ISSN: 1756–5839 (print)
ISSN: 1756–5847 (online)
writing & pedagogy
Editorial
Plagiarism in the Academy:
Towards a Proactive Pedagogy
Martha C. Pennington
Like cheating of all kinds (Callahan, 2004), plagiarism in the academy is a
rapidly growing problem. Long-time plagiarism researcher Donald McCabe, in
a 2005 featured topic issue of Liberal Education, reported on a two-year study
which found that over half of students surveyed in 68 North American colleges
and universities admitted to “at least one incident of serious cheating on written
work” (McCabe, 2005: 28).
Although most had engaged in other forms of cheating behaviors as
well, four out of every five students who reported they had cheated on a
written assignment acknowledged that they had engaged in some form of
Internet-related cheating – either cut-and-paste plagiarism from Internet
sources or submitting a paper downloaded or purchased from a termpaper mill or Web site. (ibid.)
The cutting and pasting of information from Internet Web sites or the downloading of whole papers written by someone else are clear instances of plagiarism
that are recognized by students as cheating and that, when discovered, should
be dealt with as breaches of personal and academic integrity. Not all cases of
plagiarism are so clearcut, however, as not all misappropriation of the work
of others is the result of an intention to deceive. Some instances of a student
writer’s misuse of sources may be entirely unintentional, resulting from causes
other than dishonesty; and in some cases, what appears to be plagiarism in fact
represents a student’s best attempt to handle the constraints of writing from
sources other than the student’s own mind or common knowledge.
Affiliation
Georgia Southern University, USA.
email: [email protected]
WAP vol 2.2 2010 147–162
©2010, equinox publishing
doi : 10.1558/wap.v2i2.147
LONDON
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When is using the words of another a matter of acceptable “textual borrowing,” and when is it out and out stealing of words and ideas? There is not
universal agreement on what counts as plagiarism, particularly in student
writing. Some will apply the same plagiarism label and punishments or sanctions regardless of whether there was an intention to deceive or not. Strict
constructionists count as plagiarism any infringement on another person’s
written work – any de facto infringement of copyright – no matter how small
or careless. Many educators have a more open-minded attitude to plagiarism,
realizing that students may easily stray into another writer’s territory without
any kind of intentional deception.
Referencing infractions or plagiarism may stem from a variety of causes, for
some of which the blame is not properly put on student writers. An important
general cause of referencing infractions or plagiarism that is underappreciated
is simply the difficulty of writing original academic essays, research reports, and
other types of sourced work, such as journalistic pieces using multiple sources.
Learning to produce such advanced writing is a complex and long-term process,
requiring a period of practice and apprenticeship not of semesters but years.
The process is much more involved than simply learning how to find and
access sources and mastering the mechanics of citation and referencing, more
involved by far than developing a good control of the language in order to not
only produce clear and well-phrased sentences and well-organized sequences
of these in paragraphs, but also to properly paraphrase and summarize the
ideas of others. Besides knowing how to paraphrase and summarize, it involves
making decisions about when to do so, when to use one’s own words or the
words of others. Even beyond this considerable array of skills, writing from
sources involves learning how to find, to assess, and to express one’s own ideas
in original words and constructions, and to interweave these with the words and
constructions of others. These are the skills of interpretation and intertextuality
that are central to academic writing. Together with this wide array of writing
skills, writing from sources – and academic writing more generally – involves
highly developed critical reading, thinking, and analysis skills, as well as careful
selection of a topic and a serious commitment to and degree of involvement
with that topic which may not come easily to a young person and which has
to be learned and practiced repeatedly like other college skills. In addition, it
takes a while for student writers to understand the uniqueness and the value
of their own and other authors’ words, and it takes a degree of investment in
both the writing and the educational process for students to care enough not
to appropriate the words of others as their own.
It seems entirely unrealistic to expect beginning students to be able to master
all of these areas of knowledge, skill, and decision-making and to avoid misappropriation of sources and plagiarism by the end of their first semester or
Plagiarism in the Academy:Towards a Proactive Pedagogy 149
year; yet this is what is usually expected of university students. A main cause
of plagiarism is authorial naïveté and inexperience of general (international)
academic as well as specific disciplinary requirements and conventions regarding how to use and reference other people’s work within one’s own writing.
