Teaching phronesis in a research integrity course

More and more research institutions are implementing courses in research integrity (RI). Recent
studies indicate that teachers of RI courses are increasingly adopting a “phronetic” approach to their
teaching, where the focus is on nurturing values and practical wisdom—what Aristotle called
phronesis. When adopting a phronetic approach, it is important to understand what phronesis in
relation to RI entails and how and to what extent an RI course can contribute to the development
of research phronesis. This paper contains a practice-based discussion of the realistic aims of RI
courses and a first step towards a specification of the skill set necessary for developing research
phronesis drawing on experiences from the PhD courses on Responsible Conduct of Research at the
University of Copenhagen. We discuss the limited extent to which research phronesis can be taught
in short courses and examine the broader implications of this for the role of RI courses in the training
of good researchers.