ref. Academic Honesty Practices - Middle School
Academic honesty is integral to the success of the school community. In all our actions at SFS, we encourage students towards a life governed by the values of respect, honesty and personal integrity as these are seen as characteristics of successful, principled people. As a school, we are obliged to teach our students how they need to uphold their responsibilities in this area as this is an important life skill. This document serves to guide our practices towards the teaching of academic honesty.
Academic honesty is making knowledge, understanding, and thinking transparent. Such transparency needs to be taught and supported throughout a child’s education. In order to fully master the skills of academic honesty, such as accurately citing and referencing, students need to understand how knowledge is constructed and, consequently respect those who have created this. The technical skills are essential, but the understanding of the concepts and values behind them comes first.
A safe and encouraging learning environment in which students can explore ideas and make visible the development of their own thinking will support academically-honest behaviours and help instill the values and principles that lie behind such behaviours. The attributes of the IB Learner Profile are important in nurturing such an environment.’
Developing the skills to practice academic honesty is an essential part in the development of aspects of the learner profile. In particular, this relates to being:
- Principled - The student will act with “integrity and honesty, with a strong sense of fairness, justice and respect for the dignity of the individual, groups and communities.” The student takes responsibility for her or his own actions and the consequences that accompany them, i.e. acknowledging others’ work and not taking it as their own.
- Inquirers: The student knows how to learn independently through acquisition of inquiry and research skills.
- Communicators: The student collects and analyses information, considers different perspectives and expresses their thinking processes clearly and confidently in a variety of forms.
Academic Malpractice Definitions & Examples
Academic Malpractice Definition:
- any “behaviour which results in, or may result in, the candidate or any other candidate gaining an unfair advantages in one or more assessment components.”
This includes behaviours which make a student look more academically able than he/she actually is or that affect the results of another student.
NOTE: Examples of Academic Malpractice include but are not limited to the following:
- Plagiarism is defined in Webster’s New World Dictionary as “to steal or pass off as one’s own, the ideas, writings, etc. of another.” Therefore plagiarism includes copying, adopting, or reproducing another person’s ideas, words, or statements without giving credit to the original author, including another student’s homework.
Examples of plagiarism are:
- Copying specific ideas of an individual author or source; or copying large portions of exact words from any source without both giving proper citation and using quotation marks; copying images without giving proper citation;
- Paraphrasing or summarizing unique and non-common knowledge ideas found in any source without giving proper citation;
- Copying and pasting information from the Internet or electronic sources without acknowledging sources.
- A different individual style or “voice ”from a student’s usual style of writing without citation
- Collusion is defined as supporting malpractice of another student, including allowing one’s work to be accessed, or copied, or submitted for assessment or credit by another student.
Examples of collusion are:
- Allowing or encouraging someone else to copy all or part of your work and claim it as their own;
- Copying or paraphrasing another student’s work in whole or in part and turning it in with your name on it to receive a grade;
- Turning in someone else’s work as your own;
- Someone solving problems on an assignment (another person working the problems);
- Sharing completed assignments with another student (for any reason).
Note: Collusion and collaboration are quite similar. Collaboration is often actively encouraged as long as the work is stated as being by a group, as this is permitted. However if collaboration involves a final piece of work to be completed independently, the different pieces have to be just that - different, despite the fact that it may be based on the same or familiar data as other students in the the group. E.g. if two or more students have exactly the same introduction to an assignment, this is collusion (or plagiarism) and not collaboration.
- Any attempt to give or get any assistance for a quiz, test, or an assessment without the teacher’s approval.
Examples of cheating include:
- Discussing (in detail) a test or quiz with a person who has already taken it;
- Bringing hidden notes or using notes (on paper or on an electronic device) during an assessment without the teachers approval. The mere possession of such “cheat notes” indicates intent to use them;
- Looking at another person’s work during a test or a quiz;
- Talking to another person during an assessment unless specifically permitted to do so by the teacher;
- Allowing another person to look at your work during an assessment;
- Assisting another person during an assessment through noises or silent signals;
- Possessing, in ANY form, a copy of the assessment without teacher approval before it is administered;
- Doing another person’s assessment for them at their request, or your initiative.
- Using or attempting to use a non-sanctioned digital device during any assessment
- Making up information rather than sourcing correct information.
Example of fabrication include:
- Making up and including in any form of assignment, false data and/or information, including false bibliographies.
- Undertaking unfair practices in completing and submitting an assessment task
Examples of deception include:
- Giving your teacher a false excuse for missing a due date.
- Falsely claiming to have submitted work to the teacher.
- Falsely submitting an assessment as entirely their own and not disclosing high levels of support given by an external source. i.e. hagwons, tutors, etc.
- The presentation of the same work for different assessment components and/or requirements.
Examples of deception include:
- Submitting a piece of work previously done by another student in a previous year’s course.
Student’s Responsibilities:
Students are ultimately responsible for ensuring that all work submitted for assessment is authentic, with the work or ideas of others fully and correctly acknowledged. Therefore it is extremely important that every student at Seoul Foreign School be familiar with and accepts the procedures for acknowledging sources by:
Practices
- Understanding the concept of plagiarism.
- Understanding the purpose of citation i.e The reader must be able to distinguish clearly between your words/work and the words/work of others and then if necessary be able to track the sources to either further an interest or to check their validity. Citing work also shows an ability to document one’s research process.
- Acknowledging all sources of ideas or work from any source either by use of quotations, text citation, footnoting, etc. This includes phrases, sentences, paragraphs, graphs, charts, images or any other information.
- Acknowledging sources which may include printed and electronic media, such as books, textbooks, magazines, interviews, websites and images.
- Reporting academic dishonesty to an adult.
- When taking notes, students are encouraged to either paraphrase (write in their own words) or use quotation marks when taking information copied directly from sources. This will make unintended copying less likely to occur.
- Recording the details of sources of your research whenever you take notes. This saves time to locate sources at a later date.
- Understanding that common knowledge is knowledge known by everyone and does not need to be cited. However if in doubt ask the subject teacher or librarian and then cite the source if deemed necessary.
- Students may be required to sign an statement of academic honesty contract, to acknowledge the authenticity of their work.
- Adhering to the principles and practices associated with the school’s Technology ‘Responsible Use Agreement’ (RUA) student contract i.e. Respect, Educate, Protect.
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