Tuesday April 20, 2010, 2.00 - 3.30 pm

John Scott Meeting Room 2, Latrobe University, Bundoora

Helen Simons AcSS FRSA is Professor of Education and Evaluation at the University of Southampton and Honorary Professor in the Centre for Social Research and Evaluation at London Metropolitan University. She is an elected academician of the Academy of Social Sciences, UK, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and past President of the United Kingdom Evaluation Society. Her research in the field of evaluation over twenty-five years has focused on democratic processes, ethics, case study methodology, program, policy & institutional self-evaluation, and evaluation and the arts.

For several years Helen was chair of the research ethics committee in Education at Southampton University, convenor of the Ethics committees and joint author of the ethical guidelines of both the British Educational Research Association (BERA) and the UK Evaluation Society (UKES). She has written widely on the theory and practice of evaluation, qualitative methodology, evidence-based practice and the ethics of research and evaluation. Her most recent book, Case Study Research in Practice, was published in 2009 by Sage.

This seminar will explore the many complex issues that may arise when conducting qualitative research and through examples, using the same principles, show how these were resolved in different contexts. Participants are invited to bring along their ethical dilemmas and to take part in a discussion that aims to get beneath the surface of 'good intent' to tease out what it means to make that ultimate ethical decision in the field and to know on what basis we made it.