Participant-facing documents
I changed my research question after my first draft and workshop, so I had to rewrite my Ethical Action Plan. I realised that my initial project involved quite complicated ethical issues.
First draft Ethical Action Plan – 28/09/2025
There were many issues with the first project I proposed, such as needing permission to collect data from a larger number of students (the Professional Practice sessions are open to over 300 students), involving three colleagues co-leading it, and the question never feeling entirely clear to me. I used feedback from that draft, group tutorial discussions, and the workshop to rewrite my question.
I used the feedback regarding the project’s breadth and methods to write my final Ethical Action Plan. I had a conversation with my tutor about the need to be clear about the questions I would use to set up the participatory conversation. From an ethics perspective, I realised that I should be aware of whether my questions could harm students or put them in an uncomfortable position. Although the participatory conversation ended up engaging only one student, becoming more of a semi-formal interview, the set of initial questions helped us stay on track and made me more comfortable engaging them in my ongoing analysis as the project developed.
Final Ethical Action Plan – 17/10/2025
My original Participant Documents drafts were unclear about when participants could opt out. Looking back now that I’ve seen other participant-facing documents, I wish I had rewritten the templates in a much more informal tone and made them much shorter and simpler. Even though I sent the documents by email and brought printed copies for students to sign, I don’t think they read them as carefully as they would have if I had made them shorter and clearer.