Meeting and managing ethical challenges in a New Zealand practitioner research project.
Mary Hill
Faculty of Education
The University of Auckland
New Zealand
Jan Robertson
School of Education
University of Waikato
New Zealand
Paper presented at the British Educational Research Association Annual Conference, University of Warwick, 6-9 September 2006
This paper reports research undertaken as part of the Great Expectations: strengthening teaching and enhancing learning in schools with diverse student populations through action research project funded by the Teaching and Learning Research Initiative (TLRI), a Ministry of Education initiative managed by the New Zealand Council for Educational Research (NZCER).
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ABSTRACT
Practitioner research projects generate ethical challenges that may differ from those encountered in more traditional research in schools and classrooms. This paper draws on a 2 year long practitioner research project in New Zealand in which teacher-researchers in six primary schools with diverse student populations researched their efforts to enhance teaching, improve student achievement and raise expectations. The project was funded by the New Zealand Ministry of Education through the Teaching and Learning Research Initiative. Managed by the New Zealand Council for Educational Research, the Teaching and Learning Research Initiative aims to:
· build knowledge, through partnership research, about teaching and learning
· use this knowledge to create improved outcomes for learners
· create partnerships between practitioners and researchers to maximize the value and usefulness of research.
This paper describes how teacher researchers in each school implemented and investigated interventions they believed would improve student achievement and raise expectations within their schools. Although each intervention was specific to each school, the research team constructed a conceptual framework in order to provide common research questions that were investigated across all six schools.
Ethical challenges emerged from the moment the research got underway. These included gaining ethical approval from the university ethics committee, ensuring confidentiality for teachers and students at all the schools while sharing progress at symposia and reporting to the funding body. The findings indicated that another significant challenge was the tension between including the teacher researchers as authors on published papers and keeping the identities of the research participants confidential.
Actual examples that arose during the process of this project are described along with comments by the teacher-researchers. A series of questions that might serve as a guide for decision-making are presented. The paper concludes with some recommendations about anticipating and managing ethical challenges in practitioner research.
Introduction
This Teaching and Learning Research Initiative (TLRI) project (Great expectations: strengthening teaching and enhancing learning in schools with diverse student populations through action research) investigated school-based action research for school improvement in 2004 and 2005. Researchers from the University of Waikato (and later, The University of Auckland) worked with teacher researchers from six primary schools to explore ways of changing the classroom practices of teachers.
The main aim of the project was to add to existing knowledge of teaching and learning in primary classrooms and use this new knowledge to inform and help teachers and students. Together, the teacher researchers identified factors such as expectations that were linked to improving student achievement and teacher practices within their respective schools. Teaching strategies that led to improved achievement—especially literacy and numeracy—were identified, using a range of classroom research methods.
Building the capacity of teachers to reduce inequalities and maintain high student achievement in schools with diverse student populations was also an important aim of this project. An associated aim was to increase the research capability of the teacher researchers within each of the participating schools, in order to enhance their professional learning and research qualifications.
The six main research questions that guided the study were:
How well are students achieving currently in each participating school?
What expectations are held for students within each school?
What teaching and school leadership practices strengthen learning in each context?
How should teaching change to improve learning and achievement consistently throughout classrooms in each school?
What capabilities do teachers and teacher researchers need to sustain constant improvement within their school?
How can the findings of teacher research be best communicated to a wider audience of professionals, academics, and officials?
