Bringing to Academic Responsibility for Violation of Academic Integrity: Theoretical and Applied Problems of Regulation

Abstract

Problem setting. The article highlights problematic issues related to academic responsibility for violations of academic integrity of participants in the educational process. Attention is drawn to the fact that a significant shortcoming of the Laws of Ukraine «On Education» and «On Higher Education» is the absence of such definitions as «academic responsibility», «types of academic responsibility», «academic misconduct», which significantly complicates the bringing to academic responsibility of pedagogical , scientific-pedagogical and scientific workers of educational institutions and students of education in practice. Analysis of recent researches and publications. A. Artyukhova, V. Zinchenko, Y. Kalinovsky, M. Ozhevan, O. Tytska, O. Chumak and others scientists have addressed the issue of academic integrity in their works. The scientific conclusions and approaches to the vision of these scholars are an important basis for our study. Target of the research is to study and comprehend the problematic issues of bringing to academic liability for violation of academic integrity of participants in the educational process. Article’s main body. Based on the analysis of current legislation, the author formulates a definition of the term “academic liability” and establishes its place in the general system of legal liability. The author’s definition of the term «academic responsibility» is proposed: this is a type of legal responsibility that arises for the violation of the academic integrity of pedagogical, scientific-pedagogical and scientific employees of educational institutions, students of education in scientific institutions and educational institutions and entails negative consequences of state influence in case of committing them of an academic offense. A critical assessment of the list of violations of academic integrity is given. It is noted that in the current educational legislation there is no differentiation of violations related to the training of highly qualified personnel (master’s students, doctoral students, etc.). Attention is drawn to the fact that the Law of Ukraine «On Education» establishes a list of violations of academic integrity, in which offenses that are completely different in terms of the degree of social damage, for example, self-plagiarism and bribery, are placed in the same row/ The author established that the Law of Ukraine «On Higher Education» contains a list of sanctions for violation of academic integrity not for all participants of the educational process, but only for pedagogical, scientific-pedagogical and scientific employees of educational institutions and students of education. Amendments to the current legislation regarding the clear definition of objective criteria for the selection of the type of academic responsibility for a specific violation of academic integrity are proposed. Conclusions and prospects for the development. It was concluded that academic responsibility is a multi-meaning concept, in particular, a type of social, corporate, moral-ethical, legal responsibility, is a type of state coercion. It is proposed to harmonize the provisions of the educational legislation with the Code of Criminal Procedure of Ukraine, the Civil Code of Ukraine, the Criminal Code of Ukraine and other laws, which will regulate the types and measures of punishment for violating academic integrity. It is proved that academic responsibility can be legal (civil, labor, administrative, criminal), social, moral and ethical, corporate responsibility. Thus, academic responsibility intersects with legal responsibility. The need to establish the definition of the concept of «academic responsibility» at the legislative level and to regulate in detail all procedural aspects of bringing the participants of the educational process to academic responsibility is argued.