UNDERSTANDING ACADEMIC INTEGRITY: PERCEPTIONS OF UNIVERSITY STUDENTS AND LECTURERS

There is no secret that higher education institutions in Central and Eastern Europe and especially in its Post-Soviet block still face academic misconduct frequently. Although, as results of researches reveal, academic integrity makes a significant impact on the quality of future professional activities and thus on the sustainability of society in general, the fight against academic misconduct still heavily makes its way to universities. In order to foster changes in this area and to improve culture of academic ethics a Lithuanian social science university decided to explore the situation and initiated research of academic ethics issues in its academic community. This paper aims to present one of the aspects of conducted research - perceptions of academic integrity from the perspective of both students and lecturers, since the analysis of prevailing perceptions, their similarities and differences is inevitable for gaining a deeper understanding of the on-going processes. Empirical data have been gathered in 2016 using two methods - individual qualitative interviews with 15 lecturers and 6 PhD students, and 7 focus group discussions separately with bachelor and master students, who represented different study programmes and study years. The analysis of research results reveals that both students and lecturers perceive academic integrity as one of the most important imperatives of academic ethics and event as its synonym. On the other hand, the differences of perceptions are also observed. Students tend to consider academic integrity as a whole of agreed rules and obedience to them. While defining academic integrity they prefer to give examples of academic integrity as an opposite of academic misconduct (e.g. do not cheat, do not plagiarize, do not copy ideas etc.). Direction or focus of academic integrity is given to particular students' behaviour related with study process, especially with the implementation of required tasks. Meanwhile, the perception of academic integrity provided by lecturers is more general, extended to common values. In many cases it is based on the positive aspects like academic freedom and security, courage, objectivity, respect, trustworthiness, professionalism, etc. These differences of perceptions indicate that although objectively every member of academic community follows the same ethical rules, on personal - subjective - level they perceive ethical issues differently. These differences of perceptions of academic integrity are significant for determination of the most effective ways to foster common ethical culture of every member of the academic community and to enhance academic integrity as a shared academic value.