Such a list of questions, at first glance, looks unproblematic. But undertaking this research from the inside, with teachers also becoming the researchers can be problematic on a number of fronts. As Brown and Jones (2001) warn
(emancipatory action research) draws on an uneasy alliance of two alternative research perspectives: (a) the insider perspective of teachers focusing on their own actions; and (b) research motivated by attempts to influence policy across broader sections of the teaching force. It may work in my classroom…but it is a different matter making it stick as national policy. Further, research agendas are not easily harmonized with conflicting assumptions and motivations held by different agencies, not least those assumptions built into the infrastructure within which education practices take place. (p. 4)
Soon after the TLRI began in New Zealand, the co-ordination team began to investigate this pressure point between the motivations of teachers acting as researchers in their own schools and the wider notions of research evidence that government agencies such as the Ministry of Education hold as aspirations for system-wide change. These tensions are well known and written about in the literature. As well as some deep routed debates about whether practitioner-based enquiry can even be considered as research, Murray and Lawrence (2000) list six objections to teacher research that articulate the main substantive and procedural issues. These are that practitioner-based enquiries are:
Epistemologically rooted in complex and controversial theoretical perspectives and philosophical outlooks;
Liable to produce reports that fundamentally misconceive the nature of educational practice allocating a dimension of personal ownership to it that is unjustifiable on legal-rational grounds and which also misrecognizes the normative and institutional character of such practice;
Open to the practitioner being misled into assuming that spontaneous classroom action, habit and subjective preference are the stuff of scientific revelation and can be used as evidence of prevailing conditions in classrooms;
Not able to match the (research) skills or habits of mind routinely displayed by physical scientists and that whatever research training is offered to practitioners is frequently partial, fragmentary and may lead to flawed data gathering and spurious conclusions;
Irreconcilable with the “teacher as teacher” role of the teacher;
Not amenable to be carried out under conventional research ethics. “Conventional ethics governing access to the research venue, confidentiality of information and the privacy of research subjects may all be compromised by the privileged role/status position of the practitioner and the presumption of the autonomy that accompanies this position. Indeed the interpersonal conditions in classrooms and of tutor work may be a primary source for the bias and contamination of data” (Murray and Lawrence, 2000, pp. 18-19).
While all of these debates were confronted within our project, the last is the aspect addressed at some length in this paper. We believe, as do Murray and Lawrence (2000) that the ethical framework within which practitioner research operates is critically significant for the legitimacy of the enterprise. Robinson and Lai (2006) also spend time in their text, Practitioner research for educators, guiding practitioners about ethical decision making in their research endeavours. In particular, Robinson and Lai indicate that free and informed consent, and the prevention of harm are paramount factors in ethical decision making. They sum up their section by providing 5 principles to guide ethical decision-making. These can be summarized as:
There are no rules to follow – only awareness of ethical principles and wise application to your particular context;
Ethical decision making is a kind of problem solving;
Where you can, involve others in making ethical decisions that effect them;
Use conversations and test your own and others’ assumptions about the impact of research on others. For example, do not assume that everyone wants to be anonymous.
Work on increasing the benefit to participants as well as minimizing harm. The more potential benefits that teachers see in a research project, the more risks they may be prepared to take. (2006, p. 71).
Research design and methods
The pressure on schools to improve and to raise achievement has increased since restructuring in education in the 1990s and is unlikely to abate in the near future. In New Zealand, as elsewhere (Harris 2002; Harris 2004) education policy is firmly focused on increasing student and school performance. All six schools in the study reported here were focused upon improvement and held “high” expectations for their students. However, what was not clear at the beginning of this study was what those expectations were and how they might contribute to achievement. Furthermore, as the project got underway and the schools introduced themselves to one another, it became obvious that they were very diverse in a range of ways. Table 1 below summarizes statistically some of this diversity.
Over two years (2004-5), each of these schools investigated the research questions (above) through action research designed to raise both achievement and expectations. Due to their diversity, as well as the fact that each school planned, implemented and researched their own improvement project, case study methodology (Bassey, 1999; Hill, 2000) within an overarching conceptual framework (Robertson, Hill and Earl, 2004) provided the research design for the Great Expectations research. Using our overarching research questions as a conceptual framework, the project as a whole investigated and reported with regard to expectations and achievement as well as other aspects including teaching, learning, assessment, professional learning communities and leadership approaches.
