| Course Objectives: | At the end of this course, students will be able to:
1. Identify and articulate their own preconceived
moral/ethical assumptions and positions and recognize
alternative positions held by others, as well as evaluate the
strengths and weaknesses of these positions.
2. Express increased proficiency assertively, yet
respectfully, engaging in moral conversation in which a variety
of opposing viewpoints may be represented.
3. Use classical, postmodern, and feminist ethical
theories to reveal the ethical dimension (i.e., overt and
covert ethical assumptions, implications, and ramifications)
embedded in the research topic and methods of your choice.
4. Identify and apply (as applicable) formal regulatory
guidelines established by statutory standards (e.g., the
Belmont Report), professional codes of ethics, local and
international institutional review board policies, and
religious or other nongovernmental codes of conduct (e.g., the
United Nations Declaration of Human Rights and the World
Medical Association Declaration of Helsinki).
5. Identify and apply different models of ethical decision
making to concrete research situations.
6. Recognize that the ethical analysis and problem-solving
tools presented in this course have broader applicability than
the formal research process. |
| Topical Outline: | Textbooks
American Educational Research Association, Ethical standards of
the American Educational Research Association: Cases and
commentary. Washington, DC: American Educational Research
Association, 2002.
Lawrence M. Hinsman, Ethics: A pluralistic approach to moral
theory, 2nd ed. Fort Worth, TX: Harcourt Brace, 1994.
Thomas Keenan, Fables of responsibility: Aberrations and
predicaments in ethics and politics. Stanford University Press,
1997.
Stanley Milgram, Obedience to authority: An experimental view.
HarperPerennial, 1974.
Bruce Dennis Sales and Susan Folkman (Eds.), Ethics in research
with human participants. American Psychological Association,
2000.
Harry F. Wolcott, Sneaky kid and its aftermath: Ethics and
intimacy in fieldwork. Altamira, 2002.
Topics
1. Introduction: What is ethics and how come we keep
using the word moral? Is there a difference between “moral”
and “moralistic”? Is it possible to engage in moral discourse
without being moralistic? What does morality have to do with
science? What is the relationship between “is” and “ought”?
Is science and research value free, amoral, and ethically
neutral; ought it to be?
2. Identifying Presuppositions: How do we know what is
ethical and what is not ethical? What is the source(s) of
these distinctions (e.g., individual assessment, local
community or larger cultural norms, God, Buddha, Allah, etc.)?
What are our epistemologies? What are the ethical assumptions
embedded in our world views? Do they shape or are they shaped
by our research efforts? How do we live with moral certainty
or uncertainty in a pluralistic society?
3. Developing Moral Discernment: What are specific
ethical challenges faced by everyone engaged in human research?
What are ethical surprises, contingencies, and constraints?
What ethical issues arise because of the researcher’s role
and/or experiences (e.g., social hierarchies and power
relationships in research: studying up, down, sideways, and
inside and outside groups)?
4. Broadening Ethical Perspectives: What do different
ethical traditions (i.e., classical, postmodern, and feminist
theories) identify as ethically relevant and what is considered
ethically irrelevant? What standards are established by formal
regulatory guidelines such as governmental law (e.g., the
Belmont Report), professional codes of ethics, local and
international institutional review board policies, and
religious or other nongovernmental codes of conduct (e.g., the
United Nations Declaration of Human Rights and the World
Medical Association Declaration of Helsinki)?
5. Applying Ethical Analysis: What role does ethics play
in selecting research topics and the formulation of research
problems (i.e., studying AIDS, domestic abuse, and other
sensitive issues)? How does ethics apply to action research,
insider research, participatory action research? What is the
role of ethics in the design and conduct of research studies?
What can’t researchers do? What “ought” they to do? How are
institutional review board expectations and constraints managed
in practice? What is the relationship between ethics and
research participants and settings? How do researchers
conceptualize those they study (i.e., as subjects,
participants, coresearchers)? How do ethical considerations
affect data representation, research applications, and
implications? What do we do when the needs of scholarship
conflict with the needs of research participants? How do the
norms and mores of the participants being studied affect our
ethical decision making?
6. Practicing Concrete Ethical Problem Solving: What
models for problem solving are presented by different ethical
traditions (i.e., classical, postmodern and feminist
theories)? What are the strengths and weaknesses associated
with these models? What model or combination of models is
intuitively most appealing? Why? Why not others? How do you
justify ethical decisions? What is the impact of setting and
context on ethical decision making (i.e., ethics in the academy
and other professional venues like school districts and human
service agencies)? How do we live with the ethical ambiguity
and uncertainty that come from having to choose between
multiple viable ethical options? What is ongoing moral
reflection? |