Cheating in academic institutions A deca

Cheating in academic institutions: A decade of research MacCabe, Donald L., Linda Klebe Trevino, and Kenneth D. Butterfield. 2001. Cheating in academic institutions: A decade of research. Ethics and Behavior 11 (3):219–232.

Cited in Connected Play: “Cheating in school, on the other hand, has a very official different position: it is considered illegitimate but is widely practiced. Cheating is condemned because it presumes that the learner has solved a problem under false pretenses: another person or a borrowed source contributed to the solution rather than the learner’s understanding. Recent studies of high school and college students report that the majority of them admit to prac- ticing various forms of cheating such as copying texts and answers from exams.6 This is one of the reasons why cheating offers a promising prospect to discuss ethics at large: the boundaries of what is legitimate are a moving target and are redefined by both individual players and community actions. These different perspectives of cheating create fertile grounds to challenge beliefs about what is legitimate and, more importantly, what it means to learn: in schools, individuals are seen as solely responsible for mastering the curricular content, whereas in games players’ search for support from others is considered acceptable, if not crucial, for advancing in the game. Cheating, then, provides a vivid illustration of the different notions of learning assumed and valued in each community. In cheating, boundaries and norms are transgressed that not only concern ethical issues, but also touch at the core of learning.” (84)

See MacCabe, Trevino, and Butterfield 2001. Not only students but also parents and school administrators might have differing views on cheating. A recent incident illustrated that when a high school teacher failed students because of plagiarized homework, the principal reinstated students’ grades, bowing to pressure from the school board and parents (Wilgoren 2002). Some studies show significant differ- ences between students’, teachers’, and parents’ judgments and rationales about appropriate uses of computers and the Internet (Kafai, Nixon, and Burnam 2007).