School / Roll / Location / Decile / School type / Ethnic compositionA / 700 / Large city suburban / 10 / Contributing primary
Yrs 0-6 / Pakeha 40%,
Chinese 30%
Indian 10%
Maori 1%
B / 600 / Small city suburban / 3 / Intermediate
Yrs 7-8 / Pakeha 50%
Maori 30%
Other 20%
C / 150 / Rural / 1 / Full primary
Yrs 0-8 / Maori 80%
Pakeha/other 20%
D / Small city suburban / 2 / Contributing primary
Yrs 0-6 / Maori 50%
Pakeha 34%
Pacific Islands 7%
Asian 7%,Other2%
E / 300 / Large city suburban / 1 / Integrated full primary
(Roman Catholic)
Yrs 0-8 / Pacific Islands 96% Predominantly Samoan
Maori 4%
F / 400 / Small city suburban / 5 / Contributing primary
Yrs 0-6 / Pakeha 59%
Maori 17%
Other 16%
Table 1 Characteristics of the six participating schools
The project was designed so that university researchers and teacher-researchers worked together over two years (2004-5). In 2004 three meetings were held at which the teacher-researchers in the six primary schools and the university researchers designed the conceptual framework, refined the research questions for each of the schools, gathered and analysed expectation and achievement data as well as information about how the teachers experienced their role as researchers (Robertson and Hill, 2005). A third university researcher joined the project during 2004 to assist some of the schools to investigate numeracy achievement (see Young-Loveridge, 2005 for details). In 2005 the schools worked far more independently to pursue their projects meeting twice to review and re-plan. In November 2005, partly to investigate the final research question but also to generate enthusiasm amongst teachers for practitioner research, the final symposium became a national event. It began with keynote address given by Professor Lorna Earl (Toronto), included university/researcher-led workshops and concluded with twenty-five teacher-researcher presentations.
At various points throughout the project, data was gathered from students at each of the schools and the teacher researchers. This was in order to assist us to answer the main research questions (listed above) and to determine to what extent the TLRI aims of adding strategic, research and practice value to the New Zealand education context, and to what extent the partnership we had set out to promote through the research project had been established.
Ethical considerations
At the very start of the project in putting together the application for funding, special attention was paid to ethical considerations. The following statement was included in the proposal application by the university and teacher researchers.
Although this proposal arose from the participants’ desire to research and improve practice within their own school settings, the research team has discussed the ethical considerations relating to this proposal. These considerations, and brief comment about how any issues will be addressed, are set out below. Prior to the research, the project will be approved by the appropriate institutional research ethics committee at the University of Waikato.
Because the teacher-researchers initiated and took part in the design of this proposal, no difficulties are anticipated in gaining access to participants. Due to the fact that four of the six principals are members of the research team and both of the other two principals are keen for the project to take place in their schools, they will have primary responsibility for accessing participants. Ethically this situates the principals at the center of the research, allowing for the free-flow of information to Boards of trustees, staff, students and the community when necessary, but also raising issues of power that may need to be addressed at other times. Clear ethical guidelines will be put in place to assist with this. For example, teachers who are invited to participate must feel able to decline or withdraw at any stage. This will be made clear in the information for participants as well as at the symposia.
All participants will receive written information, and further explanations where necessary, about the nature of the project and their part in it. In all schools this will include the Board of Trustees and participating teachers. In some schools this may include students, parents and other people associated with the school. All participants will give their free, informed consent. It will be made very clear in supporting information that participation is voluntary and that they have the right to withdraw.
Privacy and confidentiality will be respected. All documentation will be kept confidential so that no individual or school will be identifiable in the reports, papers or other documentation emanating from the project. Codes will be used for each school and participant from the start of the research process. However, because this project is built on an inter-school action research methodology, the participants will share information about each school, and classes within each school and results may well be disseminated within school communities, raising ethical considerations. These will be addressed as they arise and code names used in the publication and dissemination of such material.