Confessions of a Bureaucratic Cynic Reimagining Ethics Education Through IRB Practice in Qualitative Research

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Saturday 7:45 am - Gold 4
  In Roundtable Session: Leading with Ethical Commitments in Research Design

Abstract

This autoethnographic study explores how Institutional Review Boards (IRBs), often seen as bureaucratic hurdles, can instead serve as pedagogical tools in qualitative research ethics education. Drawing on my experiences as an IRB analyst and educator, I trace a personal shift from skepticism to advocacy for IRBs as spaces for ethical reflection and researcher development. Through reflective writing, institutional documents, and pedagogical artifacts, I examine how IRB processes can foster ethical foresight, clarify research design, and cultivate relational accountability. This work contributes to scholarship on ethics education by proposing IRBs as generative partners in researcher training, advocating for ethics as a lived, evolving practice embedded in every phase of inquiry.

Author

• Jonathan M. Coker, Coastal Carolina University