Loss, responsibility, blame? Staff discourses of student plagiarism

Abstract

Student plagiarism and difficulties with writing have been widely investigated in the literature, but there has been less research on staff perspectives. A Joint Information Services Committee (JISC)-funded questionnaire (n=80) and focus group study investigated the views of lecturers, librarians and study advisors at a UK post-92 university, looking at their perceptions of writing and plagiarism with a focus on first year undergraduates. The data reveal that staff in different roles employed contrasting discourses surrounding academic writing, the curriculum and the locus of responsibility for development. This paper will argue that the 'literacies' perspective shown by support staff leads to a more distributed view of responsibility for plagiarism prevention. In contrast, a 'study skills' paradigm as shown by lecturers views writing development as extracurricular and remedial, places a symbolic moral value on plagiarism as a signifier for falling standards. Implications for practice arising from the study are discussed.

Information literacy

“…Firstly the sociohistorical context of being a student at university and within a community of scholars, where any argument or 'key point' must have its own supporting piece of evidence. Possibly hidden within this is the notion of plagiarism which is itself is a source of great anxiety between both academic staff and their students (Gourley & Deane, 2012). Secondly, the reference must be 'academic' and thirdly they must not be 'autobiographies'.…”

“…For Foucault, the central issue is how discourse analysis can be used to uncover the way in which social reality is produced (Jansen, 2008). Within Higher Education, for example, both academics and librarians have come to share the agreed meaning that plagiarism undermines the academic process (Gourley & Deane, 2012). It is argued, however, that the notion of plagiarism is, in itself, a discourse and arguably a contested one which is produced by the sociallyconstructed Western tradition of academic writing and therefore, not an absolute (Gourley & Deane, 2012).…”

“…However, it has been used to a greater extent within information behaviour research (Tuominen et al, 2005;Given, 2005;Case, 2012), as well as library and information contexts (Olsson, 2010) and in related areas especially the prevention of plagiarism (Gourley & Deane, 2012). Bates (2005) has noted that discourse analysis is one of the thirteen meta-theories which have influenced contemporary information behaviour research.…”

“…Within Higher Education, for example, both academics and librarians have come to share the agreed meaning that plagiarism undermines the academic process (Gourley & Deane, 2012). It is argued, however, that the notion of plagiarism is, in itself, a discourse and arguably a contested one which is produced by the sociallyconstructed Western tradition of academic writing and therefore, not an absolute (Gourley & Deane, 2012). The discourse regarding the relative merit of the academic text book and Wikipedia entry, for example, also demonstrates the power/knowledge duality that exists within discourse.…”

Plagiarism in Higher Education: A Question of Moral Development or Sociocultural Influence of Discipline

“…And as mentioned before, new standards of text production is suggested as the concept of "remix" (Hansen et als, 2011). Gourlay and Deane (2012) found out that some students have difficulties interpreting plagiarism, and that students that are not well integrated with the academia, more specifically, non-traditional students seems to have greater problems than others when it comes to plagiarism. This could be interpreted as that plagiarism has very local frames that only holds within the context of higher education, which is another problem.…”