KIDS4ALLL puts children in the centre of research, development and testing activities of an innovative learning method. The definition of 'child' has been adopted in line with the UNCRC definition. According to the Convention “a child means every human being below the age of eighteen years unless under the law applicable to the child, majority is attained earlier” (article 1). The project further ensures that “in all actions concerning children the best interests of the child shall be a primary consideration” (article 3), thus “no child will be subjected to arbitrary or unlawful interference with his or her privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to unlawful attacks on his or her honour and reputation” (article 16).
Accordingly, the KIDS4ALLL project team is eager and willing to act upon the highest ethical standards and to implement all measures and actions necessary to mirror the spirit of the project: to raise the bar for educational collaboration among peers towards acceptance, respect and cohesion within the process of mutual lifelong learning.
The involvement of children (i.e. persons aged of less than 18 years, in accordance with the Article 1 of UN Convention on Rights of the Child) will be subject to a special protection.
Qualitative and quantitative data from the target groups will be essential to implement the KIDS4ALLL learning method, and thus treated with highest ethical and security standards by the project consortium.
KIDS4ALLL’s proposed activities do not affect any ethical issues with respect to content of the data collection or have any negative impacts on the environment. The project is guided by the principle of ‘do no harm’, which orientates the decisions made by the consortium according to ethical considerations of whether or not the consequences of their decisions may harm the individuals involved directly or indirectly in the project. Besides, no physical intervention will be conducted on the study of participants in this project.
KIDS4ALLL takes ethical issues seriously and aims to comply fully with applicable legal and professional codes of the EU and of the countries in which our project activities are undertaken. This includes not only the country-specific regulations but also the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), in forced since May 2018; the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union; and the Commission Recommendation of 11 March 2005 on the European Charter for Researchers and on a Code of Conduct for the Recruitment of Researchers.
Particular attention will be thus paid to:
- Respecting human dignity and psychophysical integrity
- Ensuring honesty and transparency towards research subjects
- Respecting individual autonomy and obtaining free and informed consent (as well as assent whenever relevant)
- Avoiding any undue inducement, such as payment of fee or the promise of other patrimonial benefits or other kind of concrete benefit;
- Protecting vulnerable individuals
- Ensuring protection of personal data and confidentiality
- Promoting justice and inclusiveness
- Avoiding physical and psychological harm and maximising benefit
- Sharing the benefits with disadvantaged populations, especially if the project activities are being carried out in precarious contexts, as refugee camps
- Respecting and protecting the environment and future generations.
Participation in the KIDS4ALLL project is free, voluntary, informed and aimed to be beneficial for everybody involved.
The participation of all the target groups in KIDS4ALLL’s activities is entirely voluntary and notice of withdrawal from any related activities can be given at any time.
All participants will be informed about the aim of the study, the collected data, data handling, storage and anonymization procedures as well as publication of the anonymized data and its inclusion in the open data pilot. Participants will also be informed of their right to withdraw their data and ask for its immediate destruction at any point in the project. Considering that participants will be from different countries, all information, consent forms and regulations will be translated into the different languages needed.
Further, the project team will apply all necessary measures to protect research subjects (and minors in particular). In the staff trainings a module will be devoted to prepare teachers and educators to detect and prevent situations of potential racism and stigmatization. In the student’s trainings all participants will be made aware on what is a discriminatory behaviour. Researchers will monitor through the ethnographic observation situations of potential discrimination and will report them to teachers and educators to prevent any future act of stigmatization.
Ethics are too important to be left to chance. Therefore, the KIDS4ALLL project team is backed by experts with solid experience in the field of Ethics.
The project consortium has put in place two work teams for ethical issues:
Ethics Task Force (ETF) – internal
The ETF monitors the implementation of activities on the main ethical problems the project may face, how they can be addressed and how the project is actually dealing with ethical issues, highlighting best practices and procedures to be reconsidered. Special attention is drawn to ensuring that the vulnerabilities of child participants are duly taken into account in all activities, while children's rights are appropriately respected at all times. All members further lead the revision of any project documentation that tackles ethical issues of the activities related to the Innovation Action.
ETF members
- Cetin Celik, Koc University
- Valeria Ilareva, Foundation of Access to Rights
- Sotiris Petropolous, University of Peloponnese
Ethics Advisors Board (EAB) – external
The external EAB has been appointed to support the KIDS4ALLL project team for the project lifetime and is composed by three experts who will be independent from Beneficiaries to avoid conflicts of interests and compromising advises and opinions. All members provide for a solid expertise in the fields of law, data protection and ethics of research activities, in particular with regard to minors and vulnerable groups. The EAB advises all beneficiaries on specific issues or adopt opinions and guidelines on the procedures to be put in place in the framework of the project.
EAB members
- Mark Carrigan, University of Cambridge
- Valentina Mazzucato, Maastricht University
- Ulrich Stege, International University College of Turin