Travelers and Trolls: Practitioner Research and Institutional Review Boards

Abstract

Practitioner research is a growing form of educational research that presents distinctive ethical issues concerning the protection of research subjects. These issues are also evident in similar forms of action-oriented research carried out in natural settings. Some Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) have been criticized for drawing inappropriate conclusions in their reviews of proposed practitioner research projects. This article seeks to explain some of the factors creating the conflicts and misunderstandings among practitioner researchers and IRBs in hopes of ameliorating these difficulties. Although some difficulties are readily resolvable, fundamental societal rifts exist in the ethical perspectives from which judgments about the ethical propriety of such projects should be made, and the disputes derived from these rifts are not so easy to fix.