Educational Action Research

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Ethical issues in collaborative action research

Terry Locke , Noeline Alcorn & John O’Neill

To cite this article: Terry Locke , Noeline Alcorn & John O’Neill (2013) Ethical issues
in collaborative action research, Educational Action Research, 21:1, 107-123, DOI:
10.1080/09650792.2013.763448

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09650792.2013.763448

Published online: 01 Mar 2013.

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Educational Action Research, 2013
Vol. 21, No. 1, 107–123, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09650792.2013.763448

Ethical issues in collaborative action research

Terry Lockea*, Noeline Alcornb and John O’Neillc
a
Faculty of Education, University of Waikato, Tauranga, New Zealand; bWilf Malcolm
Institute of Educational Research, University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand; cSchool
of Arts, Development and Health Education, Massey University, Palmerston North, New
Zealand
(Received 1 March 2012; final version received 1 November 2012)

This article begins by raising issues around the way in which ethical approval
for research is managed in university settings, where committees often base their
assumptions on a principlist approach making a number of assumptions that we
consider to be contestable, such as a neat separation between researcher and
researched. However, collaborative action research, we argue, takes issue with
the ‘objectification’ of research participants. It often blurs the distinction
between participant and researcher, particularly when an element of self-study is
included. Moreover, the collaborative nature of action research problematises the
question of who is researcher and who is researched, raising issues around ano-
nymity, the ‘ownership’ of findings and dissemination. In response to some of
these issues, we have developed a set of eight principles we derive from our
‘version’ of collaborative action research and apply them in a discussion of a
number of case studies from our own setting, where researchers have faced a
number of dilemmas in attempting to work within the terms of reference
imposed by conventional university-based ethical approval procedures. In con-
clusion, this article indicates some implications for university-based action
researchers and makes recommendations about the forms of ethical scrutiny
within the university that would be most appropriate and searching for collabo-
rative action-based enquiry.
Keywords: ethical approval; collaborative action research; ethics; ethical
principles

Introduction
This paper had its genesis in conversations the three authors engaged in among them-
selves and with colleagues on the question of collaborative action research vis-à-vis
the ethical approval process in our respective universities. The conversations
revolved around instances where the terms of ethical approval, once gained, appeared
to be at odds with our understanding of the spirit of collaborative action research as it
was being practised by ourselves and other researchers whose work we were familiar
with. These conversations prompted the hosting of a Collaborative Action Research
Network (CARN) New Zealand Symposium on Ethics and Action Research at the
University of Waikato, for which Susan Groundwater-Smith (2011) provided the
scene-setting keynote and the third author (John)1 provided a commentary on the

*Corresponding author. Email: t.locke@waikato.ac.nz

Ó 2013 Educational Action Research

108 T. Locke et al.

day’s presentations that drew together some of the themes which came up. Both of
these presentations are reflected in this paper.
In using the term ‘collaborative’, we are denoting a particular take on action
research that, as the next section argues, is an approach to research – a way of
framing it – rather than a methodology. We are therefore distinguishing collabora-
tive action research from categories of action research that are ‘methodologically
driven’ (Kemmis and McTaggart 2005, 568). Action research is not always framed
as ‘collaborative’ (see, for example, Mertler [2009, 4], who posits that ‘action
research is characterised as research that is done by teachers for teachers’).
In general, codes of ethical conduct are enunciated as sets of principles aimed at
safeguarding or assuring the rights of participants. Members of the New Zealand
Association for Research in Education subscribe to their own association’s ethical
guidelines, which offer them an overview and a set of guiding principles, catego-
rised as general, pertaining to participants, research personnel and the findings
themselves (New Zealand Association for Research in Education 2010). Universities
vary in terms of how they codify the ethical obligations of researchers and manage
the ethical consent process (see O’Neill 2011). Educational researchers at the
University of Waikato, for example, are expected to adhere to ethical obligations
codified by the university as a set of regulations (University of Waikato 2010). In
practice, ethical approval procedures devolve to faculty-based ethics committees,
which generally meet monthly to undertake the review process.
In this article we focus on ethical issues in relation to action research defined as
collaborative and participatory. As Cochran-Smith and Lytle (2007, 24) remark:
‘Everything’s ethics’. All action researchers, we surmise, bring to their work one or
more ethical frames. Teacher researchers are already accustomed to framing their
actions in terms of the ethics of their profession – subscribing to a discourse that
tells a story about appropriate conduct in respect of the rights of the students to
whom teachers offer a duty of care. Many university-based educational researchers
have a background in teaching, but in applying to have their prospective work
approved ethically by an appropriate committee in their own institution they find
themselves called upon to take up and enact a discourse related to ethically appro-
priate behaviour implicit in this committee’s codes and practices. However, as the
literature makes clear, an agreement on principle does not necessarily remove the
potential for dilemmas in practice. That is particularly true for collaborative/partici-
patory action research as practice.
We argue that a close examination of collaborative action research, as widely
understood, yields a set of eight principles that reflect both the conceptual assump-
tions on which collaborative, participatory action research is based, and the nature
of the values, relationships and decision-making it practically involves. While these
principles do not provide an easy solution to dilemmas of practice, they do help
bring them into focus. Moreover, they provide the foundation for a proactive ques-
tioning of some of the assumptions that drive the conduct of the ethical review and
approval process currently undertaken in the university institutional context.

