Construction and power: the ethics of educational policy research

Abstract

Western scientific communities have, for the past few decades, been overly concerned with ensuring that social - including educational - research is conducted to the highest ‘ethical’ standard (Hammersley, 2010). The exact meaning of the word remains contested, as does the question of whether insisting too much upon ethical rules and regulations perhaps harms the quality and freedom of the scientific endeavour. In this article, I reflect on the main arguments in this on-going debate, with the particular accent on ethics and power relationships in elite research, often neglected in such discussions. I conclude by noting that, whatever one’s stance, what is necessary, to advance both the debate and the quality of one’s research, is a greater concern with the theoretical and methodological underpinnings of adopted positions.