Addressing the baseline: Erving Goffman and ethics in a postgraduate degree for practising teachers

In response to the claim that students who have received an undergraduate degree in education lack adequate preparation for postgraduate study, the designers of a masters course in research methods set an assignment at the first meeting which asked practising teachers to match Goffman's dramaturgical concepts to observation of behaviour in public. Results based on assignments from five classes were analysed from the perspective of theoretical understanding and what the collected assignments revealed about the students' perception of the ethics of naturalistic observation. It was found that theoretical understanding was achieved and that the discussions of ethics produced findings that illustrated Goffman's distinction between ethics and etiquette.