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This chapter reflects on how ethics was managed in Basque educational ethnographic research. Specifically, it addresses researcher positionality when relating to research collaborators in an attempt to manage inclusive ethics in situ. Nowadays, most research is evaluated by an ethical review board that ensures adequate research practice. However, unexpected fieldwork events need to be managed in the field, and this chapter addresses the impact of these events on the relationship between researchers and collaborators. Influenced by a post-qualitative stance we posit that research collaborators should be included in the research process. It reflects on the data collected during an ongoing ethnographic study with higher education students. The method used includes several interview meetings between researchers and collaborators, multimodal representations of collaborators' learning, and participants' self-observations. In the interviews, participants' discourses, representations, and self-observations were collaboratively analysed. The ethnographic data from these meetings show how researchers use a collaborative approach to practise ethics. Through such meetings, the knowledge derived from the ethnographic data is co-constructed in a research relationship where participants engage in dialogue and negotiation about the discourse created around them. Based on this relationship, we propose the concept of inclusive ethics as a process requiring an honest, inclusive, and collaborative relationship with the research subject.

This chapter explores professional ethics within inclusive education. The conceptualization of inclusion is founded on ethical principles, as it concerns issues of equity, access, justice, and care. Many would argue that inclusion is a fundamental right, supported by the Salamanca Statement (1994) and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (2006). Internationally, educational systems have adopted inclusive education in varying capacities and structures. Nevertheless, the ethical dimensions of inclusion are often absent in theoretical and practice related discussions of inclusion in teaching and learning. The nature of professional ethics within inclusive schooling is presented, with an examination of ethical dilemmas, challenges, and tensions, grounded in empirical data, that occur in the nuances of a teacher’s work.

Our investigation of the emerging issue of teacher entitlement is viewed from the perspective of researchers trying to make sense of the concept with the intention of exploring its links to inclusive educational practice, teacher education and research. This chapter is therefore mainly conceptual, focusing on the limits and possibilities offered by the extension of the concept of entitlement, first relating to students, now extended to the teaching profession. The concept of entitlement is gaining currency principally in the Anglo-Saxon literature but should also be reconsidered in relation to contextual influences. In the educational field, debates denote several ‘displacements of concepts’, as shown in the extensive reviews and analyses of the concept of entitlement attitudes we undertake in this work. We first discuss developments and interpretations of the concept of entitlement specific to different disciplines in the literature. Then we undertake a contextual reframing based on a redefinition of the concept drawing on input from empirical research data, which emphasizes the challenges encountered when dealing with the phenomena of social cohesion, ethics and cultural diversity in education. The findings highlight the potential benefits of integrating the concept of teacher entitlement into valid strategies for implementing an inclusive and ethical educational process.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the elaboration of a comprehensive moral framework for designing and implementing diversity practices. In so doing, it employs distinct ethical theories that not only elevate respect for differences to an end, but also provide a set of principles, virtues or values conducive to the formation of an inclusive work environment.

A literature review, in particular contributions critical to current implementations of diversity management, may provide the basis of a non-instrumental approach to diversity issues, allowing for an inclusive and participative workplace. The paper suggests that such an endeavor can be founded on the concepts of organizational virtue, care or human dignity alternatively. In this respect, a theoretical context demonstrating the very way these concepts influence and inform diversity issues, is elaborated, analyzed and properly discussed.

Three distinct theoretical frameworks capturing the importance of major ethical traditions based on dignity, organizational virtue and care, for reconceptualizing diversity issues, are introduced. It is proposed that non-utilitarian philosophical ethics (and more specifically, Kantian deontology, Aristotelian virtue ethics or ethics of care) is in a position to provide a rationale for diversity policies that affirm the diverse other as a valued end.

The authors argue that a corporation is in a position to develop ethically-informed diversity initiatives that may effectively combine performance with an affirmation of the value of the diverse other.

The authors argue that a corporation is in a position to develop ethically-informed diversity initiatives that may effectively combine performance with an affirmation of the value of the diverse other.

