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Showing posts from April 16, 2018

Human Research Ethics and Teacher/Student Relationships

As part of my Masters in Education program at American College of Education , I recently took a course in ethics related to using humans as research subjects .  This course was through the National Institutes of Health and led to a certification.  Some of my peers questioned why it would be necessary for teachers to be concerned about how to treat human subjects in research.  However, when you think about it, we are constantly observing our students, gathering data, experimenting with our methods and planning, and making adjustments based on student feedback.  We often share our observations about our students with our peers and with students' parents.  We also guide our students' use of and access to outside information.  This could be considered study of human subjects, and as such has certain ethical ramifications. The three basic ethical principles that came from the Belmont Report  are: Respect for persons , which involves informed consent; Benef...