Ethical dilemmas and issues in practice

In an article on ethical dilemmas facing action researchers, Canadians Bournot-
Trites and Belanger (2005), after discussing the origins of modern research ethics in
 Educational Action Research 109

the Nuremburg Code, identify 13 ethical issues for educational researchers in gen-
eral. These include:

• the ownership of written work (by students, for example);

• the dilemma of maintaining participant confidentiality and acknowledging
publicly their research contribution;
• the question of having participants corroborate the interpretation of data;
• the potential conflict between confidentiality and the potential for harm around
the issue of disclosure;
• the issue of bad news: ‘These “bad news” items present subjects in a poor
light in final reports, the possibility of which might have prevented volunteers
from participating had they known in advance’ (2005, 206); and
• equitable selection of participants, including the treatment of control subjects
when the experimental ‘treatment’ is clearly the best possible instruction.

They also raise issues around informed consent, including the timing of the consent
form and the protection of vulnerable subjects who may fear disadvantage if they
refuse their consent, suggesting ‘third-party management of consent and data’ as a
possible strategy for addressing the potential for coercion (2005, 211).
Grover, writing out of a position that ‘Universal human rights and the legal
instruments in which they are embodied ought to inform the research endeavour at
every stage; from problem selection to analysis and conclusions’ (2004, 261), also
endorses the view that ‘confidentiality may be waived in those instances where sub-
jects feel it important that their voice be heard’ (250). In discussing informed con-
sent, she asserts that agreements are too often written in ways that make them hard
to understand by many participants and fail to recognise people’s difficulties with
language. Pertinent to this paper is her suggestion that, while framing research as
‘collaborative’ may help reduce the power imbalance, it does not hide the fact that,
‘… one party is investigating the other. One party (the academic), for instance, nor-
mally has the power to disseminate information broadly about the other, which
information may be beneficial or damaging to the welfare of the individual(s) and/
or community studied’ (2004, 256).
Heath et al. (2007) focus exclusively on the process of gaining informed consent
in institutions such as schools. While they neither focus solely on educational
research, nor on particular research approaches, their work has some relevance to
this paper. In particular, they refer to commentators working out of a participatory
and narrative qualitative methodology, who have argued that ‘informed consent is a
largely unworkable process given that researchers can rarely – if ever – know the
full extent of what participation may entail, or predict in advance all the possible
outcomes of participation’ (2007, 404). In this respect, they cite narrative research-
ers Smythe and Murray (2000) as arguing, ‘that traditional formulations of informed
consent have arisen from a “data source” model of research which prioritises a pre-
ordained, inflexible research design, and is considered impractical in the context of
negotiated, processual forms of (qualitative) research’ (as quoted in Heath et al.
2007, 404). (See next section for the relevance of this to collaborative research.) A
possible solution to this issue, they argue, is process consent (consent as ongoing
and ‘negotiated on an ongoing basis’), which ‘provides a useful mechanism for
updating participants involved in studies with emergent research designs, and allows
existing participants to decide whether or not to remain involved’ (2007, 409).
110 T. Locke et al.

In the main, they explore issues around agency and competency in relation to the
informed consent process. In institutions such as schools, the ‘relative status of adult
researchers and younger participants [makes] it difficult for children and young people
to refuse involvement’ (Heath et al. 2007, 405). They argue, like Grover (2004), that
the adoption of a participatory approach, despite the aim of empowering participants, is
no guarantee against children being denied authentic agency in the informed consent
process. Heath et al. raise the danger of assuming consent. ‘Informed consent is auto-
matically denied even if children are nonetheless able to choose for themselves whether
or not to participate. This amounts to the obtaining of assent only – a passive accep-
tance or non-refusal – rather than informed consent’ (2007, 412; original emphasis).
They refer to examples of children being asked to complete a questionnaire as a class-
room activity, where consent is often little more than a desire to please or a fear of not
fitting in. Such concerns relate to a concern raised by Bournot-Trites and Belanger
(Bournot-Trites and Belanger 2005) on the ease with which convenience sampling as a
way of conscripting participants can lead to coercion through assent.

