The challenges and solutions for qualitative researchers in gaining ethical approval and consent

A special series of blogs asks the difficult questions about current informed consent and ethical approval practices and assumptions, critically exploring the work and philosophy of both ethics...

Editorial: The challenges and solutions for qualitative researchers in gaining ethical approval and consent

BERA members, through informal conversation, recognised that there was a danger that qualitative studies may become under threat from not being approved by ethical committees in an increasingly...

How do we enact ‘informed consent’?

As researchers we have a responsibility not just to inform participants about our research and its possible consequences, but to have confidence that participants are giving informed consent. So...

When walking on marshland, occasionally expect to lose your wellies

A consistent refrain of colleagues is that research ethics committees seem to be committed to stopping research. Nothing could be further from the truth. The contemporary research ethics committee...

Guía Ética para la Investigación Educativa, cuarta edición (2018)

Esta cuarta edición de la Guía Ética para la Investigación Educativa de BERA, extensamente revisada, ampliada y actualizada, ha sido concebida para apoyar a los investigadores en el campo...

Natural language processing: A tool for microgenetic analysis

Artificial intelligence in educational research and practice

Microgenetic analysis is a Vygotskyan educational research method that supports uncovering student sense-making activity during collaborative learning. Investigating learning using microgenetic...

What I meant and the respondent assumed: Improving survey questions with cognitive interviews

When we gather survey data about human perceptions and attitudes, do we elicit answers to what we really ask? How far can self-administered questionnaires (Schwarz, 1999), with no interviewer...

Practitioner research and commentary in a networked society

Over the past decade, self-published polemic on education topics has become widely disseminated through a burgeoning culture of social media, and has increasingly challenged the products of...

Research Ethics Case Studies: 2. Researcher wellbeing & international fieldwork

Research Ethics Case Studies

Focussing on an early-career researcher embarking on her first academic role, this second entry in BERA’s  Research Ethics Case Studies series considers the ethical issues that arise not only...

Informed consent and assent, and the ethical review process, with/for research with the very young

This post introduces the challenges associated with gaining ethical review board approval, and securing the informed consent and assent of participant families, in educational research. It draws...

You don’t understand us!

'You don’t understand us or the subject!’ This is a frequent cry heard by me, as a university research ethics chair, from educational researchers trying to get ethics approval for research...

Research Ethics Case Studies

BERA’s Research Ethics Case Studies series, edited by Jodie Pennacchia, presents illustrative case studies designed to complement BERA’s Ethical Guidelines for Educational Research, fourth...