This cause of plagiarism (and other kinds of misuse of sources) is not essentially the fault of the student but rather of the academic establishment in not
providing sufficient time and support for the necessary knowledge and skills
to be acquired. Rather, the teaching of academic writing, like other aspects of
teaching and learning requiring individual attention and development over
time, is being increasingly squeezed into larger classes and smaller timeframes.
Another cause of referencing infractions or plagiarism is differences across
countries and cultures in the purposes served by writing and by use of other
people’s published work within one’s own writing, with concomitantly different
expectations as to appropriate use. Educational systems that emphasize acquisition of knowledge in the form of facts, standard information, and classical texts
often de-emphasize the writing of original expository or researched essays. Such
systems may instead encourage the memorization and word-for-word recitation or writing of key texts, both as a demonstration of effective rote learning
skill and as a method of internalizing cultural information and the canons of
fine rhetoric and writing style. In these systems, authorship of widely learned
cultural texts may be considered common knowledge, and their ownership
is in a sense shared by all. Production of original texts and the sourcing of
information is not a primary focus when the function of writing is to accurately
transcribe learned information in the way of memorized facts and passages
of other people’s work. The values and practices of such educational systems
contrast with those which put a strong emphasis on originality and individual
authorship in writing and which spend considerable teaching time on the writing of expository and researched essays. An example is the United States, where
secondary schools commonly require students to do one or more research
projects written up in referenced essay format and where nearly all colleges and
universities have required academic writing courses (freshman composition)
that are unknown in many other countries, other than perhaps in English as
a second language writing classes. Students coming from other countries and
educational systems cannot be expected immediately to understand these
differences nor to learn all of the skills required to write an original sourced
and referenced academic essay.
A further cause of plagiarism or misuse of sources is inattention and hurried
or sloppy scholarship in which the writer fails to reference, or to properly or
sufficiently reference, others’ work. Students who are novice scholars or who
do not plan their time well can easily fall into unintentional plagiarism through
lack of care, attention, and time spent on their writing. Within a “publish or
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perish” mentality, even experienced scholars may fall prey to overhasty or
sloppy scholarship and find themselves charged with plagiarism. While for
a professor, sloppy scholarship is not an acceptable reason for plagiarism de
facto, for a student, who is not expected to be an experienced or professional
scholar, it could be considered a more acceptable excuse and forgivable offense.
The one reason for plagiarizing that most people find unacceptable is willfully
violating the requirements and conventions of proper citation and referencing
in appropriating the words and ideas of another and representing them as one’s
own. In the latter case, the writer may be guilty of deception and simply count
on the reader not to be familiar with or to trace the original source of the text
or ideas, or may make (more or less skillful) attempts to deliberately cover up
the authorial theft. In such cases, the writer knows that a violation of ethical
scholarship and academic honor codes has been committed but hopes not to be
caught. In terms of actually charging the writer with plagiarism, “…substantial
copying leaves little doubt as to the malicious motive of such an action” (Decoo,
2008: 233, emphasis in original).
Students’ lack of language skills and limited reading, their lack of engagement
with their own writing and thinking, their inadequate preparation for college in
general and for writing in particular, and the increasingly specialized requirements of academic discourse, are factors which individually and together create
a great likelihood of writing and referencing problems and a real quandary for
educators faced with how to handle cases of students’ improper use of sources
and plagiarism. Even intentional cheating creates a quandary if, as Puka (2005)
observes, it can be reasonably attributed to poor teaching, unfair treatment
of students by teachers, or unrealistic expectations for student work. Many
students find themselves giving up and taking shortcuts when the time is short,
when the standards set for them are impossibly high, and when they have not
been sufficiently educated to be able to meet the goals of writing sourced papers.
They are also likely to take shortcuts if they do not understand the purpose of
what they are being asked to do, see no reason to involve themselves in it, and/
or simply do not know how to become involved in it.
