Penaakulan moral, nilai profesional dan membuat keputusan terhadap amalan etika akademik dalam kalangan pensyarah Institut Pendidikan Guru

The academic staff at Teacher Education Institutes (Institut Pendidikan Guru) are generally well experienced, possess excellent professional values and moral reasoning capability that are manifested in their practice of outstanding academic ethics. Despite this display of professional excellence, there are still some reports of cases that involve the violation of professional ethics. Therefore, to explore this ethical academic dilemma, this research was been carried out to study the correlation between professional values and moral reasoning and the practice of academic ethics among the academic staff of Teacher Education Institutes. In relation to this, a moderating variable, which is decision making, was utilised to study the influence of the moderating variable on the relationship between moral reasoning and professional values and the practice of academic ethics among the respondents. This study also examined the significant difference in demographic factors such as age, gender, duration of professional service with professional values, moral reasoning capability and the practice of academic ethics. A total number of 400 academic staff of Teacher Education Institutes were involved as respondents from the four zones in Peninsular Malaysia, namely the Northern, Eastern, Southern and Central zones. Each geographical zone was represented by 100 academic staff from two Teacher Education Institutes within each zone. Thus, bringing together a total of eight Teacher Education Institutes altogether from the four geographical zones involved. The methodology employed was a survey which utilised questionnaires that were distributed to the respondents to collect data regarding demographic factors, moral reasoning, professional values, decision making and the practice of academic ethics. Cresswell’s ‘Sequential Explanatory Strategy’ (2003) was employed by the researcher to collect both the quantitative and qualitative data. The data collected were first subjected to Reliability and Normality tests. The findings of this research indicate a significant correlation between professional values and academic ethics. The research shows that the respondents practiced professional values demanded by the profession which manifested in their practice of academic ethics. This research also shows the existence of a significant difference in the respondents’ duration of service and their professional values. The moderating variable (decision making) does not show any correlation between moral reasoning and professional values with academic ethics. Nevertheless, the analysis of the qualitative data indicates that the moderating variable had performed an important role. Respondents opined that decision making had influenced the correlation between professional values and moral reasoning and the practice of academic ethics among the academic staff of Teacher Education Institutes. There were also some respondents who indicated that religion influences good ethical practices or otherwise. Finally, this study has successfully linked several previously isolated theories which were referred to by the researcher during the course of completing this study.