Ethical considerations

Ethical dilemmas and concerns are part of the process of doing any research (Guillemin & Gillam, 2004). Some authors argue that ethical accounts within a research project are part of the criteria that determine the quality of the research (Groundwater-Smith & Mockler, 2007). Such views of the importance of considering ethical aspects within educational research are adopted and strongly supported in this study.

In a brief review, the ethical concerns regarding research involving human participants, included in the Ethical approval obtained from the Human Research Ethics Committee, involved the following ethical considerations:

type of access to participants; giving informed consent to participate;

confidentiality; assessment of any potential harm to participants;

participant’s right to decline; arrangements for participants to receive information; type of use of information obtained from participants;

assessment of possible conflicts of interests; and procedures for resolution of disputes (for details on these ethical concerns refer to Appendix I). In addition, participants owned the raw material collected, with any request regarding such material being honoured. Note that there was no ethical requirement on the part of Chilean authorities concerning this study.

4.9 Summary

This chapter presented different aspects related to the methodology adopted during this research study. The first part reviewed common inquiry traditions and paradigms within educational research, making the case for the selection of a naturalistic inquiry paradigm, with a focus on interpretivist/constructivist approaches as part of the methodology.

Following the review of inquiry paradigms, a description of the methods used in this study was presented. This included the characterization of the following methods: questionnaires, interviews, observations, document analysis, and the use of Google Analytics tools to evaluate the use of the EfS website developed in this study in quantitative terms (e.g. sections visited within the website).

The second part of this chapter consisted of the description of the research design of this study. This included the presentation of the different study phases, as well as issues related to the data collection, participant’s recruitment, sample size, and methods used during each data collection stage. Following this, the third part addressed issues related to data analysis and data interpretation. This included the presentation of activity theory as the descriptive and analytical framework used in this

research, and the introduction of methods used for data analysis and data coding. In particular, the use of software tools for analysis was highlighted.

The last part of this chapter discussed issues related to data validity and trustworthiness, including the presentation of different protocols and techniques within naturalistic inquiry to enhance the validity, reliability and trustworthiness of data and findings considered in this study. Finally ethical concerns and issues related to this research were presented.

Having reviewed the theoretical grounds of this study in Chapter 2, including the model for developing EfS websites presented in Chapter 3, and the methodology adopted reviewed in this chapter, the next chapter moves on to the presentation of the intervention phase of this study.

CHAPTER 5 - INTERVENTION 5.1 Introduction

This chapter describes aspects related to the intervention of this study.

The socio-ecological context present at Lanalhue Lake in central-south Chile was chosen as the target community of this study, both to apply and trial the theoretical model for the development of EfS websites presented in Chapter 3, and to research the use of ICT for EfS at the community level. The main sustainability issue present at Lanalhue Lake is the accelerated eutrophication of the waters of the lake. This means that the levels of organic nutrients have increased in the lake during the past decade, principally due to factors related to the anthropogenic activity within the catchment of the lake.

The objective of the present chapter is to introduce the socio-cultural context, characteristics and needs of the target audience, in relation to the design and development of an EfS website addressing the sustainability issues present at Lanalhue Lake. In order to illustrate the application of the theoretical model from Chapter 3, this chapter is based on the three different phases recommended in the model for the development of a community EfS website. Firstly, Section 5.2 presents data obtained about characteristics of the socio-ecological context of the target community.

This corresponds to the planning stage of the process of developing an EfS website, where the objective is to evaluate the target community and the potential use of an EfS website.

The second phase of the design of an EfS website is the pre-design research phase. The aim here is to achieve a deep understanding of the social and cultural characteristics and needs of the target community, and of the existing sustainability issues present that affect the wellbeing of this community. Section 5.3 addresses this phase by presenting data collected through questionnaires, observations and interviews, and includes some interpretation of the findings in relation to the development of an EfS website for the local context.

Finally, Section 5.4 combines theoretical aspects from the model for developing EfS websites, and findings from the pre-design research phase, into a framework for designing and developing an EfS website in the context of the socio-ecological sustainability of Lanalhue Lake. Based on such a framework, the EfS website Lanalhue Sustentable (i.e.

http://lanalhuesustentable.cl) was developed, and used as a research instrument to investigate the use of Internet websites for education for sustainability at the community level.

5.2 Socio-ecological context of the intervention: The