Pandora's box: academic perceptions of student plagiarism in writing

Sutherland‐Smith, Wendy

doi:10.1016/s1475-1585(04)00028-1

Cited by 55 publications

(66 citation statements)

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“…This characterisation of plagiarism is partly due to its historical roots, positioning plagiarism within a legal discourse, suggesting that plagiarism refers to an act of theft of the individual ownership of intellectual work (Ashworth, Freewood, and Macdonald 2003;Stearns 1992;Sutherland-Smith 2005). This construction of plagiarism assumes that knowledge has a history and that past authors must be acknowledged.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Exploring university students' perceptions of plagiarism: a focus group study

Gullifer

Tyson

2010

Studies in Higher Education

199

168

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Plagiarism is perceived to be a growing problem and universities are being required to devote increasing time and resources to combating it. Theory and research in psychology show that a thorough understanding of an individual's view of an issue or problem is an essential requirement for successful change of that person's attitudes and behaviour. This pilot study explores students' perceptions of a number of issues relating to plagiarism in an Australian university. In the pilot study, focus groups were held with students across discipline areas, year and mode of study. A thematic analysis revealed six themes of perceptions of plagiarism: confusion, fear, perceived sanctions, perceived seriousness, academic consequences and resentment.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Exploring university students' perceptions of plagiarism: a focus group study

Gullifer

Tyson

2010

Studies in Higher Education

199

168

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…The challenge that academic writing presents is further heightened if the students concerned are international students, in particular when they are non-native speakers of English. There is a general agreement in the literature that international students are more 'at risk' of plagiarising compared to their native speaker peers (Park 2003;Pecorari 2003;Higher Education Academy 2012). Plagiarism is a complex construct that can be conceived of in a variety of different ways at different levels of the institution, by individual lecturers (Sutherland-Smith 2005), by students themselves (Park 2003) or indeed across different disciplines (Shi 2012). For purposes of this article, the University of Leeds (2005) definition of plagiarism will be used as a starting point, that is: 'plagiarism is defined as presenting someone else's work as your own.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This definition seems relatively straightforward, but does not capture the reason(s) why a student may plagiarise. At institutional level in HE, it is often assumed that plagiarism is a moral or legal issue and is deliberate academic misconduct; plagiarism thus requires a judicial or punishment response (Pecorari 2003;Sutherland-Smith 2005). In contrast, in the English as a Second Language literature, plagiarism is often viewed as an issue relating to learning and development.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reducing unintentional plagiarism amongst international students in the biological sciences: An embedded academic writing development programme

Divan

Bowman²,

Seabourne

2013

Journal of Further and Higher Education

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There is general agreement in the literature that international students are more likely to plagiarise compared to their native speaker peers and, in many instances, plagiarism is unintentional. In this article we describe the effectiveness of an academic writing development programme embedded into a Biological Sciences Taught Masters course designed to reduce unintentional plagiarism amongst international students in the cohort. We compared plagiarism rates in the years before and after the implementation of the writing intervention. In addition, we analysed data from a high response rate questionnaire (87.8%: class of 90 students) designed to evaluate students' perceptions of the usefulness of the writing development programme and to elicit information about their prior educational experiences which might relate to plagiarism. Our combined quantitative and qualitative data show that an early pedagogical response reduced plagiarism levels amongst international students. However, the UK and international students in the same cohort reported markedly different responses to the writing programme. We therefore suggest that, if international students are provided with an initial opportunity to practise academic writing and receive feedback, they are more likely to be successful when writing coursework assignments later on. However, any initial writing development programme should be adapted to accommodate the differing needs of the UK and international students within the cohort.

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“…As Hacker (1998) stated, plagiarism involves documenting the source but paraphrasing the source's language too closely, without using quotation marks to indicate that words and phrases have been borrowed. However, studies have again differed from one another considerably in their operational definitions regarding the closeness or the distance that should stand between a paraphrased text and the original source (Campbell 1990;Pecorari 2003;Shi 2004;Sutherland-Smith 2005;Yamada 2003). Some studies have imposed a rigid prohibition on any trace of the source text.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Using a two-tier test in examining Taiwan graduate students’ perspectives on paraphrasing strategies

Sun

2009

Asia Pacific Educ. Rev.

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This study examines Taiwanese English as a foreign language (EFL) graduate students' perspectives on paraphrasing strategies. A two-layer scenario survey was developed to identify the reasoning behind students' judgments that certain paraphrasing is appropriate or inappropriate. The first-layer scenario survey is in a true-false format that consists of nine paraphrasing scenarios and that served to elicit from students their declarative knowledge of appropriate paraphrasing strategies. The second-layer scenario survey is in an open-ended question format that explores students' explanatory knowledge underlying their first-layer choices. In addition, an attitude survey and a demographic survey were designed and implemented to explore learner variables in relation to the learners' perspectives on paraphrasing strategies. A total of 141 EFL graduate students participated in the study. The results shed considerable light on students' diverse perceptions and reasoning regarding paraphrasing strategies. More than half of the students considered surface-level paraphrasing (patchwriting) to be acceptable strategy use. Significant correlation was found between students' responses to the acceptability of paraphrasing strategies and the following factors: (1) perceived difficulty in paraphrasing, (2) perceived value of appropriate source use, (3) perceived competence in overcoming the temptation to plagiarize, (4) perceived disadvantage as a foreign-language learner with paraphrasing, (5) gender, and (6) paraphrasing-related training. Pedagogical implications of the results are discussed.

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Pandora's box: academic perceptions of student plagiarism in writing

Cited by 55 publications

References 0 publications

Exploring university students' perceptions of plagiarism: a focus group study

Exploring university students' perceptions of plagiarism: a focus group study

Reducing unintentional plagiarism amongst international students in the biological sciences: An embedded academic writing development programme

Using a two-tier test in examining Taiwan graduate students’ perspectives on paraphrasing strategies

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