Ethical statements: a refresher of the minimum requirements for publication of chemistry education research and practice articles

‘Research’ only becomes formally recognized as research once it has been shared with an audience who can scrutinize findings critically to inform their own practices and scientific work. In a research publication, the reader relies on an explicit description of procedures that have been applied to collect research data to enable their consideration of the rigour and generalizability of the findings. This detail is particularly critical in chemistry education research due to the diversity in researcher lenses and the complexity of educational contexts that represent our community. Chemistry education research is focused mainly on human subjects as participants, therefore ethical considerations are paramount.

Despite the formal requirement in the journal's ‘guidelines for authors’ that a statement of ethical procedures is included, we routinely receive manuscript submissions that omit key information in terms of the ethical procedures that were used in the researchers’ process of data collection. This has been a long-standing concern for the journal, evident through the previous extensive advice that has been provided by past editors of Chemistry Education Research and Practice. Through their editorials, they have sought to guide authors in the minimum ethical standards that are required for a manuscript to be considered further for publication in the journal (Taber, 2014; Seery et al., 2019). The consequent process of seeking confirmation from the authors that ethical procedures were in place inevitably delays a review process, if the manuscript is to be considered further.

The current editorial team (this article's authors) have considered the range of contexts that exist and the international variation for reporting ethical procedures that arises. In 2021, we are introducing a new step in the submission process where authors are required to ‘check’ a statement that confirms that they have included an ethical statement in their methods, this aims to make any formal or local ethical procedures explicit.

Our intention is not to present a barrier to submission but rather to improve the publication process for all involved, as well as meeting a duty of care for our readers, in ensuring that only data collected ethically is shared. Our goal is to ensure that authors declare the basic protocols that have been followed, to ensure that informed consent has been acquired and that an individual's privacy and confidentiality have been protected.

Informed consent

Ethical practice involves a human subject's right to autonomy and the ability to make an independent decision, without coercion, involving informed consent and privacy. Participants in chemistry education research are typically either teachers or students. Where students are minors, their age significantly influences their ability to consider risk and provide informed consent to participate in a study. The role of a gatekeeper therefore becomes critical – an Institutional Review Board (IRB) or Human Research Ethics Committee (HREC) will frame ethical principles and require course coordinators to act as gatekeepers to safeguard student participants in tertiary institutions. In school settings, where minors lack the maturity or agency to be able to decline to participate in studies, the gatekeeper is more likely to be a parent, guardian, administrator or teacher who has been assigned with the capacity to act on behalf of participants. For some studies in certain contexts, human research ethics committees may regard the research as being of low or negligible risk and recommend a waiver or exemption for the requirement of informed consent. Given this variability, it is important that authors include an ethical statement that describes how and from whom informed consent was facilitated, or whether the study is exempt. If their research is exempt from formal review procedures, it is recommended that researchers include a brief statement outlining their consideration of the question of any possibility of physical or psychological harm coming to the participants as a result of the study, along with an explanation of the ethical safeguards in place.

Positionality and convenience sampling

The position of the researcher(s) should be made clear in terms of their role with respect to the study participants, and this includes acknowledging the existence of perceived status relationships (Ferguson et al., 2004). This is particularly important when the researcher who is engaged in action research is also the teacher of the participants (captive population), introducing a dependency relationship and double agency. Action research (research that is conducted in the researcher's own classroom or context) has attracted recommendations for ethical practice (Nolan and Putten, 2007). Although action research is potentially most complicated in this respect, a statement that makes double agency in a study explicit, while describing how this was addressed, is highly recommended for all relevant research types. This detail might explain how an independent colleague, a research assistant or a research student has delivered an intervention or collected the data to overcome perceived power relationships.

Balancing benefits and risk of harm as a consequence of the research

While education research is generally conducted with the aim to improve student learning, there is still potential for participants to experience negative outcomes based on their experience in the process of data collection or as a result of the findings. In some research designs, students might view the teaching intervention that forms the basis of the research as potentially beneficial for their learning so decide to participate for fear of missing out. Indeed, simply participating in the research can itself result in changes in student behaviour, their perceptions of their learning experience and their outcomes. This situation has potential to be further exacerbated in experimental studies (Taber, 2019) where a control group is perceived to have experienced learning conditions that are presented in a study as inferior. In chemistry education research and practice, the control condition is often referred to by researchers as a ‘traditional’ classroom which tends be the current practice in the local context, therefore regarded as supportive of learning. A quasi-experimental or experimental design enables comparison of the existing classroom environment with one involving either an innovation or the adoption of new pedagogical approaches and is common in chemistry education research. We recommend that authors state whether information that describes the research was shared with participants in each group in experimental or quasi-experimental studies and detail any additional ethical considerations inherent in this approach. Authors are also reminded that creating a control condition, as part of a study design, that could be regarded as detrimental for learners is likely to be viewed as unethical (Taber, 2019).

