Jim -

        Thanks for sharing this. One additional thought relates to deterrence: When we find that one of our students has cheated we really have a responsibility to turn the student's name in to the Student Affairs office. If the offender is aware that we have done that, it is less likely that students will continue to cheat in other classes. Of course, we determine the consequences if the student has not previously been reported for cheating but for students who are reported more than once, the administration - with faculty input - gets involved in deciding what kind of more serious punishment might be appropriate.    
         
        Paul
         
         
        -----Original Message----- 
        From: Teaching Breakfast List on behalf of Greenberg, James ([log in to unmask]) 
        Sent: Fri 8/20/2004 7:46 AM 
        To: [log in to unmask] 
        Cc: 
        Subject: Justice or Just Us: What to do About Cheating - Posted to Teaching Breakfast List by Jim Greenberg
	
	

        This issue has be discussed so many times in past TBs.
	
	
        Reprinted with permission.
	
                JUSTICE OR JUST US? WHAT TO DO ABOUT CHEATING
        May 2004
        By Jason Stephens
	
        Earlier this year, local papers were full of horrified reports of cheating
        in an affluent Silicon Valley high school. Stories like this are a regular
        occurrence. Last year cheating at the University of Virginia made headlines,
        and before that, it was the military academies.
	
        Adults always seem shocked and surprised to learn of cheating, especially in
        high-achieving and high-socioeconomic settings. They shouldn't be so
        surprised. Research on cheating has shown over and over that most students
        do cheat, at least some of the time. Research in high schools shows that two
        thirds of students cheat on tests, and 90 percent cheat on homework. The
        figures are almost as high among college students. Furthermore, it is clear
        that rates of cheating have gone up over the past three decades.
	
        Why? Do students fail to understand that cheating is wrong? Well, yes and
        no. In a recent study of high school students that I conducted, many
        students acknowledged that cheating is wrong but admitted they do it anyway,
        seemingly without much remorse. Jane, a tenth-grade honors student, is
        typical of these students:
	
        Like people have morals, they don't always go by them. ... So I mean, even
        if you get that test and you're like, "Oh yeah, I cheated on this test," it
        doesn't lessen that grade. It says an A on the paper and you don't go, "Oh,
        but I cheated." You're just kind of like, "Hey, I got that A." So it doesn't
        really matter necessarily, if it has to do with your morals or anything, you
        just kind of do it.
	
        Like Jane, other students in the study said that they cheat for simple,
        pragmatic reasons-to get high grades and because they don't have time to do
        the work carefully. Especially for college-bound students, the pressure for
        grades is real. According to the Higher Education Research Institute's
        annual survey, 47 percent of incoming college freshmen in 2003 reported
        having earned an A average in high school. As Jane put it:
	
        It's not always necessary (to cheat). I guess if you already have straight
        A's, then why cheat? But yet, we still seem to do it. It's kind of like
        insurance, like you feel better, you feel safer, if you do it. ... Then I
        will have that 95 instead of like the 90, because that's almost like a B or
        something.
	
        But despite the pressure for consistently high grades, students don't
        generally cheat in all of their classes. And somewhat surprisingly, it is
        not the difficulty of the course that predicts in which classes they are
        more likely to cheat. Instead, I found that high school students cheat more
        when they see the teacher as less fair and caring and when their motivation
        in the course is more focused on grades and less on learning and
        understanding. At least in these classes, they can justify cheating. They
        don't claim it is morally acceptable, but they don't seem to feel that it
        really matters if they cheat under these circumstances.
	
        In most studies of cheating, the researcher decides which behaviors
        constitute cheating, and students are only asked to report how often they
        engage in those behaviors. In my survey of high school students, I asked
        them to report both their level of engagement in a set of 12 "academic
        behaviors," as well as their beliefs concerning whether or not those
        behaviors were "cheating." Not surprisingly, the vast majority (85 percent
        or more) indicated that behaviors such as "copying from another student
        during a test" and "using banned crib notes or cheat sheets during a test"
        were cheating. However, only 18 percent believed that "working on an
        assignment with other students when the teacher asked for individual work"
        was cheating. Subsequent interviews with a small sub-sample of these
        students revealed that students regarded this forbidden collaboration as
        furthering their knowledge and understanding, and therefore saw it as an act
        of learning rather than a form of cheating. These!
          findings suggest that students make a distinction between behaviors that
        are overtly dishonest (such as copying the work of another, which
        effectively serves to misrepresent one's state of knowledge) and behaviors
        that are not inherently dishonest (such as working with others, which can
        serve to enrich one's interpersonal skills and academic learning).
        Educators, too, should be cognizant of this distinction and be judicious in
        prohibiting collaboration.
	
        With this pervasiveness of acceptance by students, is it acceptable to us as
        a society to tacitly accept cheating as a fact of life and not be so shocked
        when it comes to light? I don't think so. Cutting corners and compromising
        principles are habit-forming. They don't stop at graduation, as we have seen
        in recent scandals in business and journalism. And cheating or cutting
        corners in one's professional or personal life can cause real damage-both to
        oneself and to others. We need to care about it.
	
        And I believe we can do something about it. The best ways to reduce cheating
        are all about good teaching. In fact, if efforts to deal with cheating don't
        emerge from efforts to educate, they won't work-at least not when vigilance
        is reduced. These suggestions are easier said than done, but I believe they
        point in the right direction, both for academic integrity and for learning
        more generally.
	
            * Help students understand the value of what they're being asked to
        learn by creating learning experiences that connect with their interests and
        have real-world relevance.
            * Consider whether some of the rules that are frequently broken are
        arbitrary or unnecessarily constraining. For example, is individual effort
        on homework always so important? Given the evidence that collaboration in
        doing homework supports learning, it doesn't seem so.
            * As much as possible, connect assessment integrally with learning.
        Create assessments that are fair and meaningful representations of what
        students should have learned. Make sure assessments provide informative
        feedback and thus contribute to improved performance. When possible,
        individualize evaluations of students' progress and offer them privately.
        Avoid practices that invite social comparisons of performance.
            * Give students images of people who don't cut corners: scientists who
        discover things they don't expect because they approach their work with an
        impeccable respect for truth and a genuinely open mind; business people who
        exemplify integrity even when it seems like it might cost them something.
        But don't preach. Take seriously the fact that, in some contexts, being
        consistently honest can be hard.
	
        Finally, as educators, we must do our best to exemplify intellectual
        integrity ourselves-in everything from how we treat students and each other
        to how we approach the subject matter, to how we approach mandatory high
        stakes testing to how we think and talk about politics. We need to look for
        ways to make deep and searching honesty both palpable and attractive.
	
	
        About the Author
	
        Jason M. Stephens has been a research assistant at The Carnegie Foundation
        for the Advancement of Teaching since 1998, where he has worked on the
        Political Engagement Project and the Project on Higher Education and the
        Development of Moral and Civic Responsibility. He will receive his Ph.D. in
        educational psychology from Stanford University this June and join the
        faculty in the Department of Educational Psychology at the University of
        Connecticut in August 2004.
	
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