Reimagining the researcher-participant ethics relationship: a participant-centred, values-based ethics approach in comparative and international education

Abstract

ABSTRACT Conventional approaches to ethics in comparative and international educational research often entail researchers seeking institutional ethics approval; attempting to manage fieldwork’s practical ethical dilemmas using institutional and disciplinary protocols; and ‘writing up’ methodology, primarily an account of the institutional ethics approval process. This approach largely excludes participants’ conceptions of ethics, manifested through their ethical values, virtues, worldviews, knowledge, perspectives, traditions, norms, epistemologies, etc. This paper proposes a participant-centred, values-based approach which deepens the conventional approach by positioning participants’ values alongside institutional and disciplinary ones; centring participants’ values during fieldwork’s ethical dilemmas; and articulating a situated ethics account. This alternative approach deepens researchers’ capabilities for situated ethical action, and underscores the need for continuous negotiation of ethics with participants towards meaningful ethical partnerships. Such partnerships are ultimately facilitated by institutional ethics committees’ flexibility in enabling, and even encouraging, researcher-participant ethical negotiations at various stages of research.