“I think plagiarism is a major concern for this university and us as a staff member. I believe it is increasing –certainly there’s more of it around now than when I started here seven years ago, I do not know about the rest of you, but I am anxious about the responsibility of us to police the thing. My cohort has over 260 students, and I just have no that the time to check absolutely everything! Nor do I think that it is necessarily my job –I am an academic, not a police officer! I am worried about the ramification if cases of plagiarism get past me. I think the university does not provide enough support for staff if they want us to take the whole plagiarism issue seriously.”
“I could not agree more Kate. I have sent numerous cases to Disciplinary Committee in my past 12 years here, and students keep getting off. I wonder what the point is when you spend hours checking and finding the sources from which students have borrowed the work and copied it, documenting it and then the university processes simply do not support you. I cannot understand why the Committee is so lenient with these cheats! I was about to forget about it altogether when our faculty subscribed to this anti-plagiarism software service and its great! Now I am about to send a whole new batch to Disciplinary Committee with the technological tool finding the plagiarism.”
“I am concerned as well. I teach basic first year writing the subject in the Humanity faculty, and I think the students who are arriving at us from abroad just do not have the grounding before they start. My chief concern is that these kids are not going to get enough assistance in the 13 weeks of this unit and then will be thrown to the wolves in other units, Thirteen weeks is not sufficient time to learn plagiarism and be able to subdue it. Some learners have a lifetime of just borrowing textbook information to get over.
“I understand the concern of most people here, and I share them. However, I wonder how many of you can appreciate that students who operate in a second or their language just sometimes do not have the right words in English at their fingertips. So they resort to what I did in my undergraduate days –I copied the words from a book. In China, copying as rewarded at that time because the information was accurate, although I am changing now to be more like today. The action of copying is not intended to be insulting or disrespectful to teachers in any way –it is just a strategy to cope (Xiguang 337). Some of these international students come from places where copying from textbooks and even teachers’ notes were standard practice at school, and it got them high marks. They may be told not to do the same in a different location, nut they do not know what else to do because they do not have appropriate words to say it by themselves. There are a few cultural practices that are at the heart of this issue, and they need to be understood in an open manner and by the university.”
“Plagiarism challenges each of our reputations as effective teachers. We may publicly acknowledge that plagiarism is not easy to recognize and difficult to combat, but we do not usually confess on the amount of which we are afraid and hate it. It is necessary for the offended to treat it as best as possible, and we usually do so in one of two ways. Either we righteously punish offenders with the lightening revenge of instant failure, or we simply ignore incidents of plagiarism –especially if they may be difficult to prove (Walling 27).”
“The responses teachers provide to plagiarism are a manifestation of their roles as interpreters of textual meaning. In reading the written work of students, the teacher makes judgments based on their individual interpretations of textual meaning about a range of problems –one of which is plagiarism. The process carried out is one that involves an active formation of textual meaning by teacher reading of the student’s text (Gladwell 11). A decision that information is borrowed is mad due to the essential definition that has attributed to the production by the teacher-reader, not particularly the student. Probing the teachers’ role as a reader and more inept of textual meaning is necessary and may help us to reflect upon ways in which we can take positive action in plagiarism issues. The need to examine the teacher’s role of reading in attributing textual meaning is critical according to the various professions. Other teachers suggest that plagiarism lies not in the information itself, not in the student, but the reader’s reception of the writing. It is essential that consideration of the role of a reader is done while interpreting the information when plagiarism is alleged to have taken place. Teachers react in different ways to an instance of plagiarism in cases of their students writing.”
Disciplinary Committee Representative:
“Some teachers consider that there can never be any plagiarism in academic writing because the notion of plagiarism does not exist. This is based on the concept that “original though” is not possible, therefore, the concept of “authorship” is inherently flawed and there cannot be any transgression against the non-existent persona of the “author” (Levin, 26). Most teachers support such viewpoints that plagiarism can be both intentional and unintentional and agree that intentions are the key element in their decisions that relate to plagiarism.”
“Teachers who categorize plagiarism as cheating often regard plagiarism as an act of intellectual rape. Proponents of the similar view state that plagiarism in academic writing is “intellectual murder most foul” and a “clear and present danger to intellectual liberty. Others argue that civilization itself will be “eclipsed” if literally originality is not preserved in writing, providing the support to the idea that authors won their works and that priority relationship has to be preserved as should be (Pennycook 212). Therefore, although he regards plagiarism as a heinous offense and repugnant to ideas of academic integrity, he advocates the idea that teacher ought to work hard in encouraging their learners to engage intellectually in ideas with their fellows. On the contrast, other educators argue that plagiarism is wrong and is akin to cheating but is the intention of the students is irrelevant. It is, however, clear that recognizing academic as gatekeepers for assurance of ethical practices by graduates who enter their professions are in the hand of teachers, and institutional procedures are recognized as the bearers of the responsibility to deter and avoid student plagiarism (Hu 52).”
Works Cited
Gladwell, Malcolm. "Something borrowed." The New Yorker 22 (2004).
Hu, Jim. "An alternative perspective of language re-use: Insights from textual and learning theories and L2 academic writing." English Quarterly Canada 33.1/2 (2001): 52.
Levin, Peter. "Why the Writing Is on the Wall for the Plagiarism Police for the Plagiarism Police.”." (2006).
Pennycook, Alastair. "Borrowing others' words: Text, ownership, memory, and plagiarism." TESOL Quarterly 30.2 (1996): 201-230.
Walling, Donovan R. "The creativity continuum." TechTrends: Linking Research and Practice to Improve Learning 53.4 (2009): 26-27.
Xiguang, Li, and Xiong Lei. "Chinese researchers debate rash of plagiarism cases." Science 274.5286 (1996): 337.