What solutions can be offered to counter poor referencing practices, inappropriate use of sources, or intentional plagiarism? Callahan (2004: 286–287)
sees character education in the schools, focused on such commonly held values
as honesty and fairness, as a crucial complement to honor codes in tackling our
“cheating culture.” He also presses secondary and post-secondary institutions
“to foster an environment where cheating is not socially acceptable” (p. 288) and
“[to teach] young people to look beyond their own narrow self-interest…and to
develop themselves as more than consumers and future workers” (pp. 288–299).
These are ideas that many will agree with, though some educators may question
Callahan’s view that faculty should be evaluated on the extent to which they
Plagiarism in the Academy:Towards a Proactive Pedagogy 151
keep students honest (p. 288). Nonetheless, it seems clear that faculty must play
a central role in tackling the widespread problem of plagiarism by doing what
we are paid to do, which is teach. While the problem of plagiarism is partly a
matter of ethics, it is also a matter of writing pedagogy.
It makes no educational sense to assign work that students can’t do and then
either fail the majority or ignore the plagiarism of the majority. One alternative
is to stop assigning the kind of work that potentially leads to plagiarism and
instead develop a radically scaled down writing curriculum in which students
would no longer be required to develop writing skills involving interpretation
and intertextuality as we currently expect them to in writing from sources.
Rather, we might accept a goal of clear and correct writing according to a
limited set of well-learned conventions, as is the usual limited expectation in
standardized state writing tests in the United States. A somewhat less radical
alternative is to reduce the focus on writing for students in some disciplines
or for some types of specialization within particular disciplines. For example,
psychology majors pursuing careers in counseling might need sourced writing
skills less than those pursuing research or academic careers. It may be time to
consider that not all students have a need for a strong focus on exposition or
writing from sources in the traditional academic mode of a research essay. For
some, learning to source PowerPoint presentations, to set up a Web site, and to
create their own blogs may be more immediate and relevant goals. For others, it
might be useful to learn to write clear summaries of information, or proposals
and reports with referencing of information but with no expectation of the
extent of interaction with sources that is required for academic publication.
It may be time to seriously review the basis of our writing curriculum in
terms of the real needs students in the present day and, as far as we can predict,
the future, are going to have for writing of different kinds and particularly, for
writing from sources. In the meantime, as long as we hold to the standard that
all students must master referenced academic writing, part of the solution to
plagiarism is to provide a much greater focus on writing skill development at
higher levels of education, including in graduate studies. Another part of the
solution is also, in recognition of the fact that learning to write from sources
is a long-term process of acquiring an understanding of how writers use and
integrate sources with their own ideas and of learning the many types of technical writing skills needed for source use and integration, to start focusing on
writing from sources at an earlier age, even in elementary school.
To the extent that we wish to maintain the current academic culture of copyright and crediting of words and ideas, we need to start at a much earlier age
involving students in academic discourse, written as well as spoken, in which
they gain information from sources in a variety of ways and then integrate it
into their own webs of thought and language. Beginning in elementary school,
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students can be guided to explore their own words and ideas in relation to the
words and ideas of others, through discussion, questions and answers, direct
observation and investigation, and through viewing and reading sources on the
Internet, in printed texts, and in other media. Such activities can be structured
to teach students how to read, view, understand, critique, discuss, and write
about different types of information and points of view as contributed by different sources. Starting in elementary school, students can be taught why and how
to use a range of sources of information in building their own construction of
ideas, why and how to make clear the sources of information which they draw
on, and why and how to give others sufficient credit for their words and ideas.
Developing this kind of consciousness at an early age seems critical for acquiring a habit of differentiating one’s own words and ideas from those of others,
and of giving proper credit for known sources. Teaching this sort of speaking
and writing precision in the expression of ideas and opinions can be seen as
equivalent to teaching the quantitative precision required in mathematics and
science. Both provide a necessary basis for higher level learning and activity in
their respective domains of knowledge.