Collaborative/participatory action research: principles, values and rights

In a pioneering text on action research, Carr and Kemmis (1986) distinguished three
broad categories: technical, practical and emancipatory. In the latter, ‘the practitioner
group takes responsibility for the development of practice, understandings and situa-
tions, and sees these as socially-constructed in the interactive processes of educa-
tional life’ (1986, 203). In denoting the subject of this sentence as ‘the practitioner
group’, they can be seen as collapsing the researcher/subject distinction and high-
lighting its participatory/collaborative character.
Two years later, in the third edition of their influential Action Research Planner,
Kemmis and McTaggart asserted strongly the centrality of collaboration:

Action research is a form of collective self-reflective enquiry undertaken by partici-

pants in social situations in order to improve the rationality and justice of their own
social or educational practices, as well as their understanding of these practices and
the situations in which these practices are carried out … The approach is only action
research when it is collaborative, though it is important to realise that the action
research of the group is achieved through the critically examined action of individual
group members. (1988, 5)

A similar emphasis on participation and collaborative action is later voiced by Jean

McNiff:

Action research is an enquiry by the self into the self, undertaken in company with
others acting as research participants and critical learning partners. (McNiff and
Whitehead 2002, 15)

In a retrospective overview of participatory action research, Kemmis and McTaggart

write that:

Participatory action research aims to create circumstances in which people can search
together collaboratively for more comprehensible, true, authentic, and morally right
and appropriate ways of understanding and acting in the world. (2005, 578)
 Educational Action Research 111

Their preferred term has become ‘participatory’ with a much stronger emphasis on
the ‘collective’, a term they have refined to embrace notions of inclusivity and more
flexibility in terms of the way roles are exercised. The ‘spiral of self-reflective
cycles’ (2005, 563) is retained as a key feature. While Kemmis and McTaggart con-
cede that the steps outlined in the spiral can be undertaken by a single researcher,
they emphasise that participatory action research is necessarily a social process with
a focus on social practice. People involved in ‘collaborative participatory action
research projects’ are now understood as:

an open and inclusive network in which the facilitator can be a contributing co-partici-
pant, albeit with particular knowledge or expertise that can be of help to the group.
Moreover, at different times different participants in some groups can and do take the
facilitator role in relation to different parts of the action being undertaken … (2005,
594–595)

In a school situation, for example, the task of improving educational practices has a
variety of stakeholders, including students, parents, the local community and pro-
spective employers:

In principle, participatory action research issues an invitation to previously or naturally

uninvolved people, as well as a self-constituted action research group, to participate in
a common process of communicative action for transformation. (2005, 579)

This is regardless of how that invitation is received.

Besides the self-reflective spiral, Kemmis and McTaggart identify seven other
key features of participatory action research (2005, 566–569):

(1) It is a social process and focused on the interrelationship between an individ-

ual and their social environment.
(2) It is fundamentally participatory, where participants go to work on themselves,
examining the relationship between knowledge, identity, agency and practice.
(3) It is practical and collaborative, in that it involves groups investigating in
relationship their practices (including their relational practices).
(4) It is emancipatory, in that it helps people address the ‘constraints of irratio-
nal, unproductive, unjust, and unsatisfying social structures that limit their
self-development and self-determination’ (567).
(5) It is critical in the way it encourages participants to contest the ways they
are positioned to view the world in particular ways.
(6) It is reflexive in that the object of investigation is to change the world for
the better in a number of ways: practice, knowledge of practice, social struc-
tures and social media (what we might call discourse structures).
(7) It aims to transform both theory and practice, and views these as mutually
dependent.

In our own understanding of collaborative action research, we identify the following

five characteristics:

• A praxial focus, where practice is examined ethically in terms of its effects or

ends, and where there is a dialectical relationship between theory and practice
(practice underpinned by and generative of theory).
112 T. Locke et al.

• A recursive process of action, reflection and analysis, planning, further action

(intervention), reflection and analysis.
• Non-hierarchical collaboration and partnership.
• Critical self-reflexivity, where researchers are ‘aware of the ideological
imperatives and epistemological presuppositions that inform their
research as well as their own subjective, intersubjective, and normative
reference claims’ (Kincheloe and Mclaren 1994, 140; see also Locke
2004, 34–37).
• Dissemination: engagement and networking with others in the field viewed as
a crucial aspect of action.

Collaborative action research, viewed as emancipatory, is concerned to improve

practice, challenge and reorient thinking about practice and transform through dia-
logue and collaboration contexts for learning. It makes explicit links between the
micro-level of classroom practice and the macro-level of society at large, where a
range of discourses are at work, variously positioned to empower some groups and
disempower others. We are using the term ‘discourse’ here in a Foucaultian sense,
viewing it as ‘a practice not just of representing the world, but of signifying the
world, constituting and constructing the world in meaning’ (Fairclough 1992, 64).
While the concept of social justice is a slippery one, this form of action research
generally aspires to a social justice agenda (Kemmis and McTaggart 1988;
Sandretto 2008; Sandretto et al. 2007).
The focus on praxis in this understanding of collaborative action research has
links with Freire’s philosophy of education, with its focus on ‘reflection and action
upon the world in order to transform it’ (Freire 1972, 28 as cited in Roberts 2003,
177). It also has links with educational scholarship, which has deployed an Aristote-
lian view of knowledge to argue for a praxial view of education, with an ethical
focus on right action centre-stage. Regelski (Regelski 1998), for example, describes
praxis as ‘governed by the kind of “doing” called phronesis – an ethical [and situ-
ated] knowledge of and for achieving “right results” judged in terms of actual bene-
fits for one’s self or for others’ (1998, 28).
Another feature of collaborative action research is its recursivity (see Table 1),
which means that it is far more dynamic than, for example, studies where an inter-
vention is predetermined and trialled in a way that attempts to eliminate the ‘teacher
factor’. In general, the conduct of university ethics committees has not historically
been framed to allow for the indeterminacy that stems from this recursivity. We use
the term ‘phase’ to signify the way in which the spiral of action, reflection and
analysis, planning and further action often segments the research enterprise and
calls for research questions to be revisited. As indicated in Table 1, and discussed

Table 1. Action research as a dynamic process.

