ABSTRACT
It is a Monday afternoon and we sit around a large oval table in the Dean’s meeting room at South-Coast University in Melbourne, Australia-six teachers, one university policy-writer and myself. I am wearing two hatsone as a teacher of 18 years’ standing in both secondary and tertiary classrooms and the other is as an academic researcher. We are there because university management feels a crisis is looming over acts of plagiarism by its students. There is widespread concern voiced by academic staff, language support staff and international student liaison officers at the increasing number of students facing disciplinary procedures in various faculties for acts of plagiarism, collusion and cheating. International students-most of whom speak, read and write English as a second, third or foreign language (ESL/EFL)—are the highest proportion of students appearing before the University Disciplinary Board. The question is, why is this the case? Is it that international students get caught more frequently than local students for plagiarism? Do international students actually plagiarize more than locally based students, or are they unfamiliar with our academic writing conventions? Are there other factors at play in the mix?
