Plagiarism should not be an issue

Professor Sally Brown, Leeds Metropolitan University, previously at Stirling University, has weighed into the debate about the growth of internet-sourced plagiarism amongst school and higher education students today. She offers four ways to beat the 'problem' (see the BBC website): - try to deter and punish - make the penalties known and try to educate the students on the issue - try to "design it out" for example by setting assignments that required personal knowledge or keeping a diary or showing work in progress - change the culture in which students are working - the hardest option Inevitably deterrence and punishment are right there at the top. To be fair, though, of the four, the third (designing it out) is her preferred option. Deterrence, I guess, should have its place, but it is difficult to punish something that is caused as much by the nature of the assignments that students are asked to undertake as by the attitudes of the students themselves. In other words, if teachers set questions that can be answered by plagiarised text, then who can blame over-assessed students from occasionally taking the easy option? This must be part of Brown's designing it out option. The final option is not merely the hardest one - it is impossible! How can we define the 'culture' within which students work as somehow separate from the wider culture in which we all live and work? The culture of in which someone learns is surely indivisible from the culture in which they live their lives. It will take forces even greater than the education system to change that to an extent that could tackle an issue such as this. There is also the question: at what point in a learner's school career does plagiarism no longer become acceptable? I ask this because, as an ex-primary teacher, I know that many primary teachers routinely permit their pupils - when engaging in projects of various kinds, for instance - to make use of material that is certainly not self-penned in any realistic sense. So, we expect kids at some indefinable point suddenly to realise that they can no longer copy word-for-word whatever they might find in the course of their research. Perhaps before we consider punishing young people for plagiarism we need to get our own house in order !

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© John Connell
The views expressed in this weblog are entirely my own and are not intended to reflect the views of any other individuals or organizations. All sources will be fully acknowledged.