The amoral academy? A critical discussion of research ethics in the neo-liberal university

This paper challenges current dominant thinking in Universities about the processes of ethical appraisal of research studies in the Social Sciences. It considers this to be founded on unjustifiable and inappropriate principles, the origins of which are presented before discussing alternative, more i...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Educational philosophy and theory 2021-04, Vol.53 (5), p.469-478
Main Authors: Busher, Hugh, Fox, Alison
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Administrative Organization
Dialogic empowerment
Dialogs (Language)
Educational Anthropology
ethical review
Ethics
Ethnography
Foreign Countries
Inappropriateness
Integrity
moral practice
Moral Values
Morality
Neoliberalism
Organizational Change
participants' voices
Participatory Research
Research ethics
Research Methodology
Research Projects
Risk
Social Science Research
Social sciences
Universities
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Summary:This paper challenges current dominant thinking in Universities about the processes of ethical appraisal of research studies in the Social Sciences. It considers this to be founded on unjustifiable and inappropriate principles, the origins of which are presented before discussing alternative, more inclusive and ethically defensible approaches. The latter are based on dialogic processes to sustain respectful and empowering ethical reviews which appreciate the situated nature of research. The empirical evidence for this comes from papers about ethnographic studies with children and adults in various educational spaces in Western Europe, originally a symposium on the practice of ethics in educational ethnography at ECER, 2017, now forming a book published by Routledge, 2019. The dialogic processes help researchers to carry out culturally-appropriate research with the demonstrable ethical integrity that participants and stakeholders reasonably expect. The authors argue that currently risk-averse Universities need to change their research cultures to support all research methodologies and fieldwork practices that have ethical integrity and create valuable research that is socially beneficial, to enhance their lustre.
ISSN:0013-1857
1469-5812
DOI:10.1080/00131857.2019.1707656