Ethics is a hot topic in higher education (HE), touching many areas from fake news to trigger warnings, mass shootings to individual cases of abuse or discrimination. Yet ethics as a subject is often seen as dry and boring. It is only taught as a specific topic within a few disciplines, such as philosophy and religion, although research methods – and, therefore, research ethics – feature in many courses. However, research ethics in HE is primarily a regulatory system requiring students to fill in forms to please a committee, rather than an educational system teaching students to think their way through the ethical dilemmas that they will encounter in their studies and beyond.

In this complex environment, Helen will lead us to consider (via the chat) how educators can best use and create opportunities to raise ethical awareness, and what can help them in that work.

Biography:

Dr Helen Kara has been an independent researcher since 1999 and also teaches research methods and ethics. She is not, and never has been, an academic, though she has learned to speak the language. In 2015, Helen was the first fully independent researcher to be conferred as a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences. She is also an Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the Cathie Marsh Institute for Social Research, University of Manchester. She has written several books and journal articles on research methods and ethics, including Research Ethics in the Real World (2018, Policy Press), and regularly writes about ethics on her blog.

The Wakelet will be shared here following the chat.