Researcher development through doctoral training in research integrity

ABSTRACT

The article explores research integrity training for PhD-students as a site of production of academic cultures and researcher development. Based on ethnographies of four courses in research integrity, conducted in four faculties of a large comprehensive Danish university, the article explores the vital role of academic developers, teachers, and course participants in the active translation of institutional, national, and international policies into research practices. We argue that doctoral training in research integrity does not entail the direct implementation of policy and codes from above; rather, it is a site for the development and negotiation of the meaning of research integrity in disciplinary cultures and standards, and, critically, for the responsibilisation of individual researchers in policy enactment. We show how doctoral training has become a key site for the emergence of research integrity as a field. It is also a privileged site for researching contested and multidirectional processes of policy formation and implementation.

KEYWORDS:

• Doctoral training
• academic development
• researcher development
• policy translation
• research integrity

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Ministry of Higher Education and Science, Denmark [Grant ID: 6183-00003B].

Notes on contributors

Laura Louise Sarauw

Laura Louise Sarauw is working as an external lecturer at the Danish School of Education at Aarhus University. She holds a PhD in Pedagogy from the University of Copenhagen, and her academic work focuses on the interpretation and implementation of educational policies.

Lise Degn

Lise Degn holds a PhD in Social Science from Aarhus University and is currently employed as Assistant Professor at the Danish Centre for Studies in Research and Research Policy at Aarhus University. Her research focus is on changing university organization and management structures and on the changing nature of academic work.

Jakob Williams Ørberg

Jakob Williams Ørberg is a postdoctoral researcher and centre manager at Centre for Higher Education Futures, Aarhus University. His doctoral and postdoctoral work has focused on European and South Asian higher education life, reform, and development in the context of a presumed rise of a global knowledge economy.