Ethics And Academic Freedom In Educational Research

Formal ethical review of research proposals is now almost the default requirement for all – staff and students – planning research under the auspices of colleges and universities in many parts of the world. With notable exceptions, the extant literature discussing educational research ethics takes a meta-ethical overview, is negatively critical about the ethics review process per se, or comes from America and focuses specifically on the workings of the Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) there. This book, however, contains stories of lived experience from the UK, Spain, New Zealand, Bangladesh, and Australia dealing with, inter alia: dissatisfactions with criteria against which research proposals and designs and, by extension, researchers themselves, are judged to be ethical; problems encountered in obtaining ethical clearance; changes which have had to be made to plans which are believed to have affected the ensuing research process and outcomes; cases where ethical issues and difficulties arose and required considered responses despite permission to undertake the research in question being granted; and benefits perceived to accrue from ethical review procedures. Ethics and Academic Freedom in Educational Research will be of interest to researchers, students, members of ethics review boards and those teaching research ethics, primarily at postgraduate but also at undergraduate level. This book was originally published as a special issue of the International Journal of Research and Method in Education.

The Ivory Tower Myth suggests that the world of higher education has no moral problems. Unlike ethical conflicts in business, politics and medicine, ethical problems in higher education receive little publicity. But devotion to the pursuit of knowledge does not ensure ethical behavior. Power, competition, pressure and lust for recognition create moral conflicts. Some are unique to higher education but many are common to the world off-campus. This book uses ethical theories as a tool to analyze real examples from our colleges and universities. Topics include: academic freedom, plagiarism, cheating, research fraud, equal opportunity, evaluation, tenure, student-faculty relationships.

Academic freedom and tenure, both cherished institutions of higher education, are currently under attack by many both outside and within the academy. Richard DeGeorge argues that they can be defended on ethical grounds only if they are joined with appropriate accountability, publicly articulated and defended standards, and conscientious enforcement of these standards by academic institutions and the members of the academic community. He discusses the ethical justification of tenure and academic freedom, as well as ethical issues in their implementation. He argues that academic freedom, which is the basis for tenure, is not license nor the same as freedom of speech. Properly understood and practiced, both academic freedom and tenure exist not to benefit faculty members or their institutions, but to benefit an open society in which they thrive and of which they are an important part.

In this unique study, emerging higher education leader and policy expert Kenneth D. Gariepy takes a Foucauldian genealogical approach to the study of the intellectually “free” subject through the analysis of selected academic freedom statement-events. Assuming academic freedom to be an institutionalized discourse-practice operating in the field of contemporary postsecondary education in Canada, a specific kind of cross-disciplinary, historico-theoretical research is conducted that pays particular attention to the productive nature and effects of power-knowledge. The intent is to disrupt academic freedom as commonsensical “good” and universal “right” in order to instead focus on how it is that the academic subject emerges as free/unfree to think – and therefore free/unfree to be – through particular, effective, and effecting regimes of truth and strategies of objectification and subjectification. In this way, the author suggests how it is that academic freedom operates as a set of systemically agonistic practices that might only realize a different economy of discourse through the contingent nature of the very social power that produces it. Dr. Gariepy’s use of Foucault’s genealogical analysis provides a wholly different way in which to re-think the construction and practice of academic freedom in Canada and is thus an important contribution to the broader discursive field it seeks to analyze. Given contemporary neoliberal critiques of the university, the issue of academic freedom and the intellectually free subject is a vital problem that is of interest to numerous knowledge producing communities – on and off campus. Equally important in addressing the problem of academic freedom is how the book also contributes a new description of the genealogical method – something Foucault did not stipulate – that is original, ambitious, compelling, and insightful. I commend Dr. Gariepy for returning, to investigate anew, an issue we think we know.” – E. Lisa Panayotidis, PhD, Professor & Chair, Educational Studies in Curriculum and Learning, Werklund School of Education, University of Calgary, Editor of History of Intellectual Culture.

Although academic freedom in teaching and learning methods is crucial to a nation’s growth, the concept comes with numerous misnomers and is subjected to much academic debate and doubt. This volume maps out how truth and intellectual integrity remain the fundamental principle on which the foundation of a university should be laid.

