ABSTRACT
This article reports a case study of older adults learning English in China. It indicates how, founded on consequentialist ethics, risk analysis, and safeguarding, it was decided to use covert research, drawing on the confluence of risk analysis, risk evaluation, risk management, safeguarding, research ethics, and important contextual and cultural features. Ethical principles of nonmaleficence, beneficence, safeguarding, and protection were addressed, and account was taken of the strength, likelihood, and consequences of risks, safeguards, and benefits, informed by Chinese cultural contexts, values, behaviors, and features of teaching and learning based on andragogy and geragogy. Implications are drawn for teaching and learning with older adults, advocating significant account to be taken of contextual factors.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s). The research and the article were approved by the University of Saint Joseph’s Research Ethics Committee, ref. no. 1-7-1-22.
Notes
1. The Greater Bay Area includes nine municipalities of Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Zhuhai, Foshan, Huizhou, Dongguan, Zhongshan, Jiangmen, and Zhaoqing in Guangdong Province, and the Special Administrative Regions of Hong Kong and Macau.
4. Care must be taken to avoid stereotyping here, as not all Chinese conform to CHC’s collectivism and cooperation: witness the highly competitive individualism of students in a highstakes, examinations-oriented Chinese culture (Li, Citation2012; Zhao, Citation2014) and Wong’s (Citation2004) finding that Chinese learners prefer to work individually, as this gives them control over the final product.
5. Two Chinese characters are used to express ‘face’: miànzi (面子) and liǎn (脸) (Hu, Citation1944).
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