Stable factors (all phases) The collaborative relationship
The setting
Stable factors over a single phase The research questions
Dynamic factors The participants
The character of the intervention
The nature of the data
The role of participants
 Educational Action Research 113

elsewhere, we view action research as allowing for changes in participants and

participant roles. We view revisiting decisions about the character of an intervention
as integral to action research, from which it follows that related decisions around
evidence collection also require revisiting.
What might a set of ethical principles look like based on the preceding discus-
sion; that is, principles congruent with the ethically acceptable means and ends
implicit in this approach to research. We offer the following:

• Principle 1. It is incumbent on the formally constituted action research group

to respect as stakeholders all those who have an interest in the focus of the
research investigation. (Following Kemmis and McTaggart [2005], this might
be called the ‘principle of inclusivity’.)
• Principle 2. All those whose practices, knowledges, identities and constraints
are actively engaged in the investigation are entitled to be considered full
members of the action research group, even though roles within this group
may differ and change over time. This might be called the ‘principle of maxi-
mal participant recognition’.
• Principle 3. Where practicable, the research aims and design, ownership of
data and dissemination processes in relation to an investigation should involve
consultation with all stakeholders in the research, and minimally involve
negotiation and consensus building among members of the research group. As
Campbell and Groundwater-Smith note: ‘There are many tensions inherent in
relationships between practitioners and academics in terms of the setting of
the research agenda, the policy implications that may flow from it and the
right to publish outcomes. Negotiating that relationship requires ethical pro-
bity where each party recognises, understands and respects mutual responsibil-
ities’ (2007, 2). This might be called the ‘principle of negotiation and
consensus’.
• Principle 4. Members of the research group have the right to withdraw or
renegotiate the grounds for their participation at any time. Following Kemmis
and McTaggart (2005, 588), this might be called the ‘principle of communica-
tive freedom’.
• Principle 5. It is the right of members of the research group and the wider
interest community to be communicated with in language that maximises their
understanding and is not characterised by unnecessary jargon. This applies to
such documents as information letters and consent forms, and research reports
targeted at the wider community. This might be called the ‘principle of plain
speaking’. (Cf. Kemmis and McTaggart 2005, 587.)
• Principle 6. It is incumbent on members of the research group to adjudge col-
laboratively whether the aims of their research and the understandings that
arise from it are morally right, as they see it, in relation to the circumstances
they find themselves in. This might be called the ‘principle of right action’.
• Principle 7. It is incumbent on members of the research group to be transpar-
ent in respect of the discursive assumptions they bring to the investigation,
both in relation to the topic and all aspects of the research design. This might
be called the ‘principle of critical self-reflexivity’.
• Principle 8. It is the right of members of the research group and the wider
group of stakeholders with an interest in the research focus to have their feel-
ings respected, and it is appropriate that feelings count as research informa-
114 T. Locke et al.

tion. This might be called the ‘affective principle’ and is part of a general val-
idation of the whole person.

How might such principles create issues for those engaging in participatory
action research in practice? In the next section, we offer some stories from practice.

Collaborative action research in practice

The set of general principles listed in the previous section pre-supposes a collabora-
tive group who work together to address issues of concern to all of them, striving
for openness, the development of shared meanings, equality of esteem and equity
of involvement. This is an ideal and is no guarantee against dilemmas in practice.
In educational settings, action research projects are typically carried out by uni-
versity-based researchers working with teacher practitioners or teacher-researchers
(with the latter term susceptible to variability in definition; see Locke 2010). It is
often carried out by novice researchers under supervision, who are completing a
master’s or doctoral thesis. In what follows, we illustrate a number of practical
issues that can arise around ethical issues such as benefit, voice (who is heard and
who gets credit) and power or decision-making. We show that sometimes there can
be a clash of ethical frameworks between the professional ethical code of teachers
and research ethics. In the final section of this paper, we look at the implications of
all of this for the ethical approval process as typically constituted in university
settings.
Those who undertake action research projects in schools can be either outsiders
or insiders. If they are outsiders, they may initially approach the school for permis-
sion to carry out research on a problem that interests them but which may not be
the highest priority for staff or students. Principles 1 and 2 (‘inclusivity’ and ‘maxi-
mal participant recognition’) draw attention to the preliminary negotiation phase of
a research project and the need to establish the membership of the action research
group and identify stakeholders. Collaborative partnerships take time and effort to
initiate and develop, and need to be in place before the design of an action research
project is finalised. Degree candidates rarely have such time and may be inclined to
see their collaborators as subjects. If they are insiders, they may be drawing on a
history of staff involvement and commitment to address a particular issue, or they
may be interested to pursue an initiative that concerns them and hope that others
will want to be involved. Both outsiders and insiders face issues of power and hier-
archy within the school. Young teachers may find it difficult to interest more senior
colleagues to take part in their project. Senior staff may have difficulty convincing
colleagues that the research is genuinely collaborative and that they have the right
to decline involvement without disadvantage.
We describe and comment on three issues of practice: the intersection of profes-
sional and research ethical codes, voice and benefit.

