Institutional ethics review procedures aim -- in principle -- to minimise harm and evaluate risks, providing an important space to consider the safety of participants and researchers. However, literature has questioned the effectiveness of the process, particularly for reviewing 'risky' topics in a risk-averse environment. This article reports the…

Research ethics reviews are an integral component of the research process in education, but little is known about educators' perceptions of and experiences with this process. This exploratory study examines educators' perceptions of and experiences with the reviews of research ethics and, in this way, it contributes to a better understanding of…

Many educational researchers have experienced challenges in obtaining ethics approval. This article explores some of the reasons why this is the case, looking specifically at the participatory action research methodology. The authors' experience of seeking ethics approval for a project intended to introduce peer review as an enhancement process is…

Indigenous Australians represent 2.2% of the working age population, yet account for only 1.4% of all university enrolments. In relation to higher degree research students, Indigenous Australians account for 1.1% of enrolments, but only 0.8% of all higher degree research completions. This paper reports on findings that emerged from an Australian…

In the Swedish educational system, teachers have the dual responsibility of assigning final grades and marking their own students' national tests. The Government has mandated the Swedish Schools Inspectorate to remark samples of the national tests to see if teacher marking can be trusted. Reports from this project have concluded that intermarker…

Background: Turkey is a fast-developing country facing a lot of different problems. One of the problems is inadequate education. A large project was started to improve Turkish elementary education. The project includes many different purposes from physical refurbishment of school buildings, to increasing technology use in education. The author of…

Maintaining standards over time is a much debated topic in the context of national examinations in the UK. This study used a pilot method to compare the demands, over time, of two examination units testing administration. The method involved 15 experts revising a framework of demand types and making paired comparisons of examinations from…

How do evaluation practitioners make choices when they evaluate a program? What function do evaluation theories play in practice? In this article, I report on an exploratory study that examined evaluation practices in France. The research began with observations of practitioners' activities, with a particular focus on the phases of evaluation…

This article provides a brief summary of the seven articles in this special issue through the lens of the concept of "caring reflexivity". In joining "caring" and "reflexivity", we deepen the conversation about what constitutes reflexivity, encouraging an explicit focus on the relational. Revisiting the first article,…

This report is a product of an European Association for Quality Assurance in Higher Education (ENQA) Workshop "Assessing educational quality: Knowledge production and the role of experts" hosted by the Norwegian Agency for Quality Assurance in Education (NOKUT) in Oslo in February, 2008. The workshop gathered representatives from higher…

In many institutions, the institutional review board/research ethics board (IRB/REB) uses the traditional audit approach that emerged from the biomedical community (e.g., Nuremburg Code, Belmont Report) to review the ethical acceptability of research using humans as participants. This approach is guided by participant protection and risk…

Drawing from educational research conducted in Canada and Mexico, university researchers explore how culture complicates both the ethics review process and the translation of ethical research principles into practice. University researchers in Canadian contexts seek approval from university Research Ethics Boards to conduct research, following…

What is the relationship between theory and design in evaluation pretending to be "democratic?" When do we feel able to relinquish elements of intellectual control over evaluation? If not in qualitative versus quantitative tendencies, where lie key value divisions in evaluation? To elicit the views of two leading United Kingdom-based…

Practitioner involvement in evaluation, research, development, and other forms of disciplined inquiry that are small scale, local, grounded, and carried out by professionals who directly deliver those services is embraced across a wide range of professions as essential to good professional practice. However, little is known about the character,…

Starting from the premise that the teaching profession tends to view formal assessment procedures with some misgivings, the following article attempts to develop the argument that the problem is, at least in part, one of too narrow a perspective. A case study is first described involving the trialling of a vocabulary test at a language teaching…