Graduate Student Research in the Classroom Understanding the Role of Research Ethics

As universities continue to grow their undergraduate programs, graduate students are increasingly called upon to teach first and second year classes, often without feeling adequately prepared for the task. These teaching opportunities, however, can provide novice instructors with a chance to engage in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) by collecting empirical data, analyzing it, using it to improve their pedagogical practices, and disseminating the results to spur innovation. To engage in SoTL research, students must be well versed in research ethics requirements: while graduate students need to be familiar with ethics policy to undertake research involving their students, it is imperative that undergraduate students know their rights as research participants. In Canada, ethics requirements are set forth within the second edition of the Tri-Council Policy Statement: Ethical Conduct for Research Involving Humans (TCPS 2). Ensuring that graduate students are provided with research ethics training ensures that SoTL research is being conducted in a responsible manner that protects them, both as students and as novice teachers. Our article delves into these various scholarship areas grounded in research from our recent program evaluation on research ethics education.  Increasingly, graduate students occupy a liminal space within the university system, as they are expected to be students, junior academics, researchers-in-training, and frequently, teaching assistants and teaching fellows. These multiple roles often come with conflicting expectations, and, in the case of teaching and research that involves ethical issues, they may not always be accompanied by sufficient preparation or training (Nyquist et al., 1999). Yet as undergraduate enrollment rates rise and course offerings are increased, graduate student teachers can supply much-needed labour, while also gaming access to valuable professional development opportunities (Burmila, 2010). Teaching can be a source of tension for students who are embedded in research-focused departmental cultures and SoTL can provide opportunities for graduate students to study their own teaching and learning environments. Nyquist et al. note that graduate students express feelings of tension between the explicit messages they are exposed to about the inherent value of teaching, and the implicit reward structures of departments that value research above all (Nyquist et al., 1999). This tension may make it difficult for them to negotiate multiple facets of the graduate experience, such as identifying their place within the department. Graduate SoTL projects, however, are not antithetical to disciplinary research. In a re-imagining of graduate spaces, Colleen Tremonte makes explicit the benefits that SoTL can have on graduate students' knowledge of their own field of study. She suggests that "because SOTL implicitly demands teachers become more cognizant of, and conversant with, the pedagogical content knowledge of a field, it can concomitantly support a graduate student's Teaming' of respective disciplinary epistemologies and methodologies" (2011, p. 388). Developing expertise in their field may also help graduate students to feel more secure in their roles as instructors. Examining first-time teaching experiences of Sociology doctoral students, Smollin and Arluke found that some first time instructors "managed problems with students by 'playing the role' of the instructor, suggesting the sense of authority afforded naturally by their role as the instructor was not fully incorporated into their self-concept" (2014, p. 34). As graduate student instructors are most often tasked with teaching first and second year classes (either through tutorials, as teaching assistants, or independent instructors), it is important to understand the perceptions of both graduate and undergraduate students about this relationship. From an undergraduate perspective, there are some small but significant differences in their perceptions of graduate teaching assistants (GTAs) and professors.

Field of study: Education