In addition, to the extent that we wish to maintain the current academic
culture of writing from sources, I suggest that we must include intertextual,
interpretive pedagogy as a main focus of the curriculum in K-12 education
and beyond. This goes beyond so-called analytical and critical thinking and
also beyond writing from sources narrowly conceived. It involves responding
to the ideas and experiences of others in terms of the writer’s own life and
context, interacting with different sources of information and interpreting
these in relation to a personal framework which evolves in part through the
interaction with and interpretation of ideas. It requires a goal for students of
increased knowledge of self and development of well-considered opinions and
well-defined viewpoints that can be both related to and differentiated from
those of others. Teaching students to incorporate personal views and experience
in their writing helps to avoid plagiarism as they become involved in a topic and
find that they have something relevant to say about it that is their own unique
perspective. The goal is for students to come to realize that although the words
and ideas of others can be useful for exploring a topic, their principal value is
in clarifying one’s own knowledge and position; another’s words and thoughts
never match one’s own.
Assuming that we maintain the current writing emphasis in college, writing
must assume a more important position in the educational curriculum at
every level. At elementary and higher levels of education, writing pedagogy
must be progressive and scaffolded in the sense of writing from sources being
developed in stages with teacher and other assistance at each stage. The idea
of sending students off to research a topic all on their own and then to write
Plagiarism in the Academy:Towards a Proactive Pedagogy 153
up a synthesis of what they have learned is not realistic. Having students work
in small groups to explore a topic aids in finding sources and examining them
from different points of view. Scaffolding writing on discussion and debate can
also help students develop greater knowledge of different viewpoints in relation
to their own. In addition, teachers can model different modes of organization
and development for writing and gear questions to help students explore their
topic more deeply in relation to their own knowledge and experience, to find
potential weaknesses in their writing, and to solve their writing problems.
Teachers can also model meticulous sourcing and referencing of their own
ideas and written work, including in handouts, PowerPoint slides, and materials
taken from the Internet. Not only writing teachers but also teachers in other
fields should consider the value of incorporating these kinds of practices in any
of their classes that require writing from sources.
A realistic, proactive response to the endemic problems of plagiarism, misreferencing, and misappropriation of others’ work is to facilitate the long-term
development of the complex skills required for writing from sources and the
ethical practices involved in making use of other people’s words and ideas,
starting in elementary school and continuing through graduate education.
The pragmatic alternative is to consider significant reductions in the writing
requirement, especially the requirement for writing from sources, of all or
some disciplines or subdisciplines – with the possible exception of some types
of graduate level work.
Editor’s Perspective on Volume 2, Number 2
This issue contains a Featured Essay – “Not (Entirely) in Their Own Words:
Plagiarism, Process, and the Complicated Ethics of School Writing – by Cary
Moskovitz, who problematizes the use by students of input from readers. The
discussion is built from an example of input on a student paper given by the
student’s relative, who also happens to be an academic. In communication with
the student and the relative, Moskovitz comes to realize that the input given by
this highly experienced external reader of the student’s paper is quite similar
to that given by colleagues on our own academic work, thus raising issues
about why student writers are often treated differently with regard to such
freely offered “textual gifts.” When students receive such input from others –
including teachers, peers, Writing or Learning Assistance Center tutors, and/or
other more experienced writers – is it acceptable to use that input in their own
work and if so, should they explicitly cite or acknowledge the source in some
other way? And, as Moskovitz asks, “Why should we be more concerned with
students’ use of suggested words and phrases than with their use of suggestions
regarding organization, argumentation, focus, and so on?” These are fitting
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questions, without easy answers, to frame the other articles in this special topic
issue on Plagiarism in the Academy.
To the extent that textual gifts to students are like the kinds of input which
professors and other professional writers might receive from colleagues or
from their editors, the essay raises more general questions about the ethics
of accepting input from others without explicit citation or acknowledgement.
Moskovitz’s question as to “where the boundary [lies] between responsible
practice and falsifying authorship or cheating” can just as well frame a broad
discussion on the ethics of using other people’s ideas within one’s own writing.
The ethics are especially problematic, given that, as Moskovitz observes, “…all
writing is composed of interwoven strands of language and ideas we consciously
or unconsciously borrow, steal, adopt, and adapt, and that citation practice and
the values that underlie these practices are not universal.” Moskovitz closes his
discussion with a call for academics to examine more carefully our “real world”
practices in relation to input from others and to align these more carefully with
“our expectations for student writing processes.”
