Research and Student Privacy

Talking about research in school starts easy, but gets in trouble very quickly.

A large class of problems has to do with the privacy of the students.

This is a general problem, but it can be illuminated best by considering the research method of recording classes and analyzing the records later. This brings up the problem of legal issues of student privacy, which was already there as soon as we started conducting any assessment, but seems to be aggravated when recording - especially in video - of class activity. Parents must agree to video recording; video recording may be totally illegal regardless of parents’ attitude; people’s images may be their own property and can’t be used by others without explicit permission; video may be allowed while sound-recording illegal; etc. But the efficacy of analyzing video is so great, that it is worth our time to look into ways to overcome this problem. In the long run, the legal issues can be resolved by passing the right laws.

But beneath the legalities, there are real concerns of parents regarding the privacy and safety of children. There are many aspects of that concern: Parents are worried that kids will be caught copying in a test, which they could otherwise get away with. This may sound a bit comical, but talking to a parent - who happens to be a primary-school teacher - I heard a deep reason for that concern: The stated rules of society are not absolute. They are part of a dialog/conversation between society, subcultures within the society, and the individual. Breaking the rules occasionally, is part of that conversation, which allows the individual to map the real limits of behavior, and is part of building the personality. Introducing what can be used as full surveillance interferes with that healthy dynamic. The rules of society may be acceptable and reasonable, but imposing them with too much success may be unacceptable. This is a nice opening for a philosophical discussion which is way out of scope here, but the concern is there, and therefore it must be acknowledged and taken into consideration. Suggested guidelines for a solution will be outlined below.

Parents are worried about the classic issues of privacy, applied to children: The danger of ridicule (e.g., when a student is “caught” on camera picking her nose) is always real, and is amplified by the ease of uploading such material to YouTube and the like to remain there for all eternity. On a smaller scale, there is the danger of abuse of information, like exposing a secret whispered between friends. There is even the worry that the system will know the weaknesses of the child. The same guidelines below can be a starting point for dealing with these worries.

Finally, parents are afraid of pedophiles watching their kids. Whether or not this fear is well-based or not, it must be answered convincingly.

Some thoughts towards resolving the concerns over student privacy:

First, it is worthwhile to remember the current situation, to which we are used, and which we manage to live with: Students don’t have much privacy. They live in a dense society where their secrets are revealed, their weaknesses - real or imagined - exposed, and their smallest quirks ridiculed. They are watched by the system through testing, in-class observation, snitching, and teachers’ “eyes-in-their-back”. Finally, the pedophiles don’t wait for massive video-based research to catch on - they have their ways. All this is just a reality-check, and it is true that careless implementation of recording-based research can aggravate all of the above. But the last sentence leads to a better way - that of careful implementation of recording-based research.

One guideline for such careful research come from the worlds of information technology and medical research: Anonymization - The removal of all identifying details not needed for the analysis at hand. As much as possible, the identity of the students should be concealed. Starting from names, which can be withheld without any damage to the research. Also, the name of the school can be safely withheld, and the researchers need not know anything about the community where the recordings were made. Same with the identity of the teachers. In general, every detail that is not necessary for the research can be eliminated. A minimal effort can eliminate the soundtrack of a video when body-language will do, and vice versa. A higher effort can automatically block-out faces, specific people, identifying location-related signals, such as pictures hanging on walls, etc. In general, the amount of effort being put into that anonymization can determine the level of privacy. There are complicating factors, such as the need to cross-reference observed student behavior with recorded test results of the same student, while leaving out the student’s identifying details. These factors can be dealt with, but this is out of the scope of this already long post. I intentionally left out the option of sub-optimal research, where details relevant to the research are hidden from the researchers. This is not part of the plan.

Another guideline for careful research come from the world of service-providers dealing with customers’ information: Chinese Walls. This is more tricky than mere anonymization, since while anonymization requires mostly working automatic mechanisms, Chinese Walls require people’s willing cooperation. In case a research is even mildly relevant to issues of privacy, a “Chinese Wall” needs to be erected between the students participating in the research on one hand, and the researchers on the other hand. Complete separation. This means, for example, that none of the teachers can be exposed to the recorded materials, and of course no student can have such access. This will hurt the research since it will remove the chance of unexpected insights by people who know the participants. But unlike the simple case in anonymization, the more complicated case of Chinese Walls pushes us towards suboptimal solutions.
… At least until we relax a bit about privacy issues.