La recherche présentée trouve son origine dans la situation de crise générale que traverserait l’autorité au niveau politique, religieux comme éducatif au Togo. Dans le contexte de confrontation de l’éducation dite traditionnelle au modèle éducatif véhiculé par l’école, produit de la colonisation ou de la rencontre avec l’Europe, nous nous proposons d’examiner les conceptions et pratiques de l’autorité dans l’éducation togolaise aujourd’hui. Peut-on parler de crise de l’autorité, dans le même sens que Hannah Arendt pour le contexte etatsunien? Si oui, (...) pourquoi fait-elle problème? C’est sous l’angle philosophico-sémantique que cette recherche aborde cette problématique. (shrink)

Concern is growing as research continues to find evidence of academic misconduct among medical students. There is, however, paucity of information on this issue among medical students and medical graduates in Africa. We determined the perceptions and attitude of house officers on academic misconduct within Nigerian medical schools. We conducted 7 focus group discussions among pre-registration house-officers working in a Nigerian Teaching hospital between October and November 2013. A FGD guide containing 7 broad questions related to their perception and attitude (...) on academic misconduct was employed. Ethnographic content analysis and manual coding were adopted in identifying themes, issues and representative quotations. A total of 58 participants out of an eligible pool of 76 PRHOs were recruited. All the groups associated academic misconduct chiefly with cheating in examinations, and perceived it as a commonplace problem. “It is a part of school life”, admitted one PRHO. Copying during exam appeared to be the commonest form of cheating. Another respondent opined that “The lecturers should be more concerned with helping students understand better. They should not make passing an exam a do-or-die affair.” The perception and attitudes towards academic misconduct may be a reflection of the prevailing moral decline in the contemporary Nigerian society. Underlying the reasons adduced by the participants for getting involved in academic misconduct is the fear of failure in examinations. Apart from consolidating formal and informal medical ethics education, the medical schools should ensure that the opportunities and pressures to indulge in academic misconduct are minimized. (shrink)