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Nurse educators often choose to conduct research in the classroom using their own students as study participants. This type of research is most often conducted in an effort to improve teaching techniques and student learning, but too often little thought has been given to the potential harm students may experience as a result of participating in their instructor's research. Potential ethical dilemmas in educational research include actual or perceived student coercion, lack of confidentiality, and the absence of meaningful informed consent. In order to protect both the student and the faculty researcher, a faculty researcher should avoid using their own students as participants. Faculty researchers should ensure that the research design supports using students as study participants. Students should not be used as research participants simply because they are available. Faculty should avoid using qualitative study designs that utilize interviews with students as this design often encourages increased intimacy between faculty and students. Faculty researchers must design their research anticipating ethical dilemmas and must also work in conjunction with their institution's institutional review board to ensure that student confidentiality, informed consent, and educational opportunities are preserved.
Keywords: ethics; research; faculty research; student study participants
Classroom research is necessary to the educational process. Classroom research with an experimental design can provide valuable information to nurse educators about the most effective instructional techniques to employ with their nursing students. Qualitative research in the classroom can reveal new patterns of thought and new knowledge that can prove invaluable to educators working directly with students in classroom and clinical settings (Lawrence, 2007).
Research is essential to the educational process. Nurse educators are expected to produce scholarly work in order to obtain tenure and advance in rank within an academic institution. Nurse educators also have an ethical obligation to contribute to the body of nursing education knowledge. Provision 7.1 of the American Nurses Association Code of Ethics for Nurses states that nurse researchers are "responsible for active contribution to the body of knowledge supporting and advancing nursing practice" (American Nurses Association [ANA], 2005). In addition, comments accompanying provision 7.2 states that a nurse educator is "responsible for promoting and maintaining optimum standards of both nursing education and nursing practice in any setting where planned learning activities occur" (ANA, 2005)....