Ethics & Values Guide

We are Teacher Tapp, a daily survey app for teachers. We exist to put the voices of the people on the ground in school at the heart of positive change. 

We do this by giving teachers a quick and easy way to share what’s happening in schools via our app. By answering 3 simple questions each day, teachers contribute to an ever-evolving and accurate picture of education that we share widely. 

Over the years our data has informed BBC investigations into vaping, trans guidance in schools, and the cost of uniforms. We’ve been quoted by several Education Secretaries, and our stats have put pressure on them to get laptops and CO2 monitors during the pandemic, plus more funding and less workload for teachers.

But positive change in education doesn’t happen without partners – which is why we work with other education organisations on research projects. 

When organisations want to find out what teachers really think, and incorporate teacher voice into their business and policy-making, we enable them to commission Teacher Tapp to find answers to their questions. 

However, we know that doing research  involves ethical considerations. At Teacher Tapp we have a common framework to help us produce ethical products and services.

Asking Questions

Teacher Tapp has three key principles for asking questions on the app:

1. Brevity: We make it as easy as possible for teachers to answer and understand our questions. We keep questions under 110 characters for clarity and ease.
2. Conceptual Simplicity: Questions should revolve around one key idea. Complex questions are split into simpler ones to avoid confusion. Asking about objective facts is preferred to subject opinion. 
3. Honest Intentions: We ask questions that are straightforward. We want teachers to see a direct relevance in our questions to their daily lives. We avoid leading questions and aim to facilitate honest responses. Disguised promotion or advertising is not allowed. 

Transparency

We share results of the daily questions on the app – they display for 24 hours. We want teachers to learn from the results as much as research partners.

We keep the source of our questions anonymous to ensure authentic unbiased answers. 

Commercial Brands

Teacher Tapp is predominantly about education and we know it’s not interesting for teachers to answer lots of questions about brands. However, many education organisations want to find out about perceptions so they can improve their products.

As a compromise, we ask a set of three ‘Brand Tracker’ questions, once per month, so that education organisations can track perception, but with minimal impact on user experience. Teachers who answer questions are entered into a prize draw.

Beyond this, we only mention brand names in ‘extra’ optional questions.

Ethical Duties To Users

Teacher Tapp is a voluntary, useful and fun community app – teachers have the right to stop using the app at any time, for any reason, and we make it easy to request erasure. We protect your personal information as outlined in our privacy policy. And, as per GDPR, we remove any personal information after 6 years of non-usage. 

When we participate in very large research projects that go beyond data collection, we follow an ethics protocol which meets academic ethics committee standards. The underlying principles for this protocol are the same as for the British Educational Research Association (BERA) Ethical Guidelines, which were adopted by the Academy of Social Sciences. For further details about the protocol, please contact hello@teachertapp.co.uk.

If Problems Arise

Where we become aware of issues – whether it’s the app not working, concerns about questions, or anything else – our process is to:

• Investigate the issue thoroughly
• Keep users informed via social media and email channels
• Rectify the problem and make amends.

Anything missing? Tappers are always welcome to contact us using the ‘Contact Us’ box in the Settings menu of the app. Otherwise please email us your comments on hello@teachertapp.co.uk.

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