Publication of student work or images of participants may compromise their identity. Some authors are tempted to include photographs of classroom activities or professional development workshops in progress as part of their manuscripts. Any participants who are made visible need to have given signed consent to share their images for this exact purpose because they are instantly identifiable. We recommend avoiding these images because they rarely add value to the written text in the manuscript and the participants may attract negative attention if the findings involve reports of low understanding or poor skills.

Primary and secondary data analysis

Primary data may include participant-generated artefacts such as workbooks, written reflections, drawings, classroom observations, interviews, survey responses and test outcomes. These sources of data all require informed consent to be given by the participants, their gatekeeper or approval by an ethics committee for analysis and inclusion in a published study. Qualitative data poses the greatest risk to participants being identifiable compromising their privacy and confidentiality, so careful de-identification before data analysis, appropriate storage and reporting are necessary.

Secondary data involves the post hoc analysis of data or the re-use of data that were collected for a different purpose, such as student examinations or test outcomes typically collected as summative assessment and grades. Learning analytics has become more prevalent as a source of aggregated, de-identified research data in tertiary education in recent years. This has generated debate regarding the ownership of this data and related ethical issues such as analysis without students’ informed consent or knowledge (Willis et al., 2016; Braunack-Mayer et al., 2020). Typically, separate permission is sought from an ethics committee to re-analyse data to address a new research question. Dis-aggregated examination data is often regarded as involving negligible risk for participants hence its analysis is reported without ethical consideration – any local procedures and approvals should still be stated.

Variation across international contexts

In our editorial roles, our experience to date has been that there is substantial variation between international contexts – we acknowledge that in some countries education research must gain ethical clearance by institutional review boards (IRB) to proceed. Each country may have professional organisations that guide ethical standards, and several are internationally recognized, such as the ethical guidelines published by the British Educational Research Association (BERA, 2018). A statement that approval has been granted by an IRB (or human research ethics committee) generally confirms that ethical standards have been met.

In other countries there are no institutional ethics committees or local procedures in existence, so researchers are required to develop their own ethical protocols. The inclusion of a statement to this effect, in the methods section of a manuscript, describing the procedures that were implemented by researchers as ethical safeguards becomes critical for researchers in chemistry education to earn and maintain the trust allotted by research study participants. Our journal aims to support our international research community in setting expectations of the minimum requirements in reporting ethical procedures through a statement of practice which aligns with more rigorous compliance.

We recommend that, to comply with our journal's requirement for an ethical statement, the following points are addressed as part of a formal methods section to provide the reader with the minimum information; any additional detail is welcome.

• The statement must name the institutional/local ethics committee which has approved the study; where possible, the approval or case number should be provided. State the ethical procedures required in your context.

• If there are no formal requirements or procedures in your country or institution, this should be made explicit along with details of the ethical safeguards that the researchers have applied in lieu of formal procedures.

• State the researcher(s) role and relationship to the participants in the education setting, and when applicable a description of efforts taken to minimize the double agency when the researcher also serves as the teacher of the participants.

• A statement that informed consent was obtained for any experimentation with human subjects, or whether a human research ethics committee has determined a study exempt from informed consent, is required. This statement should address the questions of how informed consent was secured (including an option to decline or withdraw participation in the study at any time) and participants’ identity protected.

References

1. BERA, (2018), Ethical Guidelines for Educational Research, 4th edn, British Educational Research Association, London, https://www.bera.ac.uk/researchers-resources/publications/ethical-guidelines-for-educational-research-2018.
2. Braunack-Mayer A. J., Street J. M., Tooher R., Feng X. and Scharling-Gamba K., (2020), Student and Staff Perspectives on the Use of Big Data in the Tertiary Education Sector: A Scoping Review and Reflection on the Ethical Issues, Rev. Educ. Res., 90(6), 788–823.
3. Ferguson L. M., Yonge O. and Myrick F., (2004), Students' involvement in faculty research: Ethical and methodological issues, Int. J. Qual. Meth., 3(4), 56–68.
4. Nolen A. L. and Putten J. V., (2007), Action research in education: Addressing gaps in ethical principles and practices, Educ. Res., 36(7), 401–407.
5. Seery M. K., Kahveci A., Lawrie G. A. and Lewis S. E., (2019), Evaluating articles submitted for publication in Chemistry Education Research and Practice, Chem. Educ. Res. Pract., 20(2), 335–339.
6. Taber K. S., (2014), Ethical considerations of chemistry education research involving ‘human subjects’, Chem. Educ. Res. Pract., 15(2), 109–113.
7. Taber K. S., (2019), Experimental research into teaching innovations: responding to methodological and ethical challenges, Stud. Sci. Educ., 55(1), 69–119.
8. Willis J. E., Slade S. and Prinsloo P., (2016), Ethical oversight of student data in learning analytics: A typology derived from a cross-continental, cross-institutional perspective, Educ. Tech. Res., 64(5), 881–901.

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