Draft discussed and approved at the XXI CAPV Conference (Ústí nad Labem, 2013)
All CAPV workers should follow this approved text of the Ethical Code within their professional activities. The draft was presented at the XVII CAPV Conference (Ostrava, 2009) and was further discussed by the membership base in the period between conferences. The Ethical Code was approved by the General Meeting at the XVIII CAPV Conference in Liberec on 7 September 2010, and subsequent corrections were approved at the XXI CAPV Conference in Prague 2012.
The draft focuses on two key areas of educational research – conducting of research and publishing activities.
Ethical Principles of Research Conduct
Each member of the Czech Educational Research Association
- respects the rules of scientific work as well as free, independent, and critical thinking
- is responsible for the precision and accuracy of the research process, for the way the data is processed, and for the quality of the data presented
- conducts research with respect to all individuals who are the subjects of study, directly or indirectly, and ensures that it does not cause them any harm or affect their rights
- informs the research participants truthfully about the nature, objective, and process of the research as well as the possible consequences of the research
- obtains voluntary informed consent for the research from the research participants and informs them about their possibility to withdraw from the research at any time
- maintains the confidentiality or anonymity of information obtained from the research participants during the research (concerns both written and pictorial material)
- uses data collection methods with respect to copyright during the research
- stores the research data and plans in such a way that they cannot be misused during or after the research (see Act No. 101/2000 Coll., on the Protection of Personal Data)
- conveys the findings of his/her research to the research participants while respecting the agreed presentation method
- does not publish the findings of his/her research if it affects the rights of the research participants
Ethical Principles of Publishing Activities
Each member of the Czech Educational Research Association
- is obliged to publish the findings of his/her research, both in written and spoken presentations (monographs, journal articles, lectures, etc.)
- presents the content of his/her publications in a truthful and unbiased manner, on the basis of his/her own and other research
- does not deliberately conceal the opinions of other authors that are opposed to his/her own opinions
- presents his/her findings depending on the type of content so that they are available to different groups of potential users (i.e. other researchers, educational policy-makers, teachers and school directors, school administration staff, parents, children and youth, etc.)
- formulates the publications in such a way that their communication parameters are adapted to the expected needs of individual groups of users
- lists only those sources with which he/she has become genuinely and directly acquainted
- respects the copyright of other researchers and information sources and should in no way distort the citations or purposefully take them out of the original context, etc.
- diligently cites authors of diploma or other student theses (if he/she draws on them); considers students to be full-fledged authors
- consistently and accurately follows the rules of citing ideas or parts of texts from other publications, in particular by diligently referring to the sources (authors) from which he/she cites; in doing so, he/she follows the principles arising from citation standards (ČSN ISO 690, APA, etc.) or their modifications in individual publishing houses, journal editorial boards, etc.
- in cases of dispute, relies on the provisions of Copyright Act No. 121/2000 Coll., in particular Section 31 governing the citations in professional and scientific works
The AERA and BERA codes served as an inspiration in drawing up the Ethical Code, but the conditions and needs of Czech educational research are respected. A detailed description of the Ethical Code is contained in a paper published in the journal called Pedagogická orientace (2009, No. 2, p. 89–105). The draft of the Ethical Code was drawn up and continuously refined by Jan Průcha and Roman Švaříček.