What is normal educational practice?
As noted above, the regulations define normal educational practice as “(i) research on regular and special education instructional strategies, or (ii) research on the effectiveness of or the comparison among instructional techniques, curricula, or classroom management methods.” The IRB considers educational time to be a valuable commodity, and thus, the design of a research study that will be carried out in an educational setting should be developed with this in mind. At the minimum, the research should not waste student educational time, and may offer benefit to the individual and/or classwide educational experience. The IRB will consider the proposed methodology for the study in light of both time requirements and likelihood of benefit in order to determine whether it qualifies as normal educational practice. In all cases, the IRB will need to assess risks to all proposed participants in the study to determine the level of review required. In some cases, it may be helpful if the PI c
