocation of DMR, and hence of praise and reward or blame and punishment, may be pragmatically difficult, but not conceptually problematic. However, in distributed environments it is increasingly possible that a network of agents, some human, some artificial (e.g. a program) and some hybrid (e.g. a group of people working as a team thanks to a software platform) may cause distributed moral actions (DMAs). These are morally good or evil (i.e., morally loaded) actions caused by local interactions that are in themselves neither good nor evil (morally neutral). In this article, I analyse DMRs that are due to DMAs and argue in favour of the allocation, by default and overridably, of full moral responsibility (faultless responsibility) to all the nodes/agents in the network causally relevant for bringing about the DMA in question, independently of intentionality. The mechanism proposed is inspired by, and adapts, three concepts: back propagation from network theory, strict liability from jurisprudence, and common knowledge from epistemic logic.

Entrepreneurship education with a focus on sustainable development primarily teaches students to develop a profit‐driven mentality. As sustainable development is a value‐oriented and normative concept, the role of individual ethical norms and values in entrepreneurial processes has been receiving increased attention. Therefore, this study addresses the role of moral competence in the process of idea generation
for sustainable development. A mixed method design was developed in which wouldbe
entrepreneurs were subjected to a questionnaire (n = 398) and to real‐life decision‐
making processes in a case assignment (n = 96). The results provide stepping
stones for implementing (moral) competencies in entrepreneurship education as a
possible avenue to move away from a sole focus on a profit‐driven mentality.

In genomic research the ideal standard of free, informed, prior, and explicit consent is believed to restrict important research studies. For certain types of genomic research other forms of consent are therefore proposed which are ethically justified by an appeal to the common good. This notion is often used in a general sense and this forms a weak basis for the use of weaker forms of consent. Here we examine how the notion of the common good can be related to individual health, health care, and genomic research and we use this analysis to propose more precise criteria to justify forms of consent which diverge from the ideal standard.

Koro-Ljungberg, M., Cirell, A. M., Byoung-gyu, G., & Tesar, M. (2017). The importance of small form: “Minor” data and “BIG” neoliberalism. In N. Denzin, & M. D. Giardina, Qualitative Inquiry in Neoliberal Times (pp. 59–73). New York, NY: Routledge.

This article is about the power of the Media nowadays when
they enjoy authority and prestige, and therefore, its image attracts and influence in social change and the acquisition of new lifestyles and values. This case of the Cinema is described more carefully in the aspects that make it effective for the transmission of values. Some sociologists emphasize, finally, the Media ability of socialization.

The juxtaposition of action and research conveys a sense of the richness and complexity of action research, yet it does not entirely translate its nuanced and sophisticated philosophy. In turn, an understanding of this philosophy is crucial for grasping action research’s radical originality. In this context at least, it may be more accurate to define action research by drawing on the term practice, even though it does not form part of the basic conceptual pair. Not only does practice make it easier for us to trace the constellation of philosophical influences behind the theory and practice of action research—from pragmatism to postmodernism, including Greek philosophy and Marxist and psychoanalytic schools of thought—but also to identify where these influences end and action research emerges as the bearer of a nontransferable view. Beyond this, at the heart of action research lies a structural affinity with singular social practices, which are its key ontological sites—that is, the context where action research in each case fills its epistemological and ethical dimensions with meaning.

What kind of knowledge does action research aim to produce? What behaviors do action researchers engage in? Compared to other research paradigms in the social sciences—the field of education included—the specific quality of action research has to do with how its epistemological and ethical dimensions are shaped not from without but from within any given social practice. This is the key to its specific ecology. In action research, the epistemological and ethical realms do not stand beyond or above the situated social practices, with their values, principles of procedure, knowledges, and discourses, including their own literacies and modalities—in short, their own internal cultures. Action research conceives and presents itself as a rational and systematic way for members of the different social practices to build and rebuild their own epistemologies and ethics precisely by drawing on, and selecting from, their own internal cultures.

How does this ecological perspective translate itself in education? Education is one of the key areas in which action research is generally applied, together with welfare and healthcare. Yet apart from the specific use of action research by educators, action research carries within itself a specific educational philosophy (and a political philosophy as well) which underlies its application, regardless of the specific social practice in which it takes place. In the same way that action research is politically democratic, educationally speaking action research is participatory, meaning that learning, improvement, or development can only be realized through a self-determining process in which people act and research freely upon and among themselves. This is precisely what action research facilitates in the different social practices. Action research is always educational, whether one develops it in education, welfare, or healthcare. As a result, action research has contributed a clear-cut pedagogical model that some critical educators have already imported to their own educational institutions and practices: youth participatory action research.