Do students think what teachers think about plagiarism?

Abstract

Preventing students' plagiarism is an important issue at Higher Education Institutions (HEI) since teachers are the ones who are primarily involved in plagiarism prevention. They have to explain to students what plagiarism is and to teach them how to avoid plagiarism. A survey conducted under the research project on the Impact of Policies for Plagiarism in Higher Education Across Europe (IPPHEAE) has collected thousands of questionnaires from both students and teachers of several HEIs at various EU countries. The project addressed several research questions relating to plagiarism. This paper compares and contrasts the overall data collected on students’ and teachers' attitude towards academic writing and their perception of plagiarism and plagiarism penalties as well as their knowledge of institutional policy/procedures on plagiarism. On the basis of the results obtained it would appear that changes in teachers’ attitude and a better understanding of students' educational needs and perception of plagiarism may provide the means to enable HEIs to help students to avoid plagiarism in a more effective way.

Perceptions of Graduate Students at the University of São Paulo about Plagiarism Practices in Academic Works

“…Considering previous studies on the subject conducted with international students (Foltýnek et al 2014) and Brazilian students, who evidenced the lack of theoretical knowledge on the subject (Ferreira and Santos 2011) and dissociation between theoretical and practical knowledge (Silva and Domingues 2008, Fachini and Domingues 2008), this findings reiterates this difference, in which the fact of agreeing or disagreeing with theoreticalconceptual characteristics of plagiarism was observed not to differ from the ability of correctly evaluating practical situations characterizing plagiarism.…”

“…Also, the fact of remembering or not to have received guidance and information on plagiarism was verified not to present differences regarding the percentage of respondents who agreed or disagreed with the issues defining or theoretically characterizing plagiarism. Hence, this study stresses the idea that there is a gap between theoretical and practical knowledge concerning plagiarism, an observation made in Brazilian studies, but which was been raised by international studies (Moore 2013, Foltýnek et al 2014.…”

“…However, it is not associated with the answers regarding agreement or disagreement concerning the conceptual characteristics of plagiarism, notwithstanding their corresponding to the correct interpretation made of practical situations describing cases of plagiarism. Although, the literature shows that better training in academic writing is not enough to prevent plagiarism in students' assignments (Foltýnek et al 2014), this study can only present this assumption as something to consider since the academic writing training at USP is not something mandatory for all students 2 .…”

“…Another reason could be the mistaken idea that students are able to write manuscripts giving credits correctly just because they were trained in academic writing (Foltýnek et al 2014). The authors suggest that to help students to avoid plagiarism, it is important to consider the perception of plagiarism and the students' educational needs (Foltýnek et al 2014).…”

An Overview of Theories Explaining Plagiaristic Behavior of Students

“…One group of researchers consider students as solely responsible for committing plagiarism. By this cohort of researchers, students'-lack of knowledge and skill in source acknowledgement (Newton, Wright, & Newton ,2014;Voelker, Love, & Pentina , 2012), poor time management, busy schedule (Kayaoglu, Erbay, Flitner &Saltas , 2016), procrastination-(Foltynek, Rybicka andDemoliou, 2014), deficiency in academic writing (Batane , 2010;De Jager and Brown, 2010), absence of ethical reasoning Khadilkar (2018), attaining recognition (Wei et al, 2014)-are mentioned as primary reasons of plagiarism.…”