What digital footprints should I encourage teachers and students to make? The ethical challenges of digital technologies and social media research in education

Dr Victoria A Goodyear University of Birmingham

Seminar Tuesday 11 October 2016 17.00-18.30

Location Lord Hope Building Room 228

All welcome

Casey et al. (2016) recently reported that digital technologies and social media sites can help teachers and students to learn optimally. Developing an evidence-base about digital learning, however, is problematic, particularly when it concerns youth, physical activity and health. Numerous ethical challenges exist e.g. 

• blurred boundaries between public and private, 
• access to health-related data, 
• normalisation of health and 
• informed consent

Consequently, there is a need to be cautious about the digital footprints that research designs may encourage, or indeed limit, teachers and students to create. Despite this, no robust guidance on youth, digital technologies, social media and health is available for researchers and there is little mention in school/childcare guidelines in UK policy (Department for Education, 2015). Beyond focussing on legal issues of age and privacy (UKCCIS, 2010), the main target population for the analysis of risk and ethics has been healthcare professionals and patients (BMA, 2014; BPS, 2012; ESRC, 2015).

This seminar aims to discuss ethical challenges for research and practice for digital research in education, with some substantive examples from physical education and health. Illustrative examples of ethical challenges I have faced as a researcher/CPD facilitator will be provided from projects focussed on social media, wearable technologies, and health-related apps.