In a new article in the Tijdschrift voor Lerarenopleiders (Journal for Teacher Educators), Martina van Uum, Amber Walraven, and Lieke Jager describe how the research group of the Radboud Docenten Academie explored these challenges together and arrived at a shared vision and policy.
What makes educational research ethically complex?
Anyone conducting research in their own classroom or teacher education programme occupies a dual role: that of teacher and researcher simultaneously. These roles come with different interests and responsibilities. How transparent should you be with participants about this? And to what extent do students or pupils genuinely feel free to opt out of participation, particularly when the researcher is also their teacher? These are not abstract questions, but concrete dilemmas that teacher educators may encounter.
A shared conversation as a starting point
To explore these dilemmas further, the researchers engaged participants in structured conversations using cards with statements representing a range of positions, from a more restrictive to a more permissive view of research in and on one's own teaching practice. Participants first established their own position, then discussed it in groups. This process gave everyone insight into how their perspective related to that of their colleagues, and ultimately led to a shared vision and policy, giving individual teacher educators a clearer framework for navigating ethical questions in their own research practice.
Recommendations for practice
The authors recommend that teachers and teacher educators engage in this kind of conversation within their own school or institution, ideally using concrete statements or cards as a starting point. A shared framework makes individual dilemmas easier to discuss and prevents each person from having to work things out in isolation.
About the authors
Martina van Uum is an assistant professor and teacher educator at the Radboud Docenten Academie. Her work focuses on inquiry-based and design-based learning in secondary education, and she chairs the ethics committee of the RDA.
Amber Walraven is an educational scientist and expert in teacher expertise at Neon (Nederlands Onderwijsinstituut). Before that, she spent more than eleven years as an assistant professor and teacher educator at the Radboud Docenten Academie, where her research focused on the professional development of teachers and teacher educators.
Lieke Jager is a teacher educator and programme coordinator of the educatieve minor and module at the Radboud Docenten Academie. She is also involved as a postdoctoral researcher in a study on the educational design of mixed-ability first-year secondary school classes, with a focus on diversity, equal opportunities, and differentiation.