This issue contains four Research Matters articles. In the first of these,
“Writing from Sources, Writing from Sentences,” Rebecca Moore Howard,
Tricia Serviss, and Tanya K. Rodrigue discuss eighteen student research
texts showing that students’ use of their sources is focused on individual sentences rather than whole texts. The authors reach this conclusion by observing
that none of the student writers summarizes any of her/his sources. Rather,
they quote or otherwise cite the sources only piecemeal, via paraphrasing,
“patchwriting,” or copying. The authors conclude that citation at the sentence
level “leaves the writer in peril…, [as] one can easily paraphrase too lightly,
producing a patchwritten sentence too close to the language of the original.”
The results of Howard, Serviss, and Rodrigue suggest that students may
not have understood what they were reading nor the purpose of using the
selected sources. “Faced with reproducing extended technical information
and not wanting to copy long passages, the students might not have had the
vocabulary and background knowledge necessary to do anything but patchwrite the passages.” In such cases, patchwriting may be the logical alternative
to overlong quotation and, as such, can be seen as offering novice student
writers an acceptable way to incorporate information from a source and avoid
plagiarizing. However, given how close patchwritten text is to the original and
that it sometimes would be considered plagiarism, students should be weaned
away from this strategy and towards critical reading and analysis strategies that
make it possible for them to comprehend and to summarize long passages and
challenging texts in their own words.
The second research article, “How Do University Students Attempt to
Avoid Plagiarism? A Grammatical Analysis of Undergraduate Paraphrasing
Plagiarism in the Academy:Towards a Proactive Pedagogy 155
Strategies,” complements that of the first research article in probing the grammar of students’ attempted paraphrases as they summarized one of three set
texts. Unlike some other studies examining how students appropriate language
from sources, the focus of this investigation is on “the ways in which they
attempt to change (rather than use) source text language.” With this focus
in mind and using computer means to aid analysis, the author, Casey Keck,
identified sections of summaries produced by student writers in two groups,
native English speakers and second-language writers, that were related to the
original texts. The sections were categorized – using a classification scheme with
the categories of near copy, minimal revision, moderate revision, and substantial
revision that had been developed in the author’s prior research – and were
then analyzed grammatically. The findings both substantiate and extend those
of Howard, Serviss, and Rodrigue in showing first, how students’ recasting
of source texts takes place within the bounds of a sentence and second, what
an advanced command of language is required for effective paraphrasing and
summarizing.
Keck found that for the student writers, lexical strategies predominated for
the types of changes labeled near copy and minimal revision, while clause-level
strategies predominated for the categories of moderate revision and substantial
revision. When students attempted major alterations of their original source
texts by clause element creation, they often went too far and made inaccurate
summaries. This result raises issues as to how to evaluate students’ attempts
to paraphrase or summarize sources in their own words and to avoid copying
or patchwriting, even if their efforts lead to misrepresentation of an original
text. As Keck suggests, “students need more information about what linguistic
strategies can help them to compose paraphrases that are viewed as acceptable
and effective,” and “students also need a sensitivity towards which words or
phrases are considered to be unique or technical, and thus must be quoted or
paraphrased; which words are so commonly used that they need not be quoted;
and which words are so essential to the text’s main idea that they should not be
replaced with synonyms.”
In “Addressing Pedagogy on Textual Borrowing: Focus on Instructional
Resources,” Zuzana Tomaš goes straight to teachers to get information on their
practices related to teaching students about use of sources and avoidance of
plagiarism. The first part of her article reports on a survey of 113 teachers working with students of English as a second language. Respondents were split right
down the middle as to whether they were satisfied or dissatisfied with existing
materials for teaching about avoiding plagiarism. Teachers drew on their own
knowledge in preference to textual, Internet, or handout materials gained from
other teachers. Even those who used textbook sources found them lacking
sufficient information and activities. Those who did not use them had many
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different kinds of criticisms of textbooks in terms of the ways they dealt with
referencing and avoidance of plagiarism. The two most frequently mentioned
features of ideal instructional materials were sufficient examples and exercises.