The intersection between professional and research codes of ethics

New Zealand teachers are required to endorse and implement the Code of Ethics
developed in 2003 after a lengthy consultation process by the New Zealand
Teachers Council.2 The code is based on four key principles: autonomy (to treat
people with rights to be honoured and defended); justice (to share power and pre-
vent abuse of power); responsible care (to do good and minimise harm); and truth
 Educational Action Research 115

(to be honest with others and self). While the code is designed to be aspirational, it
is binding on those who hold practising certificates and may be used as a bench-
mark to evaluate behaviour.
The Code of Ethics for teachers shares a number of values with the ethical princi-
ples for practitioner research enunciated by Susan Groundwater-Smith (Groundwater-
Smith and Mockler 2009), drawing on Ahmed and Machold (2004). She lists seven
maxims: no harm, transparency, voice, equity, benefit, integrity and care. The New
Zealand Teachers Council Code of Ethics spells out responsibilities towards learners,
parents and whanau (the Māori word for family), society and the profession, and
addresses the maxims of no harm, integrity, care, and benefit. While it deals with
issues such as privacy and confidentiality, it does so in a different context from
research and it does not deal specifically with issues of voice.
The focus of teacher professional ethics is the protection of learners, with hon-
esty and professionalism in dealing with colleagues also seen as important. Teach-
ers are expected to base their practice on, ‘continuous professional learning, the
best knowledge available about curriculum content and pedagogy, and knowledge
of those they teach’ (New Zealand Teachers Council n.d., Section 1b). The focus
of research ethics, in contrast, is the protection of research participants, ensuring
they are not exploited in the search for new knowledge. There is a tendency of
these injunctions to reinforce traditional distinctions between practice and theory,
where practitioners make use of the research of others to improve their practice
and add to their store of professional content knowledge. Collaborative action
research, however, has the potential to turn this distinction on its head with its
insistence that new practical knowledge may be fruitfully developed by practitio-
ners themselves.
Action research may involve teachers working to improve their practice through
exploring new ways of working with students or new ways of approaching curricu-
lum material. This may seem unproblematic at a professional level. But as a group
of researchers they must not only attempt to ensure that the needs of their students
are met, but also consider the impact of their investigation on other stakeholders: a
school’s Board of Trustees, parents, advisers, the Ministry of Education. In practice,
it may not be easy to bring all stakeholders on board. Ideas of educational improve-
ment can be hotly contested, and certain research initiatives may draw an unwel-
come official spotlight on a school.
Even those who engage in self-study of their own practice must consider the
impact of their data-gathering, reflection and action on others, especially if they pub-
lish. Issues of care about the appropriateness of the research design, data collection,
analysis and use are vital. In a large project on Teachers as Writers, led by one of us
(Terry), one of the teacher-researchers trialled an intervention with one of her classes
but not with the other, despite a strong hunch that students in the intervention class
would benefit (Whitehead and Murphy 2012). Such a practice raises issues about the
duty of care, and whether this was appropriately exercised in respect of the ‘control’
class, even though a ‘greater good’ argument was being followed; that is, having a
control class was likely to produce more convincing data to make a case for a gen-
eral subsequent change in practice in the department involved. Principle 6 (‘right
action’) would suggest that a right end does not justify a not-right means.
A number of issues can arise when research questions address aspects of profes-
sional practice. Research codes of ethics rightly insist on respect for the autonomy
of research participants as persons. This is manifested through informed consent
116 T. Locke et al.

