Ethical considerations for conducting classroom research with human participants

Ethics has been defined as \"norms for conduct that distinguish between acceptable and unacceptable behavior\" (Resnick, 2011). When conducting research in the classroom, there are many ethical considerations the research must make. These include students\' and teachers\' rights, privacy rights, the issue of obtaining informed consent, and the most ethical approach to gaining access to the site, and how to safeguard against conflicts of interest, bias, and theft of intellectual property. This proposal will describe my plan for addressing the following risk considerations: 1) human participant risk, 2) site permission, 3) conflict of interest, 4) intellectual property, 5) bias.

Human Participant Risk

Legal Basis

Ethical concerns relating to human participant risk include violating the subjects\' right to privacy and right to informed consent. The issue of obtaining informed consent is an important one when conducting research in the classroom. Bournot-Trites and Belanger (2005) show that some students may refuse to participate in a study performed in their classroom. While this is well within the right of a student, a researcher strives to obtain the informed consent of all so as to have the most effective sample possible. To this end, the researcher may utilize a third party to obtain the necessary consent forms. In the case of my capstone project, I could employ the aid of the teachers being utilized in the study to supply their students with the required consent forms.

Legal Basis

Obtaining site permission to the school where research will be conducted is another important step that has ethical implications. Gaining clearance is identified as a necessary condition by several ethical research scholars in the field of education (Biesta, 2015; Briggs et al., 2012; Gruenewald, Smith, 2014). The ethical issues related to working with sites and the process for obtaining site permission are: knowing and adhering to local regulations put forward by the school district (information on how to conduct research in Virginia schools can be obtained from the district directly); adhering to individual school policies regarding obtaining student/teacher information; and ensuring privacy and confidentiality for participants.

Implications for Capstone

My occupation is in the school structure of Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS) in Virginia. The organization has come up with a holistic and diverse strategy for ensuring superior-quality guidance and supports for ELL learners. Administrative support, professional support as well as mainstream ESL educators in the complex strategy of our school structure meant to serve the diverse population of students, consisting of 30,000 ELLs who come from more than 200 different countries, and who speak 140 different dialects. I will contact the FCPS superintendent to ask for approval for basing my study on the district within which the school is located.

I will then meet individually with the principals of the schools chosen for the study in order to introduce myself and explain the purpose and nature of the research that I will be conducting. The purpose of meeting with the principals is to communicate directly with them the details of my capstone so that they are not left uninformed of what is going on. This allows them to be part of the process and have direct, first-hand knowledge of the activity. It also provides an opportunity for questions to be asked and answered in face-to-face format, which helps to build trust (Biesta, 2015).

Site permission will be accomplished once the appropriate forms are filled out and filed with the district superintendent and copies obtained for the individual schools. These will also be supplied to the individual teachers who will be participating in the capstone project and made available for stakeholders upon request.

Contacting the principals in question will proceed first via telephone, whereupon an appointment with a secretary will be secured. This will enable me to present the capstone project and to develop rapport with the principal, which is a positive first step in obtaining assistance in field research (Okello et al., 2013).

It is also important that both I and the school district have records of my application for permission to conduct research in the schools and copies of approval being given by the district. This will help to rectify and legal issues that may arise later on if a stakeholder objects to the capstone project\'s initiation.

Conflict of Interest

Moral Basis

Conflicts of interest in education research can occur when a person interferes in the data obtaining process for personal gain. In order to avoid conflicts of interest, the researcher should comply with regulations, avoid/minimize direct conflict, disclose any personal interests or stakes in the research/outcomes, manage conflicts and continue the process of learning (Biesta, 2015; Briggs et al., 2012; Bournot-Trites et al., 2005).

Implications for Capstone

This capstone project will avoid conflicts of interest by following the steps describe above.

First, I will comply with regulations set forward by the school district in Virginia and the individual policies set forward by the schools utilized in the study. This will mitigate any risk associated with interest conflicts because regulations are designed to ensure academic objectivity and fairness.

Second, I will minimize direct conflict by allowing teachers and students to engage with one another as normal for their environment. I will not be intrusive in any way but will simply provide teachers with the necessary materials, tools and training to implement the curriculum guide for their students. Any direct intervention beyond that is minimal to nil.