In the second part of her article, Tomaš reports on a case study of Deena, a
graduate student instructor teaching an advanced academic writing course for
international students. Deena spent a quarter of instructional time on topics
related to plagiarism and textual borrowing. For this purpose, she made heavy
use of materials passed on from colleagues, especially PowerPoint slides related
to the textbook, which appeared inadequate in its inclusion of few examples
and its lack of authenticity and opportunities for integrative practice in summarizing. From her research, Tomaš concludes that “if a less experienced
writing instructor happens to select a course textbook that does not adequately
present information about avoiding plagiarism, he or she may not realize the
instructional need for addressing this topic until after a substantial number
of students misuse sources, often at a point in the course when there is little
chance for effective pedagogical intervention.” She further stresses the need “to
place an emphasis on pedagogy rather than on a punitively oriented policy in
the case of developing writers” and lists a number of suggestions about how to
facilitate students’ integration of sources by teaching summarizing in authentic
and engaging ways.
The final Research Matters article, “Student and Teacher Perceptions of
Plagiarism in Academic Writing,” is a study comparing the views of students
and faculty at a university in Lebanon as regards students’ inappropriate or
dishonest practices to “enhance” their written work. The authors, Nahla Nola
Bacha and Rima Bahous, adapted an earlier survey to report on students’
writing strategies that involved tampering with text or interacting with other
students. The tampering-with-text strategies included inventing or altering
data, submitting coursework from an outside source, copying material from
a book without acknowledging the source, submitting someone else’s work
with or without their knowledge or permission, paraphrasing work without
acknowledging the original author, putting a name next to one’s own ideas to
make it sound clever, changing dates of old research to look more up to date,
and inventing articles, research, references, or bibliography, among others. For
most of these strategy types, “faculty perceive students as tampering with texts
to a significantly higher degree than do the students.” The strategies involving
other students include submitting work as an individual when it has been
written with other students, which students reported as occurring relatively
infrequently, and allowing coursework to be copied by other students, which
they reported as occurring more frequently. Teachers had a significantly
higher mean for the first of these two items (but not the second) than the
students did.
Plagiarism in the Academy:Towards a Proactive Pedagogy 157
Students and teachers were also questioned as to students’ knowledge of
plagiarism, agreeing that they had been taught about plagiarism and referencing and that use of an electronic plagiarism detection tool would deter them
from plagiarizing. However, to a much greater extent than the students, the
teachers thought that the students had been taught about other skills associated
with preventing plagiarism and that individual students had had it suggested
that they may have plagiarized while at university. Other comparisons are
made across different academic divisions and years of study. Estimates by
students and teachers of the extent of plagiarism, which are similar to those of
the original study which Bacha and Bahous are (partially) replicating, suggest
that the faculty “may be underestimating the extent of student plagiarism.” The
study “raises questions about the type of teaching and learning going on in the
classroom and whether it needs to be improved” in order to prevent various
forms of plagiarism, text tampering, and the unacknowledged assistance of
other students.
The first of two Reflections on Practice articles is “Preventing Plagiarism:
Working with What Works,” by Mark Richardson and Tammy Overstreet. The
authors suggest that plagiarism, a complex phenomenon with multiple causes,
requires pedagogical practices that address those complexities. Richardson
and Overstreet begin by reviewing different perspectives on plagiarism and
the widely varying range of responses to it. In their view, “plagiarism embraces
too broad a spectrum of writing practices, and is too culturally charged with
repressive images and emotions, to continue as a legalistic premise.” They
offer a pedagogical program for avoiding plagiarism which starts from building awareness of the problem and then moves through a writing curriculum
that makes it difficult to plagiarize, that practices the writing skills needed to
integrate sources, and that teaches plagiarism detection and revision skills to
avoid misappropriation of sources.
The second pedagogically oriented article is “Proactively Addressing
Plagiarism and Other Academic Honesty Issues with Second-Language
Writers.” Jane Conzett, Margaret Martin, and Madeleine Mitchell give a
detailed account of how one university intensive English language program
addressed academic honesty and the problem of plagiarism among their students by carrying out a “plagiarism summit” to review and revise classroom
practices. First, they rewrote the university plagiarism policy in simple language
that students could understand. They then made curricular revisions to include
source use and citation practices at an earlier stage and more extensively at
every level of the writing curriculum. They made further changes to incorporate citation practices in the speaking curriculum as well, in connection with
students’ oral presentations. The result of their curriculum work is a four-stage
program building paraphrasing, summarizing, and citation skills that is relevant
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for not only international students but also any novice writers. A novel feature
of the program is the use of automated plagiarism detectors for practicing and
checking paraphrases, in-text attributions, and proper referencing conventions,
and for helping students transition to independent assignments by running the
detector on multiple drafts.
