IMPACT OF STUDENTS’ SOLIDARITY ON THE MAINTENANCE OF ACADEMIC INTEGRITY

Solidarity, as a moral link and a commitment that unites the group, may be useful for understanding the phenomenon of academic integrity as well as academic misconduct. Based on the results of a research conducted in 2016 at one of Lithuanian university, this paper aims to reveal the manifestations of students’ solidarity and its impact on the maintenance of academic integrity. Empirical data have been gathered during 7 focus group discussions separately with bachelor and master students (overall, 31 students), who represented different study programmes and study years.

According to results of the research, students perceive academic integrity as a significant academic characteristic, an important attribute of study quality that inter alia requires collaborative actions and shared values. However, students’ solidarity plays not only an important role in creating academic integrity, but also in cases of academic misconduct: cheating, unfairness in group work etc., when students collaborate in order to achieve their goals through measures that contradict the norms of academic community. However, academic misconduct could happen not only because of negative intentions of students, but also because of their sense of unity. Moreover, the discussions revealed that students put more emphasis on lecturers’ role in ensuring atmosphere of integrity in the study process and assess their own capability to influence behaviours of their fellows as limited.

Understanding of different forms and reasons of students' solidarity is significant for identification of problems and creation of measures that allow avoiding misconduct and strengthen academic integrity.