5d - My enquiry and ethical considerations.

I have been thinking about, struggling with and refining the idea for my enquiry for some time. After talking to Rosemary, it was suggested that I need to refine it further, to decide on a particular type of student, age range, ability, genre and location to make it possible to complete my enquiry and make it meaningful within the time scale that we will have.

I have therefore chosen a specific student group of adult learners aged between 18 and 45 who have mild to moderate learning disabilities. The location of the enquiry will be a range of services and classes which are inclusive of adults with learning disabilities within my local area and at which I provide support as part of my employment with a care organisation. I am interested in the benefits achieved for adult learners with disabilities and how these can be maximised by different teaching styles.

I have defined the area of enquiry below;

An enquiry into whether different teaching methods produce different benefits for adult students with learning difficulties. I’m interested in comparing approaches such as performance workshops, improvisation workshops, traditional ballet syllabus classes, and dance exercise classes and whether one approach is more adaptable for producing the greatest amount of benefit for the widest range of students. I am interested in understanding how to approach my own teaching when faced with the challenging situation of suiting a combination of students.

Ethical Considerations

In considering my enquiry, I had considered that I might provide a new service for a limited time, a specific dance group in order to manipulate the teaching method and to ascertain the benefits that were achieved by each. I quickly realised that this would be an unethical approach to take. Within learning disabilities there can be some apprehension to change, in providing something and then continually changing it this would aggravate this reaction causing harm to the participants. Additionally providing a service that would be enjoyed and then to take this away when the enquiry was completed would also be unfair, as the student would have a sense of loss, this again can cause distress.

For this reason in choosing to observe and consider a range of activities that are already attended, I have no need to manipulate anything. I can simply take advantage of the fact that a range of approaches are already used and monitor the benefits in this way.

This approach will also have research benefits as I am only usually present as a support member of staff, I have no control over lesson planning or approach, I simply follow the guidance of the lead teacher. This then means that I will have no way of manipulating any results, or pushing a particular method in order to get results, this should hopefully keep things unbiased.

In gathering my data and recording it then I will obviously have to maintain levels of confidentiality. I am dealing with vulnerable people, and the nature of their learning disabilities may be relevant and this of course is very personal and must be confidential. I would therefore not use names of any participants, and would keep all date gathered stored confidentially, and password protected on my computer.  

Teachers of the classes would also be protected by confidentiality, and would have the right to consent to the observations, surveys, interviews, or which ever method used. They would be fully informed about what I was enquiring about and why. They would also be given the opportunity to review the results of the enquiry after it has been completed. Again no names would need to be provided so that no one individual is identifiable if they wish not to be. I would also treat their responses with care and consideration, and only report what is relevant to the enquiry in a way that is a true representation of the opinion, not taking anything out of context.

My final consideration is again for the participants of the classes, I wonder about informed consent. I feel that perhaps informing them of the enquiry and what I am observing may change the results, at the moment being present at their classes is not uncommon and their behaviour is quite natural. If they know there is an alternative reason then I wonder if this may make them behave differently, or even potentially create anxiety or apprehension, or on the other end of the scale playing up to an audience creating behavioural difficulties.

It seems that when possible informed consent must be sought, this is the ethical thing to do, and would be my preferred method; however it does worry me that it will effect my results. I also know that it will take some time to explain to all participants what it is I am doing, as understanding can be limited at times and additional methods such as pictures and widget symbols may needed to be used for consent forms, this could create further problems with time scales for observations.

In summery my main ethical considerations will be for the participant of the study, keeping them safe and comfortable, not only through health and safety consideration but additionally emotional comfort must be of maximum importance. I don’t want to cause any harm or distress, this includes keeping confidentiality.

This is also true of the teachers of the classes; I don’t want to cause any distress or discomfort in conducting my enquiry. There should be no pressure to participate and any opinions and responses should be dealt with care and confidentiality.

I also want my research to be reliable and, research ethics should mean that my results are true, unbiased and worthwhile.