21 - Development of the K-12 Teacher and Support Staff Human Subjects Protection Training Course

Background:  Research in a K-12 setting benefits from partnering with teachers and school personnel. However, unique ethical challenges emerge in school-based research with mitigating tension between an authoritarian environment and the voluntary nature of research, minimizing potential social or psychological harms, and protecting privacy and confidentiality in group settings involving children.

Program

Description:  The K-12 Teacher & Support Staff HSP Training course consists of five modules with interactive knowledge checkpoints designed for K-12 teachers assisting researchers in the classroom. The course is distinctive because plain language principles were applied to increase readability/comprehension for teachers with little knowledge of human subject research.

Another innovation includes focus on research involving children to introduce content more aligned with classroom research. For example, historical context includes unethical research on children like the 1939 Monster Study to better engage teachers that work with children. Also, the Common Rule (45 CRF 46) is introduced briefly before diving more deeply into Subpart D’s additional protections for research with children.

Module four innovation moves research ethics into the classroom. This module presents ethical issues specific to teachers helping with recruitment, obtaining consent/assent, and collecting data. Knowledge checkpoints in this module use classroom scenarios to encourage users to consider how they might handle ethical research issues in the classroom.

Program

Assessment:  Before making the course available to researchers, ORI staff field tested the K-12 Teachers & Support Staff HSP Training Course to evaluate features and functionality. An IRB committee member with expertise in early childhood development and child advocacy also reviewed the course content.
We made course revisions based on the feedback we received. For example, the initial version of the course consisted of just one situational case study. A comment from an IRB committee member lauded the case study example. This prompted the development of additional classroom scenarios used in module four.
After initial revisions, we presented the course to the research community. The course was featured in IRB and College of Education Newsletters, presentations, and other promotional sources. Feedback from users inspired us to revise the course to ask users to enter their names so that we could set up the course to personalize certificates of completion.

Limitations: Despite promotion, progress towards selection of the course is slow and difficult to measure. To date, the small sample has not yielded an adequate number for formal course assessment. To increase awareness, the course is available to faculty members from the College of Education for use as a course assignment. Also, we added a brief feedback survey at the end of the course to assess content and measure course usage more formally.

Discussion:  While more research with children takes place in a school-setting, it receives less attention than higher risk medical research. However, it is complex, involves numerous stakeholders, and is far from risk-free. Our immediate plan is to develop and implement a systematic course evaluation within our institution to further enhance the content. Long-term, we hope to offer the course to a broader national audience from which we could garner further feedback and data that could evidence enhanced human subject protection.