In the From the e-Sphere section of this issue, the topic of “Detection
Systems for Text-Based Plagiarism: Developments, Principles, Challenges,
and the Aftermath,” is taken up by Wilfried Decoo and Jozef Colpaert. The
authors give a brief review of a range of the available plagiarism detection
systems, how they operate, their use in checking for plagiarism both before
and after student papers are turned in, and the ways in which those intent
on cheating are continually developing ways to avoid detection of their nonoriginal work. Use of plagiarism detection programs before turning in a paper
can help students ensure that they have not mistakenly plagiarized but can
also help students check that term papers obtained from an online source and
their own alterations of writing taken from others will not be detected as plagiarized. For this purpose, plagiarizers may use computer-assisted rewriting
tools to substitute synonyms and change grammatical constructions, or they
may use automatic translation tools to produce an English-language version
of a paper written originally in another language. Given the inventiveness
of plagiarizers, Decoo and Colpaert recommend an approach to detecting
plagiarism which compares texts in multiple ways, starting from the simplest
technique of matching word sequences and moving to more complex grammatical and stylistic analyses, and at different levels, casting a broad net to
search the World Wide Web or narrowing down to a university database of
student papers or to a search of one specific source. Noting that a detection
report merely lists “varying degrees and types of similarities tied to various
potential sources,” the authors emphasize the complexity in many cases of
deciding whether plagiarism has occurred, offering specific criteria which can
help in the decision process but at the same time stressing the “continually
improved strategies to circumvent detection.”
The first of two New Books contributions is a review of Wendy SutherlandSmith’s Plagiarism, the internet and Student Learning, which Miriam Eisenstein
Ebsworth describes as “a rich and thoughtful work exploring the timely
challenge of plagiarism from multiple perspectives.” The book is based on
perceptions and experiences of plagiarism involving international students at
an Australian university interwoven with “an extremely thorough review of
the literature on plagiarism” and a discussion that problematizes plagiarism
and suggests viewing it as a matter of degree. Virginia Lo Castro reviews
Diane Pecorari’s Academic Writing and Plagiarism: A Linguistic Analysis, which
reports on the author’s research in British universities on the writing of thesis
Plagiarism in the Academy:Towards a Proactive Pedagogy 159
students who are speakers of English as a second language, incorporating
textual analysis and interviews with Masters students and their thesis supervisors. Although the reviewer believes the discussion does not offer much hope
of easy or near-term solutions, she nevertheless recommends that those who
teach academic writing or who supervise Masters or Doctoral students “should
read this book” and learn from it.
References
Callahan, D. (2004) The Cheating Culture: Why More Americans Are Doing Wrong to Get
Ahead. Orlando: A Harvest Book, Harcourt, Inc.
Decoo, W. (2008) Substantial, verbatim, unattributed, misleading: Applying criteria
to assess textual plagiarism. In T. S. Roberts (ed.) Student Plagiarism in an Online
World: Problems and Solutions 228–243. Hershey and New York: Information Science
Reference.
McCabe, D. (2005) It takes a village: Academic dishonesty. Liberal Education Summer/
Fall: 26–31.
Puka, B. (2005) Student cheating. Liberal Education Summer/Fall: 32–35.
Upcoming Issues
The journal publishes one open topic issue and one special topic issue per year.