and the right of individuals to withdraw from research, at least until the stage when
the data are being written up. For collaborative action research within schools, such
injunctions are problematic. To what extent is it possible for teachers to exercise
autonomy and ‘withdraw’ from research when what are being examined are records
of meetings, decisions, surveys and interactions that are expected of them as part of
their professional work? How can the boundaries between involvement and non-
involvement in the research, as opposed to routine work, be demarcated? Whose
voices can be quoted in progress reports? Petrie (Petrie 2011) outlined some dilem-
mas of action research in a classroom where a university academic and a teacher
worked together on a weekly basis to teach and observe. Both teacher and academic
regarded themselves as colleagues; before the research began parents and children
were asked for consent. But if, as has happened, a child decided not to be part of
the research for any reason, it would negate the teacher’s duty of care not to
involve him or her in the instruction and assessment tasks that formed the basis of
the research data. Yet separating out a student’s individual work and voice is not
easy. If the assignment being used for research purposes is an integral part of the
research data, designed to integrate teaching and research and ensure that all tasks
are related to the students’ learning, the issue becomes yet more complicated. Prin-
ciple 4 (‘communicative freedom’), which views consent as a matter of continual
re-negotiation, may be part of the answer but will not rule out dilemmas of this
kind.
Particular dilemmas arise when principals engage in action research. Here the
clash of cultures is clear. As a principal, she/he is expected to assign teacher
responsibilities, provide support and appraisal, and involve staff in collective evalu-
ation and forward planning. The current New Zealand government-endorsed empha-
sis on evidence-based teaching underpins much of this work. But action research
initiated by a principal, particularly for an academic qualification, can raise ethical
issues for the researcher (and for university-based ethics committees) over the feasi-
bility of free, informed consent to involvement in a project, because of the power
relationship between principal and staff. There is a further issue around the trust-
worthiness of data gathered in such a project, and whether staff will be free to
express reservations to someone who may determine their professional advance-
ment. Protocols can be developed for evaluation exercises conducted for but not by
the principal, but it is difficult for a practitioner researcher in this situation to under-
stand why the professional trust on which a small school works is suddenly ques-
tioned. One of us (Noeline) has experienced this dilemma currently with a principal
who is seeking to evaluate her school’s commitment to its vision statements. For
the university ethics committee concerned with individual participants’ autonomy,
ensuring that participants are taking part freely and without coercion is paramount.
For the principal, expecting staff to be involved in ongoing professional questioning
and evaluation is normal practice. But Principles 2, 3 and 4 (‘maximal participant
recognition’, ‘negotiation and consensus’ and ‘communicative freedom’) would sug-
gest that ethically a process of careful negotiation around role and consent in the
research process needs to occur. Of course, this potentially creates a further ethical
dilemma if the collaborative relationship established for the purposes of research is
displaced by the hierarchical relationship expected for employment purposes in the
everyday workplace setting.
 Educational Action Research 117

Voice
Voice is a serious ethical concern (Groundwater-Smith 2011; Campbell and
Groundwater-Smith 2007) and is the particular focus of Principle 3 (‘negotiation
and consensus’). For this reason alone it is important that the power issues in the
example discussed above are worked through so the voices of teachers and parents
are taken fairly into account. There is a growing literature in education asserting
that the voices of young people and minority groups have not been heard in curric-
ulum and pedagogical decision-making (Groundwater-Smith 2011; McNae 2011;
Smith 2005; Bishop and Glynn 1999). It is important that collaborative action
research empowers and gives voice to the powerless and silenced as well as the
assertive and confident.
Some of the complexities of voice are illustrated in a recently completed doctoral
thesis by McNae (McNae 2011). McNae’s reading and experience convinced her that
most youth leadership programmes were based on adult conceptions of what young
people needed, and rarely consulted those who were chosen to take part. She
approached a local school and asked whether she could run a voluntary programme
for a small group of senior students. With the go-ahead obtained, she addressed an
assembly to ask for volunteers, stressing the time involvement needed. Exercising its
right as stakeholder, the school insisted that a random selection be made from the list
of those interested, resulting in a heterogeneous group who met with McNae weekly
after school for approximately six months. In that time she built trust, explored stu-
dent understandings of leadership, and co-constructed a programme with them that
met their espoused needs but also drew on her own considerable experience. She
found that these young women wanted to start, not with powerful models, but with
themselves, and that they learned through activity and reflection. Together they deter-
mined that leadership did not necessarily equate with a formal position but could be
exercised in a range of situations in school and beyond.
These young women, like many research participants, were proud of the ideas
they generated and, while they understood the need for anonymity and the pseud-
onyms under which their comments were quoted, they craved recognition for their
ideas. This recognition was afforded somewhat, not in the formal written report sub-
mitted for examination but in the publicity initiative they generated. Collectively,
they wrote and delivered a presentation to the school’s Board of Trustees, outlining
what they had learned and achieved. Further, they received permission and funding
to themselves deliver a leadership programme to students in the class below them
the following year.
In much small-scale and intimate action research, an insistence on anonymity can
be problematic. Those involved may want to have their views acknowledged rather
than appropriated by the researcher writing up the project. The more collaborative the
research has been, the stronger the desire may be to be acknowledged fully, not as
part of some anonymous sample. Conversely, there is a strong protocol for research
participants to be anonymous and their context non-identified where sharings – for
example, in interviews – are of a sensitive or personal nature. The issue does not
arise where research is in-house and owned by participants as a group, but even in
this situation, once wider publication is mooted, issues of anonymity can arise. This
is particularly so if the research has identified problems that need to be addressed.
Should such ‘dirty laundry’ be aired in public? In an era of public relations ‘spin’
and schools competing for reputation and students, this can be a risky business.
118 T. Locke et al.

McNae raises a further issue. Collaboration between her and the young women
participants was strong and reciprocal. However, collaboration between the
research project and stakeholders involved in the ongoing life of the school did
not occur until its end, with the initiative of the young women participants. In ret-
rospect, and in the spirit of Principles 1 and 2 (‘inclusivity’ and ‘maximal partici-
pant recognition’), McNae believed that involving at least one teacher from the
school would have been valuable, as she often felt isolated. Ironically, this situa-
tion provided a climate in which the research participants bonded together and
developed a level of trust, partly because they felt separated out and unofficial.
This resulted in a tight research community, but one that saw itself as quite dis-
tinct from the wider learning community in which it was embedded – a poten-
tially unhelpful them/us situation.

