Critical Dialogue towards an Unprincipled Ethics of Educational Research

Abstract

McKendrick: There aren't any principles in your sense. There are only a lot of principled people trying to behave as if there were. Anderson: That's the same thing, surely. (Tom Stoppard, Professional foul) Ethical issues in educational research go back to its beginnings. The earliest example known to me is described by the Greek historian, Herodotus in Book Two of his Histories. The researcher in question was Psammeticus I, King of Egypt during most of the seventh century BC. A man of an inquiring mind, Psammeticus was interested in determining which, if any, human language could be identified as the most ancient, and carried out an experiment designed to answer this question. He obtained two normal, healthy infants, and arranged that they be raised without hearing human speech. The children were taken to a remote place and given every care and attention, except that their attendants were strictly forbidden to speak to them. (According to one account, `the nurses' tongues were removed in order to safeguard the integrity of the research design.) After two years, a definite result was obtained. The children began to use the word `becos', and when the experts in languages other than Egyptian were consulted, it was discovered that this word belonged to the Phrygian language and meant `bread'. Psammeticus concluded (with some regret) that the belief, commonly upheld by Egyptians, that theirs was the most ancient of human cultures could not be sustained, and that in this respect they could only be seen as coming second, at best, to the Phrygians. Now it need hardly be said that this research project would not gain the approval of an institutional ethics committee of the present day. This is despite the fact that it dealt with an important issue, was well designed -- given certain supporting assumptions -- and led to a successful outcome. (The part about the tongues alone would probably rule it out, aside from other details.) And in general, I think it is true to say that we are far more aware of the ethical dimension of educational research than in the past, even the relatively recent past. Philosophers have played a part in this development, and it is their contribution that I want to look at here. My discussion will be critical, but also constructive. That is, I will begin by pointing out the drawbacks of some common approaches to the subject, and move on to sketch an alternative which will not only be philosophically defensible but will also correspond in interesting ways to the better practices of making ethical decisions in research. What are the distinctive features of the ethics of educational research? I can think of several, but I intend to limit the scope of this discussion by excluding deliberate misconduct. That is, I will not be talking about falsification, plagiarism or `honorary authorship', although ethical judgements on such behaviour are plainly appropriate. The problems I have in mind are found in the conduct of people who are, as I suppose, acting with relatively good intentions. These important issues can be approached as several levels. As a practical issue: what do researchers and research institutions do to make sure their research is ethical? And on a more abstract theoretical or philosophical level: how are these ways of making decisions justified? This second question is about the role of ethical principles, that is, of general rules and maxims; but it should not be separated from the more practical topic. What I call a principled approach is typified in formal codes of research ethics. What I call an unprincipled approach is typified in the workings of institutional ethics committees. In arguing for an problem-solving rather than a `top-down' strategy, I will effectively be claiming that ethics committees provide better means for making good ethical decisions than such codes. That is, my view is that codes of ethics are not very useful, and that ethics committees can be very useful, if they work properly. …