The paper offers certain insights into the particular conditions that may help organizations design and implement a diversity strategy facilitating thriving and fulfillment of diverse others, grounded on the priority of dignity, virtue or care respectively. Such a perspective, permeating vision, culture and leadership, is invested with a potential that overcomes the managerial instrumentality, so strongly denounced by the majority of critical diversity scholars.

This chapter investigates the central role that intention (cetanā) plays in Buddhist ethics, the unique perspective into the nature of the self and agency from a Theravāda Buddhist stance. Intention is paramount in determining every mental, verbal, and physical action as wholesome, unwholesome, or neutral in the Buddhist ethico-psychology. Buddhist ethics offer an inclusive, compassionate, and non-theistic perspective into the many moral dilemmas we face today as the mind and its processes, the underlying volition of a thought, context, and circumstances all determine the nature of an action. This is of relevance particularly in the digital age where agency is often imperceptible from societal, legal, and materialistic stances. The virtual world is perceived to be distinct from concrete reality and hence unethical actions considered to be less negative and destructive, and the perpetrators often difficult to trace or made to pay the consequences as societies and legal systems struggle to deal with this new reality. Buddhism has little to say about reforming society but on the other hand provides a refined investigative system of categorization of ethical and unethical actions through its theory of kamma (action) originating in a seed of positive or negative intention in the mind, and the consequences are said to be unavoidable although subject to manifold variations. Although the influence of Buddhism is still fragmented in the West with debates on its relevance, what to adopt, adapt, and discard, it can offer a fresh perspective on ethics, intention, agency, and the self.

This chapter explores underlying ethical tensions and dilemmas that arise through assessment practices used by teachers, specialist teachers, and other educators in determining a child’s learning. An ethical dilemma arises when teachers are aware that an assessment is not the narrative that best represents the child, and in doing so, further perpetuates the deficit orientation toward learning. While the policy context may reflect a strong commitment to inclusive classrooms and communities, assessment policies and well-intentioned school practices can marginalize students with high needs, simply because the assessment tools are not suitable. Ethical issues in the day-to-day formal and informal assessment practices used by teachers are explored; practices that serve to reinforce for learners who struggle what they “cannot do” or “do not want to do.” Ethical assessment practices that allow the dignity of the learner to be upheld through a celebration of learning, however incremental, are needed. As outlined in this chapter, some decisions made by teachers are not their own, as pressures from outside their control influence the decisions they make. Policy directions can influence the focus of assessments, and unwittingly create the ethical dilemmas teachers face. When teachers question and challenge assessment policies and practices, they can initiate change for all learners. This might include challenging the status quo and finding other ways to include students, more visibly, in their own assessment. In these ways, ethical dilemmas can be addressed and new understandings of assessment emerge.

The origin of this chapter lies in a presentation by a colleague whose work I admire. Drawing on their extensive experience, they have developed guidance for schools to support children with special educational needs. Their conclusion was that teachers could adopt an eclectic approach, utilizing and combining different interventions as appropriate. The notion of utilizing different teaching approaches to facilitate inclusive education seemed accepted as unproblematic. However, I began to wonder about what happens when teaching approaches are based on conflicting views about the nature of how children learn. This led me to consider a more fundamental question. Do teachers’ own beliefs about how knowledge is created and how children develop (their personal epistemological beliefs) have an impact on their practice and children’s experiences in inclusive classrooms? Answering this question leads to the ethical issue of whether all ways of thinking about how children learn are compatible with teaching in inclusive schools, and the consequences that arise in seeking an answer.

This chapter provides a framework for ethical decision making related to inclusive educational opportunities for secondary students with intellectual and developmental disabilities (I/DD) based on policies and practices in the United States. Relevant research findings are utilized to explore ethical principles involved in educational decision making for secondary students with I/DD, with discussions on how these are intertwined with U.S. policy. I/DD and inclusion, as described in the research literature and U.S. policy, are defined and the current status of inclusive practices are described. Next, an exploration of the rationale, as supported by empirical evidence, for educating students at the secondary level with I/DD, primarily with their peers who do not have identified disabilities, is shared along with the counter-narrative. Connections of inclusion to post-school outcomes and the lived educational experiences of students with and without disabilities and educators are considered, including ethical dilemmas and conflicts. Finally, factors influencing the application of inclusionary practices are provided.