Benefit
As we have noted, the issue of benefit in research is potentially contentious. Action
research is contextual and localised and, while based on other research and theorisa-
tion, seeks practical solutions to immediate problems. Most action research aims to
make a difference to students or their teachers through questioning taken-for-granted
ways of acting, collecting evidence, planning and implementing action, and reflect-
ing on the impact of that action. Repeated action cycles may be necessary, each
building on an evaluation of the previous one. But anticipated benefit may be con-
tested, and implementing planned change risky (lisahunter, Emerald, and Martin
2013). Activist teachers (Sachs 1999) are not always welcome. Practitioners who
adopt innovative practices may experience frustration or even failure before they
experience success and therefore question the wisdom of the action research pro-
cess. Students or colleagues may be resistant to change. Parents may be suspicious.
At a time when schools are judged on test results, many boards and teachers prefer
to stick to traditional methods, often related to a focus on narrow outcomes, while
eschewing discourses of teaching that, for instance, challenge an exclusive focus on
outcomes and emphasise culturally responsive pedagogies.
By developing alternatives, action research can be a form of resistance to cus-
tomary practice. But it can be a dangerous game. Locke (2007) provides an
account of an extended action research initiative involving 13 schools across New
Zealand, which developed and implemented a holistic, senior-school, English cur-
riculum and qualifications regime – the Certificate of Studies: English – in oppo-
sition to a new and controversial national qualification, the National Certificate for
Educational Achievement (NCEA). The project was both rigorous and collabora-
tive, designed with supporting evidence of student engagement and achievement
in the belief that this would benefit students and contribute positively to a
national debate around programme design, assessment, moderation, workload and
reporting. Ultimately, the Certificate of Studies: English had to be abandoned
when the authority responsible for national qualifications (the New Zealand Quali-
fications Authority) ruled that students could not count Certificate of Studies: Eng-
lish credits towards university entrance. In this instance, conflicting views of
educational benefit collided.
In the light of such challenges and dilemmas, it would be easy for an ethical
action researcher to despair. Acknowledging this complexity, Groundwater-Smith
has advocated seeking ‘good enough’ solutions. Her stance is worth quoting in full:
 Educational Action Research 119

Good enough should not be seen as ‘merely good’ or some kind of mediocrity. It has
to do with making rational and defensible choices. The good enough approach is a
way to drive ongoing improvement and achieve excellence by progressively meeting,
challenging, and raising our responses to difficult ethical problems in practitioner
inquiry as opposed to driving toward an illusion of perfection. (2011, 12)

In the final section, we examine some implications from the preceding discussion
for the process of obtaining ethical approval for participatory action research pro-
jects in the university setting, and put a spotlight on the typical conduct of Univer-
sity Ethics Committees and their relationship with approval applicants.

Reframing the university-based ethical approval process

In the first part of this paper, we articulated eight principles that might enable
researchers to engage meaningfully with the uncertainties involved in continually
(re-)negotiating the ends and means of a research enterprise in which both research-
ers and practitioners are engaged collaboratively. In the second part, we used exam-
ples to focus on three major ethical tensions that may occur as a result: the co-
existence of professional and research ethics discourses in a single research space;
the exercise of research voice in a teaching and learning community; and making
consequential judgements about the perceived practice benefits of the research.
These served both to illustrate the ethical dilemmas that collaborative action
researchers must engage with dynamically in the field, and to anticipate our asser-
tion that typical university institutional ethics committee (IEC) frameworks and pro-
cesses struggle to accommodate the messy realities of collaborative action research
projects. In this part of the paper, we consider the basis on which IECs are consti-
tuted, and how these constitutions need to adapt in order to be more encouraging
and accommodating of collaborative action research in education.
One of us has argued that adversarial representations of (powerful) ethics com-
mittees and (powerless) researchers are conceptually simplistic and practically
unhelpful (O’Neill 2008). Instead, it is more useful to regard ethics review and
approval as a shared discursive space, which both parties negotiate according to the
discourse resources they have available to them. O’Neill identifies four discursive
strands or ‘regularities’ in this contemporary space; they are the regularities of
‘principle’, ‘convention’, ‘relationship’ and ‘risk’ (2008, 55–60). Principle refers to
the codification of the ethical conduct of research according to universal standards
of ethical researcher conduct. Convention refers to the disciplinary traditions and
self-regulating approaches to research conduct in fields of scholarship such as edu-
cation. Relationship refers to the different ways in which researcher and researched
are positioned within the research endeavour. Risk refers to the conception of
research as a performative enterprise in which reputation management (individual
and institutional) is central. As in any discourse analysis, the importance and influ-
ence of each of these strands may be said to ebb and flow over time, and to be
responsive to changes in language, behaviours and relations both inside and outside
an institutional setting. Thus, in considering how IEC processes may need to
change to better accommodate collaborative action research, one needs to under-
stand how such processes are currently configured and why.
Currently, it may be argued that IECs give greater weight to matters of principle
and risk than they do to convention and relationship. In part, this may be because,
120 T. Locke et al.

