Abstract

This article investigates the representations of doctoral students in education regarding those aspects that configure the ethical aspect of scientific research. In this study, participated 24 doctoral students from different Chilean programs (60% women) between 30 and 52 years of age. The design involved six focus groups, and the interactions were recorded in audio and video. The corpus analysis was carried out under a qualitative approach based on Grounded Theory with a constructivist perspective. The results show the coexistence of two different representations of ethics in educational research. Each of these representations reflects an understanding and a way of conceiving reality regarding the role of ethics in research. The implications of these types of representations for research activities, as well as for the design of doctoral training programs in Chile, are discussed.