Ethics is a complicated field and much has been written about its application to educational research. In this paper we introduce a way of planning for and dealing with situations that arise in the course of research that promotes detailed ethical analysis. We present a framework based on the work of Seedhouse and Flinders and describe a methodology for its use, alongside two examples in which the framework was used to achieve a comprehensive ethical analysis. The framework encourages us to view each situation from different philosophical perspectives and in doing so addresses issues about how to behave ethically, alongside methodological considerations, thus ensuring the integrity of the research. Use of the framework involves what Pring ( 2004 Pring, R. 2004. Philosophy of educational research, London: Continuum. [Google Scholar] ) refers to as ‘practical thinking’ and addresses many of the concerns that other people raise about the limitations of linear codes and principles in a complex field.

The rising numbers of forcibly displaced peoples on the move globally, and the challenges with providing access to education, reflect the shifting and complex times that we live in. Even though there has been a proliferation in educational research in the context of forced migration, in line with the increasing number of forced migrants, there has not been a commensurate focus on unpicking the increasingly complex ethical conditions within which researchers and participants operate. To examine this issue, the article provides three narrated accounts by researchers in this field and explores the interaction of researcher and author‐researcher voice to critically appraise their research experience and identify critical reflections of understanding of ethics‐in‐practice in fragile contexts. These narratives are framed by the CERD (consequential, ecological, relational and deontological) ethical appraisal framework, which explores ethical thinking through four ethical lenses. The article contributes to a deeper understanding of ethics‐in‐practice as a central dimension in educational research. The implications of this work show how a one‐size‐fits‐all approach to ethical appraisal is inappropriate for socially just educational research. This work also illustrates the importance of attending to relationships and voice of the forcibly displaced, both of which are often lacking in educational research in fragile contexts.

Accepted 19th January 2015. Embargo 18 months.This paper documents the creation, implementation and analysis of a survey instrument designed to reveal patterns of use and attitudes towards the value of social media by UK teachers. The study was motivated to discover which teachers use social media professionally, how they use it (both personally and professionally) and attitudes to social media as a professional tool (for their students’ and their own professional use). The instrument was created from verbal data from two focus group discussions regarding the use of social media in education. Attitude statements were included verbatim when practical. This instrument was placed online and practicing teachers invited to complete it (n=216). Exploratory factor analysis and hierarchical clustering identified nine factors from 54 attitude statements and five distinct teacher groups. The rich data allowed each group to be carefully defined, providing potentially invaluable information to school leaders when developing social media projects to recognise and accommodate the full range of teacher concerns and experience. The paper also addresses methodological concerns regarding instrument-creation, dealing with missing data and the impact of missing data on subsequent analysis.Peer-reviewedPost-prin

This study, drawing on the voice of beginning teachers, seeks to illuminate their experiences of building professional relationships as they become part of the teaching profession. A networking perspective was taken to expose and explore the use of others during the first three years of a teacher’s workplace experience. Three case studies, set within a wider sample of 11 secondary school science teachers leaving one UK university’s PostGraduate Certificate in Education, were studied. The project set out to determine the nature of the networks used by teachers in terms of both how they were being used for their own professional development and perceptions of how they were being used by others in school. Affordances and barriers to networking were explored using notions of identity formation through social participation. The focus of the paper is on how the teachers used others to help shape their sense of belonging to this, their new workplace. The paper develops ideas from network theories to argue that membership of the communities are a subset of the professional inter‐relationships teachers utilise for their professional development. During their first year of teaching, eight teachers were interviewed, completing 13 semi‐structured interviews. This was supplemented in Year 2 by a questionnaire survey of their experiences. In the third year of the programme, 11 teachers (including the original sample of eight) were surveyed using a network mapping tool in which they represented their communications with people, groups and resources. Finally, three of the teachers (common to both samples) were then interviewed specifically about their networking practices and experiences using the generation of their network map as a stimulated recall focus. The implications of the analysis of these accounts are that these beginning teachers did not perceive of themselves wholly as novices and that their personal aspirations to increase participation in practical science, develop a career or work for pupils holistically did not always sit comfortably with the school communities into which they were being accommodated. While highlighting the importance of trust and respect in establishing relationships, these teachers’ accounts highlight the importance of finding ‘peers’ from whom they can find support and with whom they can reflect and potentially collaborate towards developing practice. They also raise questions about who these ‘peers’ might be and where they might be found.