in Aotearoa New Zealand, six of the eight universities have human ethics
committees that are externally accredited by the Health Research Council. The
Health Research Council accreditation processes and procedures are derived from a
medical model of ethics review. Ethics review in the health sector is based on the
four bioethical principles (Beauchamp and Childress 1979) of autonomy, benefi-
cence, non-maleficence and justice. This ‘principlist’ approach to ethical review has
rapidly become hegemonic in research, both inside and outside the health sector.
Unfortunately for social researchers, this approach is based on highly question-
able assumptions that greatly affect the ways in which institutional ethics commit-
tees approach the review of proposed social ‘science’ research studies, including
those in education. First, autonomy invariably refers to the natural person, not the
group or community. IECs therefore construe consent in terms of the individual.
Conversely, collaborative action research, as we have argued, is a social activity
that takes place within a community, be this the class, the workgroup, the institu-
tion or the community at large. Consent is complex and ongoing. Second, non-
maleficence trumps beneficence: all research is constructed as having the potential
to cause harm. The principal role of the IEC is, therefore, to ‘protect’ potential
participants from the proposed actions of researchers. Relationships of trust are
vested in the consent agreement rather than a prior and ongoing relationship of
trust. Third, and most significantly in this context, principlist ethical approaches
tend to assume a separation of interests between researchers and participants: ben-
efits that accrue to the researcher are viewed as categorically different from those
that accrue to participants. Moreover, the researcher’s benefits are seen as invari-
ably direct, while those of participants may only be indirect. The role of the IEC
is to ensure that researchers represent the cost–benefit calculus truthfully in the
process of seeking and gaining informed consent. In order to be truthful, all the
possible benefits and harms are ideally required to be identified in advance and
weighted accordingly.
In medical research it is all but inconceivable to imagine a situation in which
researchers and researched do all of the following: genuinely share decisions about
the focus of the research (our Principle 1); take on different roles during its course
(Principle 2); negotiate and build consensus around decisions as the research
unfolds (Principle 3); re-negotiate grounds for participation (Principle 4); prioritise
plain language communication and reporting (Principle 5); collaboratively make
moral judgements about the conduct and ends of the research (Principle 6); question
the underpinning assumptions they bring to the research (Principle 7); and incorpo-
rate feelings as a significant aspect of research data and conduct (Principle 8). Yet,
as we have argued, these eight principles accurately reflect both the conceptual
assumptions on which collaborative, participatory action research is based, and the
nature of the values, relationships and decision-making it practically involves.
If principlist ethical approaches are based largely on assumptions of research
stability (aims, design, execution), and collaborative action research necessitates an
ethic of dynamic research as we have suggested above (Table 1), there is an impli-
cation that IECs need to accommodate, minimally, broader understandings of the
meanings of ‘participants’, ‘the character of the intervention’, ‘the nature of the
data’ and ‘the role of participants’ in research studies that are not based on a
hypothetico-deductive model of inquiry. We would argue, in fact, that broader
understandings of the dynamics at play in respect of these characteristics of collabo-
rative action research would encourage ethics committee members to re-negotiate
 Educational Action Research 121

differently the shared discursive space with social researchers, and with an assured-
ness that, in our experience, is distinctly lacking at present. In collaborative action
research, the distinction between researcher and participant is blurred, overlapping
or non-existent; the focus and the character of the intervention emerge only as
researchers and participants together construct a shared understanding of what is
worth investigating; similarly, appropriate data are only suggestible once the actual
focus of the investigation becomes apparent; while the roles of participants change
in response to what is needed to best gather and interpret the emerging data – expe-
rience-near craft expertness, or experience-distant scholarly expertise (Geertz 1993).
In terms of the ethical review and approval process currently undertaken in the
university institutional context, what we are arguing for, in effect, is a need for an
assertion of the importance of research relationships and disciplinary traditions of
doing research: a recognition that relationships of trust both permit, nurture and sus-
tain collaborative action research; and that collaborative action research is a com-
munity of inquiry practices, with its own self-regulating and self-correcting research
traditions and moral tenets that have integrity. In other words, collaborative action
research, conducted in fidelity with collaborative action research traditions, is a
moral and ethical form of scholarly inquiry, not a poor relation to the hypothetico-
deductive model. In this respect, we are advocating a rebalancing of IECs’ reliance
on abstract principles and risk-management imperatives.

Acknowledgements
The authors would like to acknowledge the contribution of Susan Groundwater-Smith to the
2011 New Zealand CARN Symposium on ‘Ethics and Action Research’ both formally and
informally.

Notes
1. In this paper ‘we’ refers to the three of us collectively as co-authors. Where we need to
refer to one of us for a particular reason, we will use our first names.
2. See http://www.teacherscouncil.govt.nz/required/ethics/codeofethics.stm.

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