Abstract
Since the introduction of international research ethical codes and related issues in Taiwan by scholars, a great majority of domestic researchers had paid close attention to their follow-up development and disputing points. In the meantime, National Institutes of Health Research, National Council of Science and academic associations had devoted themselves on developing “Human Research Ethic Codes”, and mandated that all research involving human subjects should be presented to the Reviewing Board of Research Ethics for ethics approval, for the purpose of protecting human rights. However, after a quick reviewing of researches involving human issues, an amazing fact indicating that most of the ethical concerns more on quantitative researches instead of qualitative ones. Explicitly, the ethics in educational qualitative researches which usually managed the treatment of disadvantaged participants in natural setting were severely ignored. Based on this understanding, this paper has its focus on “ethics in qualitative research”. To address the importance of three core ethic codes, namely, respect for persons, concern for welfare and justice, cases involving these codes and ethical considerations were presented and fully discussed, and some disputing viewpoints regarding the conflicts between codes were explored for further analysis, hoping that a consensus will be achieved, and provide a solid foundation for more flexible ethic codes.