STRUCTURE OF THE HIGHER EDUCATION APPLICANTS’ ACADEMIC INTEGRITY COMPETENCE

Abstract

The article analyzes various aspects of the academic integrity problem facing higher education students. An overview of the main state documents on the specified problem has been made: laws, codes, regulations, letters, methodological recommendations, etc. The points of view regarding the relevance and essence of the problem are based on the publications of domestic and foreign scientists. Attending online webinars and lectures on the sought-after problem on the Coursera and Prometheus platforms, familiarization with the scientific and practical conference programs, online courses on teaching academic integrity, surveying the teachers’ and students’ results on awareness of the issue of academic integrity lead to the conclusion about the relevance of the problem and the feasibility of its research. The study of scientific articles over the past five years allows to state that the problem of the academic integrity competence structure of higher education students remains relevant, but insufficiently researched, which has negative impact on the effectiveness of its formation. The concept of the academic integrity competence is clarified, and its structure based on the National Qualifications Framework (2020) is substantiated. We believe that the above-mentioned competence should consist of four sub-competencies; knowledge in academic integrity in the field of education, skills in academic integrity in the field of education, communication based on the principles of academic integrity in the field of education, responsibility and autonomy in compliance with academic integrity in the field of education. The structure of each of the subcompetencies, which consists of microcompetencies for a specific level of education and for each of the training courses, is defined according to the Academic Integrity Competency Resource Map (University of Waterloo, 2023). For example, sub-competency 1 “Knowledge in the field of academic integrity in education” covers 4 microcompetencies, the first of which is “Knowledge in the field of academic integrity in education” for undergraduate (first, second, third and fourth years), for master’s (first and second years), and postgraduate studies (first and second years). Subcompetencies two, three and four are similarly structured. The next step in the study of the mentioned problem is to specify the content of each of the microcompetencies.