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Educational Research Ethics Committees as Space for Situated Learning in Higher Education

This paper contributes a different perspective to the debates regarding the role of research ethics committees (RECs) in educational and social sciences research. It identifies limited explicit engagements from such debates about how academics who serve in RECs can learn from these committees towards academic growth and development in and beyond being ethical researchers. We (the authors) follow a duoethnographic method to reflect on our experiences of learning from one committee in a South African university. We argue that, notwithstanding the identified shortcomings in some of the REC committees, they can also be spaces for situated learning. Based on our experience, we identify several ways in which these committees can be resourceful. (1) They can empower the less experienced members through observation and interaction with the experienced. (2) They provide opportunities for the transfer of “knowledge power” to beyond the committee for quality research and postgraduate supervision practices. (3) They can be a solution to the limited research supervision capacity in some institutions. The paper also extends the understanding of the situated learning theory as we add ‘visitors’ as an element of the community of practice.