I found the description of classes that experience the least amount of
cheating revealing "... The best ways to reduce cheating
are all about good teaching." 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.
I'm also suprised at how cavalier "cheaters" can be. I always thought
of plagerism and other cheatings as mortal academic sins- I've overheard
student discussions about cheating behavior that makes it sound
perfectly normal. Of course these may be the students to whom the GOOD
teacher is the one who is easy, "doesn't care" (actual quote) gives no
work and has low expectations of the students...
-----Original Message-----
From: Teaching Breakfast List [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
Behalf Of Nepkie, Janet ([log in to unmask])
Sent: Friday, August 20, 2004 11:29 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Justice or Just Us: What to do About Cheating - Posted to
Teaching Breakfast List by Jim Greenberg
For very practical reasons (and others, I'm sure) Paul is
absolutely correct in saying we need to report the cheating student to
Student Affairs. But let me also put in a strong plug for calling Mary
Logan when you detect cheating. She's the Director of our Office of
Judicial Affairs and she has good advice for ways of dealing with all
sorts of student problems. Her email is [log in to unmask]
Janet
----------
From: Teaching Breakfast List on behalf of Conway,
Paul ([log in to unmask])
Reply To: Teaching Breakfast List
Sent: Friday, August 20, 2004 8:27 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Justice or Just Us: What to do About
Cheating - Posted to Teaching Breakfast List by Jim Greenberg
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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