Submissions for the first issue (open topic) of Volume 4 (2012) are now being
accepted. For best consideration, submit by 1 March 2011. We are especially
interested in the following topics for future special topic issues or individual
articles in the genres of essay, research, and reflections on practice: Teaching
Writing in Elementary School, Teaching Writing in the Disciplines, Teaching
Writing Online, Changing Needs for Writing in the Twenty-First Century,
Writing Assessment, Education and Professional Development of Writing
Teachers. The special topic issues for the next two volumes are:
Upcoming Special Topic Issues
Vol. 3(2) 2011
Multiliteracies
Guest Editors: Sherry Taylor
and Jim Cummins
Vol. 4(2) 2012
Creativity and
Writing Pedagogy
Guest Editor: Harriet Levin Millan
The contents and authors of the Multiliteracies issue have been agreed with the
Guest Editors, Sherry Taylor (University of Western Ontario, Canada) and Jim
Cummins (Ontario Institute of Studies in Education, University of Toronto,
160
writing & pedagogy
Canada). We are seeking contributions for the Creativity and Writing Pedagogy
issue edited by Harriet Levin Millan (Drexel University, USA).
Call for Contributions to Special Topic Issue, Volume 4(2), Autumn 2012
Creativity and Writing Pedagogy
Writing & Pedagogy announces a special topic issue on Creativity and Writing
Pedagogy guest-edited by Barnard New Women Poet’s Prize winning author,
Harriet Levin (Millan), Writing Program Director at Drexel University. The
issue aims to present the latest research and practice on creativity as it pertains
to writers and writing, which may include theoretical essays and research
articles on technology measuring or advancing creativity or on the study of
creative methods or practices as these pertain to writing; personal narratives on
individual creative writing processes; and reflective practice contributions on
teaching creative writing to college age students, adults, or children. The issue
aims to break new ground in offering a comprehensive look, both practical
and theoretical, at enhancing learners’ skills as creative thinkers and writers.
Submit detailed outline or article for consideration by 31 May 2011 (new deadline)
to:
Harriet Levin Millan
Director, Writing Program
Drexel University
Department of English and Philosophy–5th floor
MacAlister Hall
33rd and Chestnut Streets
Philadelphia, PA 19104
[email protected]
Volume 3, Number 1 (Spring 2011)
Featured Essay
Ethnography as a Way In: Writing
Meets Research in First-Year
Composition
Jennifer Susan Cook, Meg Carroll,
Karen Pfeil, Rhode Island College,
USA.
Plagiarism in the Academy:Towards a Proactive Pedagogy 161
Research Matters
“The Job of Teaching Writing”:
Teacher Views of Responding to
Student Writing
Dana Ferris, University of California,
Davis, USA; Hsiang Liu, California
State University, Sacramento, USA;
and Brigitte Rabie, California State
University, Sacramento, USA.
Writing Across the Curriculum for
Secondary School English Language
Learners
Kristen C. Wilcox, University at
Albany, USA.
Reflections on Practice
Teaching Writing and Civic Literacy
Katherine Kessler, James Madison
University, USA.
An Exchange on High-Stakes Testing:
True to Ourselves: Effective Writing
Practice in a No Child Left Behind
World
John Poole, Expedition Academy
and Western Wyoming Community
College (USA)
A View of Education Reform from
Across the Pond
Sandra Sargent, University of
Bedfordshire, UK.
From the e-Sphere
Writing in a Multiliterate Flat World,
Part II
Vance Stevens, The Petroleum
Institute, Abu Dhabi, UAE.
New Books
Roy Harris (2009), Rationality and
the Literate Mind
Reviewed by Vladimir Žegarac,
University of Bedfordshire, UK.
162
writing & pedagogy
Highlights. Volume 3, Number 2. Special Topic: Multiliteracies
Guest Editors: Shelley K. Taylor, The University of Western Ontario, Canada.
Jim Cummins, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of
Toronto, Canada.
Featured Essay
Jim Cummins
Research Matters
Making Room for Identity in SecondLanguage Writing: The Promise
and Possibilities of Dual Language
Identity Texts
Sarah Cohen, Northern Illinois
University, USA.
Co-creating Identities Through
Identity Texts and Dialogical
Ethnography
Mario E. López-Gopar, Ángeles
Clemente, and William Sughrua,
Universidad Autónoma Benito
Juárez de Oaxaca, Mexico.
Action Research with a Family ASL
Literacy Program
Kristin Snoddon, Ryerson University,
Canada.
Reflections on Practice
Identity Texts as Decolonized Writing:
Beyond the Cowboys and Indians
Meta-Narrative
Shelley K. Taylor, The University of
Western Ontario, Canada.