ABSTRACT
Many students have quite clear views on a range of unacceptable academic practices, including cheating, collusion and plagiarism. Although many students are fairly clear on what they consider to be cheating, often it is not the clear-cut line that university policy assumes it to be. In addition, the term “collusion” can appear daunting to many first-year tertiary students. Collusion is difficult to distinguish from collaboration at times as, for many students, collusion is just a stronger degree of collaboration and does not amount to cheating or misconduct. Students appear to have shades or gradings of behavior in terms of use and acquisition of the work of others-as with the University of Birmingham’s plagiarism policy, where the university considered plagiarism could be categorized from “serious” to “slight” (see Chapter 3). A number of students find the concept of plagiarism quite confusing, based on prior learning experiences of what was expected of them and what was valued and rewarded in terms of
actual point of such acknowledgment continues to elude them. In other words, some students understand that they should not take words or ideas without attribution to the source, but they do not understand why notother than to avoid university penalties. Plagiarism often presents great difficulties for students in operational terms, for example, how do students know what needs to be referenced and what does not and what constitutes “common knowledge” that does not require citation and what is not “common knowledge” and therefore does require citation? It is important for teachers to understand that students can and often do view plagiarism through different lenses from staff. Although students may read the same plagiarism policy, attend the same sessions on academic referencing and be provided with the same set of instructions about plagiarism, cheating or collusion-they perceive plagiarism differently from their teachers and from each other. This is not a new phenomenon. Peter Ashworth, Philip Bannister and Pauline Thorne concluded in their UK study in 1997 that student perceptions of plagiarism do not start from the same premises as academics, and one problem with many of the studies is an assumption of shared understandings of plagiarism between students and staff. According to Ashworth et al., students tend to value factors such as protecting friendship groups, interpersonal trust and also “us” and “them” attitudes towards institutional power in their decisions on whether to plagiarize or not. My own research builds on the previous studies which suggest that many students, particularly those for whom English is a second or foreign language, are fearful that they may be unwittingly plagiarizing and can tend to over-cite sources in a bid not to be labeled a “plagiarist” or a “cheat.” By understanding varying students’ perceptions of plagiarism, particularly in relation to Internet sources, teachers may benefit in understanding plagiarism in light of issues of academic integrity.
