Ono, H. Laboratory

The Current State and Prevention of “Research Misconduct” in High School Students’ Inquiry: Establishing Research Ethics Education through School Libraries (Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (B), Principal Investigator: Haruki Ono, FY2025-FY2029)

 

High school education in Japan has shifted to emphasize inquiry-based learning. High school students are also expected to write research papers and give presentations at academic conferences. However, unlike universities, high school students and teachers have not received enough research ethics education. If teachers conduct inquiry-based classes without taking any research ethics education, there is a risk that students might make problematic research presentations that lack of fairness and ethics. There is an urgent need to solve this issue in order to prevent incorrect research habits from taking hold before entering university. However, this issue has not been sufficiently addressed in traditional academic discussions.

Therefore, this study aims to clarify the actual occurrence of research misconduct at the high school level and propose effective teaching materials and methods to prevent it.

This study introduces a new perspective, namely, high school students conduct research, and research misconduct can occur even at the high school level. Through this project, we aim to establish a model for teaching research ethics that utilizes school libraries as a place to provide teaching materials and implement instruction.

Our laboratory aims to share these research findings with schools nationwide while pioneering new research areas related to inquiry-based learning instruction. We are looking for students who are interested in practical research themes like this.