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Ethical Issues in Applied Linguistics Scholarship
Edited by Peter I. De Costa, Amr Rabie-Ahmed and Carlo Cinaglia
[Research Methods in Applied Linguistics 7] 2024
► pp. 45–58

Chapter 3
Ethical issues in educational action research

 | University of Edinburgh
Educational action research (EAR) is often employed in language education by practitioners and researchers who wish to engage in bottom-up, collaborative forms of research that merge teaching, learning, and inquiry. EAR is characterised by having a direct impact on the teaching and learning processes as it is often carried out by teachers with their own students. EAR can be approached as a practical or transformational endeavour to improve language teaching and learning. Whatever the architecture supporting EAR, there are a few macro- and micro-ethical issues that must be acknowledged. In this chapter, I draw on my experience as a researcher leading an EAR project carried out with secondary school teachers and learners in Argentina to discuss ethical issues related to quality of evidence, quality of purpose, and quality of outcome. The article includes a series of takeways to support the ethical design, implementation, and evaluation/afterlife of an EAR project.
Article outline
  • Contextualising ethics
  • Contextualising ethics in educational action research
  • Ethics in practice
    • Quality of evidence
    • Quality of purpose
    • Quality of outcome
  • Final reflections
  • References
Published online: 21 November 2024
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/rmal.7.03ban
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