Academic Integrity, Religiosity, and Morality of Indonesian Pre-Service Teachers: Does Field of Study Matter?

Background/purpose. Academic misconduct has become a significant, unresolved issue at all educational levels, notably higher education, worldwide. Since teachers play a major role in instilling the values of academic integrity, this issue is expected to be considered in the teacher preparation program.

Materials/methods. This quantitative study explores the behaviour of academic dishonesty among 439 pre-service teachers at two universities in Indonesia, each representing the status of public and private universities. Different fields of teacher education were examined: engineering, science, and humanities. To better understand which background and personal characteristics are related to cheating behaviour, this current work also sought to examine the impact of demographic factors as well as religiosity and morality factors.

Results. We first analyzed the quantitative data from an online survey by looking at the differences in academic misconduct behaviour by the variables of study disciplines, gender, university status, and parents’ background. The linear regression analysis highlighted how the personal characteristics of religiosity and morality influence the student teacher’s attitude toward academic dishonesty. The findings indicated that academic dishonesty was more prevalent among men than women and that it was more commonplace in engineering education than in other scientific subjects.

Conclusion. The results indicated that religiosity and morality characteristics predict the cheating behaviour of the pre-service teachers. It is expected that this research would be advantageous for teaching institutions in paying specific attention to preparing future educators with excellent ethics and professionalism.

Keywords: Academic dishonesty, pre-service teacher, religiosity, morality

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