Space, place and race: Ethics in practice for educational research in ethnically diverse rural Australia

Research in Australia’s ethnically diverse rural and regional communities requires an approach that is informed by notions of space, place and culture, and which recognises race as a relational social construct mediated by social and political discourse and context, and prone to change overtime. This critical review examines how teacher education researchers connect culturally competent research and rural ethics with the view to improving education systems, addressing rural teacher workforce issues, informing the preparation of pre-service teachers, and, most importantly, ensuring that rural students have access to educational opportunities that are engaging and meet their needs. It focuses specifically on researcher positionality on the insider-outsider continuum and how this informs ethical research in diverse rural communities, particularly those in which visible new migrants reside. Peer-reviewed journal articles that discuss how education researchers negotiate working in rural space are examined and considered in relation to discourse about ethics in practice and the insider/outsider continuum. Scholarship reflected in the literature spanned the fields of rural/research ethics, inclusive education, education research methodology and research with new migrants, minority and marginalised groups.

A cross-cultural construct of the ethos of the corporate codes of ethics: Australia, Canada and Sweden

The objective of this paper is to develop and describe a construct of the ethos of the corporate codes of ethics (i.e. an ECCE construct) across three countries, namely Australia, Canada and Sweden. The introduced construct is rather unique as it is based on a cross-cultural sample seldom seen in the literature. While the outcome of statistical analyses indicated a satisfactory factor solution and acceptable estimates of reliability measures, some research limitations have been stressed. They provide a foundation for further research in the field and testing of the ECCE construct in other cultural and corporate settings. We believe that the ECCE construct makes a contribution to theory and practice in the field as it outlines a theoretical construct for the benefit of other researchers. It is also of managerial interest as it provides a grounded framework of areas to be considered in the implementation in organizations of corporate codes of ethics.

A cross cultural comparison of the contents of codes of ethics: USA, Canada and Australia

This paper examines the contents of the codes of ethics of 83 of the top 500 companies operating in the private sector in Australia in an attempt to discover whether there are national characteristics that differentiate the codes used by companies operating in Australia from codes used by companies operating in the American and Canadian systems. The studies that were used as a comparison were Mathews (1987) for the United States of America and Lefebvre and Singh (1992) for Canada. The major conclusion is that, whilst Australian codes do have some characteristics that differentiate them from the other two groups, it appears that companies in all three cultures are driven by the same motives to develop codes.

Cross-cultural encounters and 'difficult heritage' on the Thai-Burma railway: an ethics of cosmopolitanism rather than practices of exclusion

This chapter argues for the significance of embodied actions and their traces in the heritage landscape as traces of cross-cultural practices in the context of interpreting difficult heritage in places where the heritage of war is of significance for multiple stakeholders.

Navigating the ethics of cross-cultural health promotion research

Health promotion researchers must consider the ethics of their research, and are usually required to abide by a set of ethical requirements stipulated by governing bodies (such as the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council) and human research ethics committees (HRECs). These requirements address both deontological (rule-based) and consequence-based issues. However, at times there can be a disconnect between the requirements of deontological issues and the cultural sensitivity required when research is set in cultural contexts and settings etic to the HREC. This poses a challenge for health promotion researchers who must negotiate between meeting both the requirements of the HREC and the needs of the community with whom the research is being conducted. Drawing on two case studies, this paper discusses examples from cross-cultural health promotion research in Australian and international settings where disconnect arose and negotiation was required to appropriately meet the needs of all parties. The examples relate to issues of participant recruitment and informed consent, participants under the Australian legal age of consent, participant withdrawal when this seemingly occurs in an ad hoc rather than a formal manner and reciprocity. Although these approaches are context specific, they highlight issues for consideration to advance more culturally appropriate practice in research ethics and suggest ways a stronger anthropological lens can be applied to research ethics to overcome these challenges.