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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