When ‘Research Ethics’ Become ‘Everyday Ethics’: The Intersection of Inquiry and Practice in Practitioner Research

Source: Educational Action Research, Volume 22, Issue 2, 2014, pages 146-158.

This article explores the ethical dimensions of what Cochran-Smith and Lytle have termed the dialectic of practitioner inquiry.

The article argues that the reflexive nature of the theory/practice dynamic means that, in the context of sustained practitioner inquiry, the ethics of research and the ethics of practice both hold the potential to be shaped by and to shape the other.
Elsewhere in discussions of the issue of quality in practitioner and other practice-based research, Groundwater-Smith and Mockler have argued that ethical professionalism can and does work as a platform for quality, pushing practitioner inquiry ‘beyond celebration’.

The article builds on these ideas. Furthermore, the article examines the implications of issues relating to: informed consent; ‘voice’ and ownership; transparency and negotiation; confidentiality, anonymity and trust; and deliberative action in the context of both practitioner inquiry and classroom practice.