Formal ethical review of research proposals is now almost the default requirement for all – staff and students – planning research under the auspices of colleges and universities in many parts of the world. With notable exceptions, the extant literature discussing educational research ethics takes a meta-ethical overview, is negatively critical about the ethics review process per se, or comes from America and focuses specifically on the workings of the Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) there. This book, however, contains stories of lived experience from the UK, Spain, New Zealand, Bangladesh, and Australia dealing with, inter alia: dissatisfactions with criteria against which research proposals and designs and, by extension, researchers themselves, are judged to be ethical; problems encountered in obtaining ethical clearance; changes which have had to be made to plans which are believed to have affected the ensuing research process and outcomes; cases where ethical issues and difficulties arose and required considered responses despite permission to undertake the research in question being granted; and benefits perceived to accrue from ethical review procedures. Ethics and Academic Freedom in Educational Research will be of interest to researchers, students, members of ethics review boards and those teaching research ethics, primarily at postgraduate but also at undergraduate level. This book was originally published as a special issue of the International Journal of Research and Method in Education.

This is a book about the ethics of teaching in the context of higher education. While many books focus on the broader socially ethical topics of widening participation and promoting equal opportunities, this unique book concentrates specifically on the lecturer's professional responsibilities. It covers the real-life, messy, everyday moral dilemmas that confront university teachers when dealing with students and colleagues - whether arising from facilitated discussion in the classroom, deciding whether it is fair to extend a deadline, investigating suspected plagiarism or dealing with complaints. Bruce Macfarlane analyses the pros and cons of prescriptive professional codes of practice employed by many universities and proposes the active development of professional virtues over bureaucratic recommendations. The material is presented in a scholarly, yet accessible style, and case examples are used throughout to encourage a practical, reflective approach. Teaching With Integrity seeks to bridge the pedagogic gap currently separating the debate about teaching and learning in higher education from the broader social and ethical environment in which it takes place.

The reputation of a college or institution depends upon the integrity of its faculty and administration. Though budgets are important, ethics are vital, and a host of new ethical problems now beset higher education. From MOOCS and intellectual property rights to drug industry payments and conflicts of interest, this book offers AAUP policy language and best practices to deal with all the campus-wide challenges of today's corporate university: • Preserving the integrity of research and public respect for higher education • Eliminating and managing individual and institutional financial conflicts of interest • Maintaining unbiased hiring and recruitment policies • Establishing grievance procedures and due process rights for faculty, graduate students, and academic professionals • Mastering the complications of negotiations over patents and copyright • Assuring the ethics of research involving human subjects. In a time of dynamic change Recommended Principles to Guide Academy-Industry Relationships offers an indispensable and authoritative guide to sustaining integrity and tradition while achieving great things in twenty-first century academia.

After the downfall of Senator Joseph McCarthy, it was assumed that the principles of academic freedom had become part of "the common law" of American higher education - honored in theory and, except for episodic and eccentric violations in the hinterland, scrupulously observed in practice. A decade or so later, as the climate of academia became heavily politicized and small but influential groups among students and faculties charged the universities with complicity in supporting the evils of racism, war, poverty and pollution, and demanded that the universities as corporate entities take public stands on controversial social and political issues, the principles of academic freedom were again problematic. With the eruption of violence on the campuses of leading universities, the issue became acute. In the past, freedom to teach and to learn had been threatened by forces outside the academic community. Now these threats came from within. Among the consequences of the unprecedented turmoil, there developed a widespread concern with the restructuring of the curriculum, the governances of the university, and above all, the rights and responsibilities of members of the academic community. Of particular importance was the question of the nature of the teacher's vocation, and of the ethics of teaching. Because of political developments, and even more so because of the alleged dangers of certain types of scientific experiments to mankind, questions of the nature, justification and limits of scientific research challenged accepted conceptions of the autonomy of scientific inquiry in the social and physical disciplines. This volume contains the deliberations of more than a score of thoughtful and distinguished scientists, philosophers, and jurists on the ethics of teaching and the ethics of research.

Moral Problems in Higher Education brings together key essays that explore ethical issues in academia. The editor and contributors – all noted philosophers and educators – consider such topics as academic freedom and tenure, free speech on campus, sexual harassment, preferential student admissions, affirmative action in faculty appointments, and the ideal of a politically neutral university. Chapters address possible restrictions on research because of moral concerns, the structure of peer review, telling the truth to colleagues and students, and concerns raised by intercollegiate athletics. Cahn selects two key readings in each are to offer a readable introductory guide to these critical subjects for students studying academic ethics and higher education policy. In addition to the selections and a general introduction, Cahn provides study questions for use in the classroom.