Third, I will disclose any personal stakes I have in the research. For this particular capstone, I have no personal interests in the outcome, as my study is objectively composed to determine the outcome of the intervention. I achieve no personal gain for any outcome one way or the other.

Finally I will manage conflicts and continue the process of learning by ensuring that steps 1 through 3 and adhered to and that all stakeholders are comprised of the importance of honesty and fairness in recording data. Learning will be continued in the sense that following the analysis of data, recommendations will be made for future research based on the outcomes and what they signify.

Intellectual Property

Legal Basis

As Pilz (2012) points out, student intellectual property is an issue that many places of education and learning are facing today. Ethical questions about who controls the intellectual property relate to who has had input into it: in some cases, educators feel as though they may have had a hand in shaping the intellectual property and thus should be credited for their role. The issue, as Pilz (2012) observes is far from being resolved.

Intellectual property, as Verspagen (2006) notes, is not easily defined because of the manner in which creative works are produced. In many legal cases, lawsuits over intellectual property appear again and again. Likewise, in terms of research, \"who controls research stands at the center of a growing number of legal and administrative disputes which raise critical issues of professional sovereignty, scientific secrecy, and proprietary rights\" (Nelkin, 1984, p. 13). In the case of my capstone project, ensuring that intellectual property rights are not violated is an important part of maintaining the integrity of the project.

Implications for Capstone

In order to ensure intellectual property rights and maintain the study\'s integrity, I will have all participants sign non-disclosure agreement forms in order to ensure scientific secrecy and confidentiality. I will also have them sign a form that shows their agreement to sign over all intellectual property rights pertaining to the study to me, the researcher. This will be the simplest way to ensure that no intellectual property rights violations occur.

As the study will not require students or teachers to create or produce anything that they may later like to use, sell, or implement for personal or monetary gain, the risk of disputes arising regarding intellectual property rights is minimal. So as to ensure that this risk is completely mitigated, I will take the added step of having the non-disclosure agreement forms signed and the intellectual property rights forms signed by participants. This will prevent any need for legal wrangling or any fear or threat of disputes associated with intellectual property from arising in the future.

Bias

Moral Basis

The importance of examining for personal bias is located in the moral responsibility that the researcher has to obtain objective results through fair and impartial means and to analyze those results in the same objective manner (Bournot-Trites et al., 2005). Personal bias can take many forms. For instance, a researcher may expect a certain outcome and intentionally or unintentionally skew data or data analysis in favor of that outcome (Creswell, 2007). Ultimately, however, it is the researcher\'s duty to reveal the essence, nature or veracity of things -- and therefore the researcher should adopt an impartial attitude towards outcomes. Whether a hypothesis is proved correct or not should be a matter of indifference to the researcher (Lin, 2013). To this end, it is necessary for the researcher to avoid both respondent bias and researcher bias.

Respondent bias can occur when the respondent senses that a \"right\" answer is desired by the researcher and thus strives to give it. It can also occur when respondents want to appear positive or helpful to a perceived aim that they think the researcher is trying to achieve. Researcher bias occurs when data that favors a particular outcome is chosen over data that does not. It can also occur when researchers make assumptions about a subject or sample, relating to culture, ethnicity, education, etc.

Implications for Capstone

In terms of this capstone project, I plan to mitigate the risk of bias by clearly defining the hypothesis and null hypothesis and then strictly adhering to the research steps as defined in the prospectus. These steps will serve as the guide so that any researcher could perform the study, regardless of one\'s preconceived notions. The key to reducing the risk of bias in a study is to devise the necessary impartial steps for obtaining and analyzing data. Therefore, in this study, the impartial steps are the following:

Teachers will be given the curriculum guide to implement on their own in the classroom. Student achievement will be measured by the teachers and teachers will be surveyed, using a Likert scale, which provides quantitative data that can then be assessed and analyzed.

I will further mitigate the risk of bias in my capstone by addressing the issues of respondent and researcher bias. To reduce the risk of respondent bias, I will indicate that I am not looking for any particular outcome and desire no particular effect: I will communicate to interviewees that their responses should be genuine and should not be tapered to produce a particular effect. For researcher bias, I will state the assumptions that I am making at the outset of the capstone so that the limitations are clear. Aside from these assumptions, I will rely solely upon the data that is gathered in order to produce the data set for analysis. This will enable me to refrain from making judgments or from dismissing data that does not indicate a particular outcome.