Ethical regulation changed from communal and institutionally sensitive approaches to imposed managerialist ones during the early twenty-first century in many western countries (Israel 2015). The extension of ethical regulation systems from those used in medicine and psychology across all types of research in the Social Sciences and Humanities (Stark 2012) has caused difficulties for educational researchers. For researchers using types of research different from those used in medicine and the physical sciences it is sometimes difficult to explain why these other types, such as ethnography, can also be judged ethically sound. The imposed regulatory regime pre-supposes potential levels of harm to participants which are highly unlikely to occur in qualitative research. However, some form of regulation is reasonable. Participants, gatekeepers and beneficiaries of research need to be confident that researchers have taken every care to avoid harm to participants in and the environment of a research project.

The managerialist approach led to powerful institutional research ethics committees (RECs), sometimes called institutional review boards (IRBs) being established. These impose definitive judgements based on utilitarian ethical thinking (visible informed consent from participants, avoidance of harm, confidentiality in reporting research) on all proposed research projects in their institutions. However, some countries in Scandinavia have constructed central or national review bodies, rather than institutional ones to support researchers in their ethical thinking and to police their practices (Beach and Arrozola in press).

The regulatory procedures used by RECs cause delays in the inception of research projects, especially those using qualitative designs, requiring researches to revise requests for ethical approval repeatedly, before gaining approval. These procedures have alienated many researchers by depriving them of the moral compasses they formerly generated through their discussions of research frameworks with peers and research participants (Brady 2012). Further, the procedures risk regimenting researchers into particular modes of research design, entry to the field, and gaining informed consent from putative participants at the start of their projects.  Researchers having conversations with members of the RECs might be speedier and more constructive means of gaining ethical approval.

Ethnographic research proposals often face particular challenges because members of RECs may be unfamiliar with how the methodology collects and authenticates data and takes account of changes in the field during the course of a project. Further, gaining REC approval at the start of a project does not necessarily help ethnographers to deal with specific methodological dilemmas in the field (Rashid, Cain and Goez 2015), such as changing relationships with participants or the emergence of interesting data not covered by the informed consent given initially. Such issues require significant self-reflection on ethical practice from researchers (Fine 1993).

More collegial approaches for developing ethical research practice would avoid the tight managerialist control of RECs and reliance on utilitarian ethical thinking. Such approaches might also use deontological ethical thinking (researchers’ obligations, reciprocity with participants, avoidance of wrong during fieldwork, fairness in reporting outcomes) and relational ethical thinking (researchers’ relationships, collaboration with participants, avoiding imposition on participants, producing confirmatory outcome reports) (Flinders 1992). They might even include ecological ethical thinking (cultural sensitivity, avoidance of detachment, responsive communication) (Flinders 1992) for critical research projects. Together these perspectives provide a comprehensive framework for ethical appraisal (Stutchbury and Fox 2009), encouraging reflexive dialogues between researchers and RECs (Beach and Eriksson 2010) as well as between researchers, their participants and their gatekeepers throughout the life of a research project.

This paper discusses how more collegial ethical approaches would help researchers to generate research practices that allow participants in and gatekeepers and beneficiaries of research to appreciate the ethical integrity of research projects.

The discussion of different approaches to ethical thinking in research is based on a series of papers about ethnographic studies carried out in educational spaces with children and adults in various countries in Western Europe. These include papers by Nikkanen (in press) about her role as a teacher and researcher in a Finnish school; Smette (in press) about the experiences of undertaking an ethnographic study of schools in Norway; Dovemark (in press) about the ethical dilemmas faced in studying public recruitment fairs of Swedish schools, as well as others described as ‘in press’ in this proposal and the authors’ own papers. The papers were originally presented to a symposium on the practice of ethics in educational ethnographic research held at the European Conference on Educational Research (ECER) in Copenhagen, 2017. The symposium emerged from online discussions by members of Network 19 of ECER, Ethnography in Education, in the months before the conference. Revised versions of these paper are chapters in a forthcoming book, edited by the authors of this proposal, to be published by Routledge in 2019. The papers illustrated and discussed the dilemmas that ethnographic researchers can encounter in the field when trying to enact ethical practice and how researchers tried to resolve the problems they met. This involved them engaging reflexively in the field with participants and using different ethical models to make sense of the situations, especially when reference back to utilitarian ethical thinking did not address the problems they faced. The development of wisdom in practice in the field, can be described as the growth of phronesis (Traianou in press), a framework of thinking that helps researchers to act wisely, morally and practically. Phronesis is a process of interpreting situations that allows researchers to make virtuous judgements to support skilful ethical practice in the field rather than relying on ethical checklists promulgated by RECs. It can help ethnographers to acknowledge the biases they bring to their research which they might otherwise unconsciously embody (Fine 1993). It can be considered part of the relational work of ethnographic enquiry when intra-personal as well as inter-personal enquiry is pursued and values and assumptions properly problematised (Dennis 2018).

This paper synthesises evidence from revised versions of those papers presented at the ECER 2017 symposium of Network 19 on ethical integrity in practice in research in education. The evidence shows how different modes of ethical thinking can help researchers to construct and apply knowledge of ethical practice in different educational situations. In turn, this can reduce the potential risks to participants in and gatekeepers and beneficiaries of education research projects. The evidence also shows how researchers can make visible the ethical integrity of their project practices to their participants as well as to the RECs in their institutions. A key argument is how demanding ethical decision-making is for researchers especially when compelled by the current practices of RECs in many states to enter the field with only pre-determined utilitarian models of ethical thinking, and without the on-going support which researchers in some Scandinavian countries can access. However, assuming researchers engage reflexively with research practice throughout the life of research projects, they will gain in expertise and begin to develop the capacity to make wise judgements and exhibit skilful practice in the field. Institutional supervisors and RECs could play a facilitative role for researchers in this development by discussing with them the complexities of methodological and ethical issues, together with alternative models of ethical thinking about these (Traianou in press). The paper is intended to help researchers in the field to cope wisely with the ethical dilemmas that they may encounter. It is also intended to help ethical regulatory bodies at national and institutional levels to come to wise decisions when faced with research applications that may challenge tightly constructed notions of what constitutes ethical research practice.

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