Research Ethics in Second Language Education

"This book is about ethics in action. Early career and experienced researchers reflect on their ethical challenges and comment on their ethical decision-making in real, in-the-moment research activity. This clever interweaving of reflection and commentary makes for an immensely readable, instructive, and accessible book, one to be consulted by all researchers, especially graduate research students, grappling with a research design involving human participants."

-Gary Barkhuizen, Professor of Applied Language Studies and Linguistics, University of Auckland, New Zealand

"As the contexts of language education inquiry broaden to include a wide range of life experiences, social practices and relationships, its ethical demands grow in complexity and urgency. This book offers a fascinating insight into the many of such demands against the backdrop of the chapter authors' practical decision making in their own inquiry. The book's case-study approach has generated textured portraits of ethical concerns in context. Its conversational approach highlights intricate dynamics between local dilemmas and global principles of research ethics. This is an invaluable guide for any researcher striving to develop their ethical consciousness."

-Maggie Kubanyiova, Chair in Language Education, Director of CLER Centre for Language Education Research, United Kingdom

"With an increase worldwide in the number of graduate students pursuing research in second language education in different locations with different human subjects, this book is a timely reminder of the important aspect of ethics when conducting such research. Roger Barnard and Yi Wang have put together a fine collection of chapters that highlights such thorny ethics related issues as attempting to apply ethical regulations while trying to adjust the research design to meet local circumstances without compromising the quality of the data collected that most graduate students must grapple with in their programmes. Scholars from within and some from beyond the field of applied linguistics not only comment on these graduate students ethical challenges, but also contribute their views of the ethics of conducting research in their fields to make this a well-rounded collection that provides a greater academic understanding of the ethical issues when conducting second language education research."

-Thomas S.C. Farrell, Professor of Applied Linguistics, Brock University, Canada