Formal codes of ethics are not the best way of addressing ethical issues arising in educational research. Philosophers have often exaggerated the importance of such codes, although philosophy has little to contribute to them. What we need rather is a closer attention to the ways in which ethical decisions about research are actually made. Moral theory can contribute here by clarifying this process and identifying helpful procedures and strategies, such as those used by institutional review committees in arriving at good judgements. New and unfamiliar situations require us to extend our existing abilities, not to return to first principles and set up formal codes.

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Constructivism comes in a number of forms. Some are models of learning which involve few, if any, startling epistemological claims. On the other hand, what has been promoted as ‘radical constructivism’ holds that our concepts cannot be related directly to an external reality, and that claims for the objectivity of knowledge are therefore unjustified. This standpoint is an anti‐realist version of evolutionary epistemology. I argue that it relies on a mistaken interpretation of the Darwinian theory of evolution by natural selection, and that its application of this model to the relation between knowledge and the world is also mistaken.

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