Inclusive Learning and Educational Equity 5

Participatory Research are also intensively discussed in Kremsner (
2017
) and 
Kremsner and Proyer (
2019
), among others.
First and foremost, it has to be stated that every research study should consider 
the following general principles as described in Kemmis et al. (
2014
, 159):
1. Respecting Persons means that research should always respect participants’ 
“integrity and humanity as persons – as people whose rights and whose physical 
and psychological and cultural integrity must be protected, and not damaged, in 
the research process.”
2. Avoiding Harm is defined as “not only avoiding physical harm or hurt, but also 
psychological harm (for example, stress or anxiety) or other harm like depriving 
participants of esteem, or taking them away from educational activities they 
M. Proyer et al.

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would have been occupied in had the research not intervened, or in any way 
damaging their reputations.”
3. Justice in research “requires avoiding injustice in the process of the research, for 
example, by processes that oppress or dominate participants.”
4. Beneficence “requires that research be undertaken in the interests of the people 
involved and affected, in the interests of the whole human community, and in the 
interests of the sustainability of the Earth.”
Taken these general principles into account is of particular importance when 
children are involved in research contexts, as is clearly and unequivocally pointed 
out by, amongst others, Greig et al. (
2013
).
Informed consent
is (or at least should be) key to all research projects (McClimens, 
2007
). Participants have the right to know all the information available about a 
research project and its process before they can agree or not to participate. 
Concerning our project, informed consent was obtained in differing ways from all 
the participants:
1. Practitioner-researchers constantly gave their consent for using and utilizing 
their data both orally (taped in the context of interviews) and in written form.
2. Students – or rather their parents – signed an informed consent form at the begin-
ning of each school year. Even though constant and repeated informed consent is 
specifically preferable when working with children (Greig et al., 
2013
), we were 
requested by the school to avoid the repeated filling in and signing of forms by 
parents. Instead, all parents were provided with written information about the 
project at the beginning of each school year (when they were asked to sign 
informed consent forms) and were presented with further information at the 
teacher–parent conferences (if they attended) where all three practitioner- 
researchers were present. Even though they were not asked to fill in forms, the 
students themselves nonetheless received constant information about the project, 
its aim and progress through the three practitioner-researchers, who regularly 
discussed UDL-related issues with their classes.
3. The parents themselves were asked to participate in the project only in the course 
of the teacher–parent conferences, where they were asked to answer questions in 
written and anonymized form only. In other words, we did not specifically ask 
the parents to again fill in informed consent forms, but to anonymously fill in 
questionnaires. Those who did so effectively gave their consent by placing the 
filled-in questionnaire in the boxes prepared in advance.
Anonymity
is widely guaranteed for all research participants except for the three 
practitioner-researchers. As key members of the research team, they play a crucial 
part in the research process and its outcomes and therefore need to be cited by name. 
Direct citations later in this chapter are still anonymized in order to guarantee some 
basic levels of privacy for the three highly involved teachers. For all other partici-
pants, full names have no importance for the project and were therefore only docu-
mented in the context of informed consent. For the academic part of the research, 
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neither the students nor the parents’ names are even known: their data was mainly 
collected by the practitioner-researchers and student assistants.
The chosen research approach asks all involved parties to engage and invest con-
siderable time and energy. Openness and transparency among the research team 
proved to be of utmost importance. Examples of the practitioner-teachers’ valuable 
contribution to making this research possible include the ongoing reflection of prac-
tices and involving colleagues as well as providing access to their own teaching 
practice.