only connect - dissertation - ETHICS

Not quite sure what this is about - but I feel I need some. Here you'll find both a fairly standard outline of the research ethics of Only Connect, plus other thoughts.

			Fundamentals

Students The anonymity of the students involved in the project is important, within the dissertation and beyond into the publication of various aspects of the project. Students, in collaboration with their parents/guardians are assured that the most specific identification of any of them will by by first name only and their location will be described as 'the Chesterfield area' or 'North Derbyshire'. This applies to any publicity and press releases during the project. Once we are into the post-project phase each will be identified by a first name they have chosen and all subsequent writing and communication, including the dissertation, will use those names. Each was asked to indicate the level to which they would be willing to be involved with publicity. They were specifically asked if they would be willing to: be referred to by their first name have photographs taken be interviewed on TV or radio This produced a variety of responses that have been kept to throughout the project. The use of educational background information and reasons for home-tuition is possible, but will only be where directly needed to make specific points; where possible such information will not be linked to a specific student, even when they are referred to by pseudonyms. In some cases students have felt able to write information on their own backgrounds that they are willing to share. These are shown elsewhere under the chosen pseudonyms. MORE TO COME

			'I am become death'

Pretty dramatic heading, however, I have developed a real concern regarding the outcomes of this work, both as a free-standing project and as a dissertation. This grows out of the fact that it's looking more and more like this is one of the first studies in this area (please contact me if you know of others, it's lonely in here and I'm scared) and so it's possible that, despite its small scale, it might receive a lot of attention from decision makers at a high level. At the very least DCC will be using it as a basis for developing a wider application of the internet to home tuition. In the current climate of all-things-internet-are-great and the search for quick, cheap fixes to fundamentally expensive problems there will be a temptation to use internet based solutions not to augment but to replace current home tuition provision - perhaps to the extent of turning home tutored students over completely to ILS type programs. It is my feeling that such a move would serve to isolate students, to provide them with an arid and uninspiring educational experience that might leverage SAT scores but will be of little meaning to them, and to squander the developing resources held in the heads of existing home tutors. I feel that this would be doing students a great disservice in the name of cost-saving and the Great God ICT. Current methods of funding are likely to make this even more probable. The nature of this activity means that it is likely to attract funding from a variety of sources - the Lottery and EU Action Zone funding come immediately to mind. Such funding tends to encourage capital expenditure under tight deadlines on projects that are under-researched and often lead to mind-bending levels of waste. Such funding does not encourage the development of long-term projects that expect to grow, change and develop over many years. As a method of pump-priming it's fine, but that tends not to be the way it's used. A grant of £200,000 would set up 100 students with high quality home learning stations and make great headlines, but unless it was backed by an ongoing commitment to spend a lot more than that on training, staffing and maintaining the system it's simply money down the drain. So, in the writing of both the dissertation and any articles/press releases about the project, I will be trying to keep in mind the idea that Only Connect is exploring ways of extending and augmenting an existing face to face system of home tuition and that the face to face, personal tutor is at the heart of it.