ETHICAL BEHAVIOUR IN HEIS. AN EXPLORATORY STUDY FROM STUDENTS PERSPECTIVE

Abstract

Issues specific to ethics and academic integrity cover a wide range of fields and can take the form of professional ethics, the ethics of scientific research, the ethics of relationships between students and between students and teachers, and the ethics of classroom activities. Violation of academic integrity is also known as “academic misconduct” or “academic dishonesty”. There are different ways of committing acts of violation of academic integrity, but it is important to keep in mind that committing any of them has consequences that will be reflected in both academic and professional life. Therefore, it is important to be known, recognized, and avoided. The main aim of our research is to explore the student’s perception about the ethical norms and academic integrity during the didactical and research activity at their university. Our findings show that students have knowledge about the academic integrity norms and can respect them, but, sometimes, if it is easy to obtain the same result, they decide to use the unethical practices (copy-paste, wrong citation, plagiarism). Results, implications, and future directions of research are presented.