SAHEIs must acknowledge that students come from different backgrounds, with different accepted ways of being and doing that might clash with current academic principles. Therefore, there is a need to rethink institutional culture and shift practices toward learning and care. SAHEIs need to move away from a teaching-centered culture where institutional policies and systems are built around the teacher and move toward learning excellence. This places students and their needs at the center of the institution. This naturally extends into aspects linked to institutional culture such as academic integrity/misconduct and the policies and systems linked thereto.
Using frameworks is a novel approach to understanding problems and challenges as it provides a lens or critical perspective to define the challenges and find a way forward. However, using only one lens provides a limited understanding or singular view of the problem. Therefore, it is beneficial to use multiple lenses to critically reflect on a problem or context in order to shift thinking to find different solutions or cultural innovations. The benefit of using both ethics of care (EoC) and restorative justice (RJ) for evaluating institutional culture, systems, and policies for academic misconduct is that they complement each other. Both are people-centered approaches that can be used to develop a softer culture where the student is placed in the center and where learning, administration, and support (Fig. 2.3) for academic integrity are built around the students to help them become better academic citizens rather than to vilify students. As such, both allow for the recognition of the student and their needs, moving away from the decontextualized learner to viewing students as social beings (Boughey & McKenna, 2016).
By suggesting the use of two lenses, EoC and RJ, we—the authors— try to acknowledge the complex and multifaceted nature of academic misconduct as well as the need to not have a “one-size-fits-all” approach to breaches of integrity. It requires the institution to introspect and resituate academic integrity within a broader institutional cultural change.It is important for HE institutions (HEIs) to employ multiple strategies such as developing explicit educational experiences for students, creating check-in systems that can be incorporated into existing support structures at university such as mentorship programs, advising programs, and writing programs, as well as explicitly talking about academic integrity at class and course level to name but a few. For these aspects, it is important for institutions to shift their tone from punitive and adversarial to a tone of inclusivity and community building (Sopcak, 2021), which forms part of the larger paradigm shift to learning excellence where the institutional culture is built around the student.
This conceptual chapter considers EoC and RJ, later defined as restorative practice (RP) as possible ways to reimagine and recenter the culture of academic integrity around the student and to reshape institutional practices  using a framework of learning excellence. The chapter is written to help academics, policymakers, registrars, deans, curriculum developers, and other individuals involved in academic integrity/misconduct reflect on their current culture and practices around academic misconduct, as well as to reimagine their institutional approaches to be more inclusive and student centered when dealing with academic integrity and misconduct. The first step is to unpack how to reframe a culture of learning excellence with EoC and RJ at the heart of an institutional academic integrity culture.
2. Establishing a culture of learning excellence
Reimagining Learning in HE is a collective process between staff, students, and institutional leadership. Changing this learning and teaching culture to one focusing on student inclusivity requires us to reimagine our current practices in HE, to one of partnering with students in order to develop better systems, processes and procedures, and a learning environment  that benefits the students. To do this, one needs to understand the relationship between institutional culture, curriculum, and the context, in  which these systems intersect to enhance the student experience (van As  et al., 2023).
Traditionally, a key focus of HE institutions has been on teaching excellence (Kreber, 2002), in which learning pedagogies place the educator at the center of institutional decisions. This promotes an organizational culture of teaching and knowledge transmission where the student is expected to listen and absorb rather than to engage meaningfully with learning. Part of the reason for this is that South African universities place a significant emphasis on research output to remain internationally relevant and competitive, with significantly less focus on students’ learning journey. However, universities are mandated to not only develop knowledge but also “provide optimal opportunities for learning” (The Higher Education Act [No. 101 of 1997], 1997, p. 2). The emphasis on HEIs should therefore shift toward providing students with the best learning experience possible. This requires institutions to place students at the center of the decision-making process, as well as to adopt student-centered practices. By doing so, it will be possible to promote a shift from teaching excellence to learning excellence (Fig. 2).
Learning Excellence involves assessing and reassessing student, employer, and societal needs to ensure degrees remain current and relevant. Drawing on 21st century skills, for example, is one way of adapting discipline specific knowledge to remain relevant for radically changing work environments (Germaine, 2016). Additionally, learning excellence is also about making sure that appropriate and effective teaching, support, assessment, and learning opportunities are provided to students, which includes monitoring student performance, creating a culture of academic integrity, providing support through mentorship, peer-tutoring or additional assignments, and making counseling services available to students in need.