Faculty of Education and Humanities project puts research ethics under the spotlight

A new research project, lead by Dr Dave Burnapp, Senior Lecturer in English & Creative Writing, supported by Postgraduate Research students Djamel Eddine Benchaib and Anthony Stepniak, will look at the Ethics and integrity in staff:student research and academic innovation partnerships.

The involvement of students as partners, rather than just as participants, in research and innovation is increasing throughout Higher Education, and this raises new questions for researchers.

This Faculty of Education and Humanities research project, which has been funded by the Institute of Learning and Teaching, will gather experiences of staff and students and aims to create and disseminate guidelines relating to ethics and integrity abstracted from these findings. The long-term aim of the project is to publish a finalised set of guidelines which will be of value within the University of Northampton and the wider Higher Education sector.

Dr Dave Burnapp said: “Innovations in learning and teaching are rooted in research, and the benefits of incorporating the perspectives of students relating to initiatives is increasingly valued. The move from ‘participants’ to ‘partners’ raises interesting new questions which I hope this project will debate and begin to address.”

Anthony Stepniak, PhD Research Student and Associate Lecturer said: “This project will focus on collecting rich qualitative accounts of those researchers and students already working in this ‘partnership’ style, to draw best practice from these experiences, combining reflection, application, and experimentation geared to the enhancement of teaching practice.”

Djamel Eddine Benchaib, PhD student said: “There is still a gap in the literature on how to conduct research which involves students fully collaborating with staff. By conducting this project, we aim to provide evidence-based input to improve research practice and research conduct within Higher Education.”