Researchers and practitioners build their ethical fitness

Topics Ethical research and evaluation
Participants explore the toolkit at the Ethical Practice workshop in Sydney.

Last month, the RDI Network hosted workshops in Sydney and Melbourne for researchers, evaluators and practitioners to explore and expand their ethical fitness.

With participants ranging from NGO program managers and project officers to seasoned academics and graduate students, the workshops demonstrated that regardless of level of experience, ethical practice is a continuous learning journey. Whether they identified as “novice”, “explorer” or “veteran” in terms of practice, everyone was able to walk away with new ideas and tools to inform their practice in the future.

The ethical practice workshop is a highly interactive training session offered by the RDI Network to build capacity within the sector to tackle some of the most difficult ethical considerations associated with conducting research or evaluation practice in developing country contexts.

Building from the Principles and Guidelines for Ethical Research and Evaluation in Development, the workshop guides participants through a series of sessions that encourage co-learning and problem solving around concepts including risk, consent, power and mutual benefit.

Feedback from this training – which has been running for over two years now – has been overwhelmingly positive, and highlights a broad demand for engagement with ethical dilemmas based on real-world experience from the development field.

“I gained valuable knowledge for my role and for my organisation to formalise and enhance our processes around ethical practice”
Ethical practice workshop participant

You can get a free taste of the workshop’s content with a selection of tools and activities available online via the Ethical Practice Starter Kit. This resource is available to you to trial, tailor and apply to your own work and to your own context.

The RDI Network seeks to host open workshops at regular times in major cities, and also offers the workshop module for purchase by organisations or institutions to use internally.

You can find out more about these opportunities here or by contacting us.