Zusammenfassung

Despite great diversity in terms of our theory and practice one way to think about what constitutes the core of action research is a common values stance. This set of shared beliefs has been described as ‘a respect for people and for the knowledge and experience they bring to the research process, a belief in the ability of democratic processes to achieve positive social change, and a commitment to action’ (BrydonMiller, Greenwood, and Maguire, 2003, p. 15). But action research can also be defined by its range of research practices which most often involve working in complex, ever-changing, and unpredictable environments. One lesson action researchers learn early and often working in such settings is to expect the unexpected (see also Lichtenstein on emergence, Chapter 44, this volume). How then can we best go about preparing ourselves, our students and our community partners to enter into an action research process mindful of the values that underlie this practice in order to provide them with strategies for responding to ethical concerns when they arise? In this chapter we consider how we might promote effective ethics education and create institutional structures that better support ethical reflection and action. We begin with a brief review of ethical theory in order to provide a common framework for examining the ways in which values inform action and how we might better understand these decision-making processes. We then present a tool that has been developed to encourage both individual and group-level ethical decision-making, structured ethical reflection (SER), with examples of its use in both individual and small group reflection processes. Finally, we consider ways in which the larger institutional settings within which we operate might draw upon this same framework to deepen the ethical climate of teaching and research and create broader structural change supporting ethical practice.