Cultural decorations and pseudomoral images of academic integrity in the modern educational space

authors: Lesya Panchenko, Nataliia Radionova

 Abstract.

Relevance of the research. Contemporary Ukrainian education is undergoing challenging times. This is due not only to globalization, European integration, and innovative-technological challenges, nor even so much to the difficulties of implementing educational projects at all levels under martial law, but rather to the ongoing process of moral renewal that Ukrainian education and science are currently experiencing.

Problem statement. As the foundations of every society are defined by its national culture, of which education and science are essential components, Ukrainian society is in urgent need of “reasonable education” grounded in the principles of the ethics of duty and the ethics of responsibility. Therefore, this article focuses on identifying the pathologies and reasons for the transformation of academic integrity into mere decoration in the educational space.

Analysis of recent research and publications. The philosophical foundations of the concept of virtue have been developed by I. Kant, H. Jonas, A. MacIntyre, A. Rand, F. Fukuyama, M. Huemer, and others. The issue of integrity, particularly in educational and scientific contexts, has become the subject of broad discussion among Ukrainian scholars, notably in the works of M. Boychenko, O. Vysotska, S. Krylova, M. Kultaieva, N. Khamitova, and others.

Main material presentation. Since the times of Plato and Aristotle, who laid the foundations of ethics, and the earliest universities, whose core principles were based on Christian ethics, virtue has held a prominent place in the landscape of human existence. The establishment of a culture of virtue in society is predicated on the freedom of spirit and the confidence that everyone fulfills their ethical obligations. Sometimes, virtue is perceived as an aspiration for achievements that one expects from one’s own productivity and infallibility in strategies of life-creation. In a consumer society, such as Ukraine’s, holding a doctoral degree and the title of professor is regarded as a status position, which, quite evidently, in the practices of life-creation, encourages individuals to model both “real” biographies—dedicated to serving education, science, and the Motherland—and “fictitious” ones, resorting, in pursuit of personal ambitions to be a “scholar,” to deviant behavior masked by simulacra of academic integrity. In this context, the need to revise the mechanisms for ensuring academic integrity becomes increasingly significant.

Conclusions. Thus, academic communities structured on the basis of universal human values, morality, and law, at the level of individual strategies of life-creation, strengthen the attractors of the ethics of responsibility as a moral goal. One possible response is the cultivation and self-cultivation of virtue—intellectual, academic, and universal human.

Keywords: education, culture, science, academic integrity, virtue, life-creation, reason, academic communities, freedom, culture of integrity, ethics of responsibility, spiritual renewal.

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