Abstract:

This study aims at determining what academicians consider to be against ethics in activities that they perform (such as educational activities, research and social service) and their causes as well as how to prevent them. It also makes an attempt at identifying the dilemmas academicians might have concerning ethics. The research uses a semi-structured interview technique, one of the qualitative research methods. The research group was composed of the 50 subjects chosen through snowball sampling from the 100 academicians group working in the Faculty of Education in Canakkale Onsekiz Mart University. Inductive analysis, a type of content analysis, was conducted in the analysis of the data. The behaviours that the academicians considered to be against occupational ethics were mostly related with educational activities, and second mostly related with research activities. The academicians consider refusing to teach with no excuse, coming to class late without an excuse/ leaving the classroom early, not conducting the instruction effectively and qualitatively, failing to fulfill the responsibilities at university due to working outside the University, not treating students equally / fairly against professional ethics most in terms of educational-instructional activities. They consider not giving the quotations and resources correctly, not conducting high quality and original research studies and making changes in the research data unproffessional most in terms of research- related activities. Besides, they find doing nothing for social service against professional ethics in terms of service to the society. The causes for such behaviours were listed as personal characteristics, desiring to promote quickly and time insuffiency, economic insuffiency, and institutional expectations. The academicians stated that those behaviours could be prevented through the formation of an institutional culture, having role-models among administrators especially and among employees, the formation of an institutional infrastructure, ethic values of an institution, questioning one’s conscience, values education and character education, and regular supervision. It was found that academicians experienced ethical dilemmas between educational activities and research activities, between their work at university and willingness to work in private sector, and between administrators’ pressures and their personal values in fulfilling their duties; respectively.

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