Abstract
The article is based on the author’s experience as an administrator of three primarily social science institutional review boards (IRBs) to which researchers presented research protocols that purported to be minimal risk studies of teacher practice where the “teacher–researcher” was the “research subject.” Recently, educational, social, and behavioral science researchers encounter many problems with regard to their methodologies and the oversight mandate of the IRBs. There is a divergence between the IRB’s role and assumed bio-clinical predisposition and the ability of behavioral and social science researchers to have their research methodologies and research understood and appreciated by IRB members. The article explores some of the dilemmas confronting IRB members and administrators in the review and administration of the action research protocols, particularly those that involve vulnerable populations and which, from the practitioner–researcher’s perspective, focus on the practitioner–researcher as the object of the research.
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Notes
Institutional review boards (IRBs) are known by different names in different jurisdictions. IRB is the nomenclature used in the United States while in Canada these committees are known as Research Ethics Boards (REBs) and in other jurisdictions as ethics review committees. This paper uses the terms IRB and REB interchangeably, reflecting the transnational nature of the discussions and references.
For example, on May 5, 2003, Meeting of the Inter-Institute Bioethics Interest Group and Behavioural/Social Sciences Interest Group had presentations on Issues in Human Subjects Protection in Behavioral/Social Research from Felice Levine, Ph.D, Executive Director, American Educational Research Association and Chair, Social and Behavioral Sciences Working Group on Human Research Protections and Elaine Wetherington, Ph.D, Associate Professor, Department of Human Development and Department of Sociology, Cornell. The presentations addressed the history of social and behavioral sciences research within a biomedical framework; described key human subjects protection issues in the review of social and behavioral science protocols, especially in the areas of informed consent, risk, confidentiality, and third parties; examined the dynamics of various research contexts used in social and behavioral sciences research as they relate to the protection of human subjects; and described some NIH-funded efforts to improve understanding of the substantive issues and the process by which protocols are reviewed.
Some school districts have specific guidelines for the ethical review of research to be conducted within their schools and some have specific guidelines on action research while others have very limited, if any, systematic ethics review processes, Often relying on the on-site administrator (e.g., the principal) to provide adequate review.
The methods by which data are collected are those that typically engage others as participants, including but not limited to focus groups with colleagues and key informants, surveys of parents, questionnaires to parents and/or students, journals by students, interviews of students (present or past), photographs of classroom activities, and video-taping of classroom practices.
The TCPS suggests that this principle is directly related to harms–benefits analysis is non-maleficence, or the duty to avoid, prevent or minimize harms to others.
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Owen, M. Conflict and Convergence: The Ethics Review of Action Research. J Acad Ethics 4, 61–75 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10805-006-9021-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10805-006-9021-5