Democratising Ethical Regulation and Practice in Educational Research

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The main focus of this article is a challenge to the ideologies and practices of ethical review committees (ERCs), which often impose top-down regulations based on values current in institutions of the global north. The call for more dialogical, democratic and de-colonised processes of review, which also might be on-going and multi-stage, is well-made. 

Some key concepts and theoretical approaches to ethics might be explicated a little more fully. Reference is made to the 'Utilitarian Ethical Framework' (bottom of p. 2), which, it is claimed, rests upon principles of respect for persons, etc. 'Respect for persons' is usually considered a deontological principle (the foundation of Kantian moral philosophy). Other 'principles' listed take the form of qualities of character or virtues - 'honesty' and 'fairness' (key to Aristotelian virtue ethics). These wouldn't usually be regarded as principles of utilitarian ethics, which is based on the promotion of the greatest good of the greatest number, and might entail disrespecting one person for the benefit of many others, or engaging in dishonesty in pursuit of beneficial outcomes.  The relationship between utilitarianism and the broader consequentialist  approaches to ethics should be briefly explained. Usually utilitarianism is regarded as a specific type of  consequentialist ethical theory. 

The CERD framework should be spelled out in full on first mention and a little more detail given about the pluralist approach to ethical theory that seems to underlie this (p. 3).

'Ubuntu' mentioned on p. 3 should be briefly explicated - its roots in African philosophy and how this fits with 'relational ethics'. 

'Phronesis'  is mentioned as important on several occasions. This could be further developed. Phronesis is an overarching, integrating virtue in Aristotelian ethics. Given virtues/qualities of character feature in this article, more discussion of virtue ethics seems to be called for (this work might be useful: Emmerich, N. (ed) Virtue ethics in the conduct and governance of social science research, Emerald Publishing). 

The ideal of a de-colonised, dialogical research ethics process is presented. While it is obviously beyond the scope of this article to give detailed recommendations for how current systems be changed, a brief indication of what might need to happen would be useful. What resources of time and funding might be required? What alternative ways of supporting and ensuring ethical research practice might there be other than via ERCs? Ethics committees and boards could be reformed, or maybe they are not the best way of achieving ethical practice? The proposals here seem to call for small, diverse review groups/mentors for each research project. Is this feasible in terms of time and cost? 

An important and challenging article, offering a good opening to the special issue and raising very important issues for researchers, funders and research institutions.    

           

 

  

          

   

Author Response

Thank you very much for your contributions to strengthening our paper.

 Please see our responses on the attachment. 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

I felt that this essay provides a clear and well-structured argument advocating for a restructuring of the existing ethical review processes to focus more on collaboration and consultation rather than predetermined rule following.  That said, I think these are arguments that have been raised before and some relevant literature related to these issues around de-colonizing research ethics, the incorporation of phronesis, and the creation of ethics guidelines through communal engagement were not included (see for example, Olav Eikeland's extended discussions around phronesis, discussions of the OCAP principles put forward by Canadian First Nations groups, and work by Sarah Banks and others on ethics in participatory research).  I think all of this work could be easily incorporated into the existing essay and would provide additional support to the important arguments raised by the authors.

Author Response

Thank you for your contributions to strengthening our paper. Please find our responses to your review attached. 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf