Why Children Cheat and What to Do About It

From: Parenthood.com

Why Children Cheat and What to Do About It

By Judy Molland

"When all else fails … cheat," reads the promotional advertising for Slackers, a film that features college students. A well-known author admits copying several passages for her best-selling book. Corporate executives amass fortunes while their employees lose their retirement income. The news is full of examples suggesting that cheating does, in fact, help one find success.

Surprisingly, such examples of dishonesty in society at large appear to have little direct impact on school-age children. According to high school principal Cliff Moore, who conducted an informal survey of his students, not many kids perceive the outside world as a model. They may be receiving our culture's subtle messages, but they don't articulate them as influences on their own behavior.

Fifth-grade teacher Barbara Forster is even more emphatic: "My students don't make those connections to the bigger society beyond the classroom. Kids are very caught up in their own immediate world, and that's really all that exists for them."

So why do children cheat?

Experts agree that the reasons vary, depending on the age of the child. Younger children may look over another child's paper, but don't see this behavior as dishonest, explains Darrell Rud, president of the National Association of Elementary School Principals. Rud sees such behavior emerging in first or second grade, when students are given increasing numbers of worksheets and the level of difficulty can cause them to feel overwhelmed. The intention is not to cheat, but to keep up.

Conscious cheating starts around the age of 8 or 9, when children can conceive that they are taking responsibility for a piece of work, according to Joe di Prisco, co-author of Right from Wrong: Instilling a Sense of Integrity in Your Child. This coincides with the introduction of letter grades in many American schools, which may cause students to feel greater pressure to succeed.

As one fifth-grader put it, "your parents tell you not to cheat, and you know you shouldn't cheat, but you feel pressured because you also know that your parents feel that the grade is the most important thing."

As students move up through middle and high school, the pressure to succeed grows, coming not just from parents, but also from peers, from teachers and school administrators, and from the need to get into a good college. The general consensus after Moore's survey of his high school students was that "everybody does it at least once," and that made it OK.

Children may also cheat to help their buddies (by giving a paper to a friend who is going to be suspended from the football team, for example) or they may behave in dishonest ways because they believe the school doesn't care.

How Students Cheat

Just as the reasons for cheating vary, so do the methods. With younger children, cheating mostly takes the shape of copying another student's work. As kids get older and tests and homework build up, youngsters may be tempted to take shortcuts. Two students may agree to do half the assignment each and share their answers, for example.

When groups of students take the same test at different times, the group that has taken it first can tell the second group what to expect.

"Even though you know that you shouldn't listen, how do you ignore information that is being directly told to you?" says one fifth-grader.

This example underlines both the temptation to and the ease with which kids can share this kind of information.

Several middle- and high-school teachers we interviewed brought up the issue of writing. As Barbara Forster explains, children have to learn reporting and writing skills. Before her students begin a research project, Forster always talks with them about how to paraphrase an idea using their own words. In the lower grades, while young children are learning these skills, plagiarism may be inadvertent. In the upper grades, it is frequently intentional.

Internet plagiarism in particular appears to be a widespread and growing problem. High school teacher Christine Pelton recently found that 28 of her 118 sophomore students had stolen sections of their botany project off the Internet.

Educators around the country agree that technology has improved a student's ability to cheat. There are currently more than 20 so-called "cheat sites" on the Internet, where students can download an entire paper on their chosen topic.

In a 1999 study carried out by the Center for Academic Integrity in North Carolina, 75 percent of college students surveyed on 21 U.S. campuses admitted to some Internet cheating. Programmable calculators are another example of how technology is making cheating accessible to more students.

Schools Response

Teachers should respond swiftly and frankly to cheating, according to Karen E. Bohlin, executive director of the Center for the Advancement of Ethics and Character at Boston University, and co-author of Building Character in Schools. "They should call a spade a spade," she emphasizes. "This is dishonest; this is taking someone else's work."

Teachers need to be more than "plagiarism police," she adds, they also need to discuss the importance of respecting other people's ideas, and help children aspire to honesty, taking pride in their own work, and experiencing the joys of learning.

When it is so easy to download a paper from the Internet, there has to be a compelling reason for students not to do these things. Educational experts agree that the real goal should be to help children develop the dispositions of mind and character that will stay with them for a lifetime, not just as practices for the classroom.

To help students understand what cheating is, elementary and middle schools often post specific lists: "You may call and ask a friend what the homework is, but you may not have a friend do that homework" or "Your parents can go with you to help buy materials for a project, or help you if there is something dangerous about the project, but your parents should not do the project."

In most schools, the consequences for cheating are fairly standard: the first time a student is caught cheating, he receives a zero on that assignment and must have a conference with the teacher. In addition, there is a referral to the administration resulting in a meeting with all the parties involved. For a second offense in the same school year, the penalties get much more serious - the student may be removed from the class, receive a grade of "F" or become ineligible for extracurricular activities.

Parents' Response

If your child is caught cheating, you should consider yourself lucky, di Prisco says. "Now you have an opportunity to address the issue directly," he explains.

Rud agrees: "If your child is caught cheating, my first piece of advice is to be open-minded and go and hear both sides of the story. Once you do, you may indeed find clear evidence that your child was cheating."

Parents tend to be very embarrassed, and denial tends to be one of the first reactions, Rud explains.

Educational psychologists agree that it's important for parents to recognize that the world will not end if their child cheats, but that it does get more serious if cheating becomes a pattern. They urge parents to try to discover and address the root causes of their child's cheating.

Di Prisco notes that there are many reasons to cheat, but ultimately only one reason not to cheat: integrity. "It's a good starting point to acknowledge with your child that it's hard to have integrity and that people make mistakes," he says, adding that children need to have these limits made explicit for them.

"They know that cheating is wrong," di Prisco says. "Every healthy conversation around plagiarism and academic dishonesty is really about focusing on the kid's strengths. Kids want to do the right thing, but you need to connect the dots for them. Kids don't want to misrepresent themselves, so you need them to see that this is exactly what they are doing when they pass off someone else's work as their own."

Judy Molland is a veteran teacher, contributing education editor for Dominion Parenting Media and a frequent contributor to Parenthood.com.

Source:

From: suite101.com

Cheating in the Classroom

What to do When a Student Copies During a Test

© Dorit Sasson

May 13, 2007

How clear is the code of cheating to your students? What can you do about it?

Cheating is becoming more and more of a problematic issue in education in many classrooms around the world. The issue of cheating is far however from being solved: cell phones and text messages have become an additional culprit for cheating on tests and it is uncertain how future technology will continue to affect the cheating situation.

Causes for Cheating in School

Students cheat because of many reasons, the main being that they don't feel they can succeed on the the test and as a result, they feel a need to cover up for whatever weaknesses they may have.

In the meantime however, it is important for you to know where you as a new or seasoned teacher stand with regard to cheating in elementary, middle and High School. It is also equally important to know what other teachers' feelings regarding cheating. Do they...

1. Feel strongly about cheating, respond strongly when it happens?
2. Punish it when it happens, but don't convey strong indignation.
3. Respond not very assertively, would really rather not know.
4. Don't take any notice.

Stop Cheating in School: Classroom scenarios before the test

The atmosphere at school can definitely exacerbate the cheating situation. But, there are instances when a child believes in his or her ability to succeed, which has a positive effect on his or her learning and self-esteem.

When students plan and design their own test questions together for instance, with the teacher and under teacher supervision and guidance they are not only digesting the information, but they are working towards higher level thinking skills, which are not always taught in conjunction with the child's needs and abilities. Test administration can be rethought to to lay out new expectations regarding class time for preparation for tests.

What Should You Do?

If you find yourself still in an awkward situation, unable to stretch beyond the curriculum definitions and limitations, it is important to find out what is the school policy on cheating so that you know where you stand in case you do run into instances of cheating.

Your first line of defense is to prepare multiple versions of the same test. This is completely free shareware. It works for all questions. You can download a copy from this site. Just click on the header on the top of the page.

In addition, here is a list of responses, which might be part of your school policy or you might wish to bring it up with your school staff. What other reactions prevail by other teachers regarding cheating?

• no credit for the test or assignment cheated on
• negative grade on the test or assignment
• sent to the principal
• sent to the class teacher
• private talk with the teacher
• discussion with the whole class (no names mentioned) on rights and wrongs. (follow-up, should be immediate)
• class discussion leading to clarification of rules and penalties about cheating. (follow-up, should be immediate)

It should be very clear to pupils about the code of cheating and what types of behavior will not be tolerated. Kids are always looking where to stretch the limits (especially now with the new technology )and it is important that you are backed up by school policy and / or the decisions of your particular staff, before you commit to informing the students on a consequence that has not been implemented previously.

Classroom Situations: Have you come across cheating in one of your classes? What happened? Join the discussion forum and share your experiences.

From: Tallahassee Community College, Academic Affairs, Division of Library Services

Cheating Prevention in College Classrooms

Cheating on tests, plagiarizing papers, how insidious and ubiquitous is the problem -

Statistics vary, but recent studies indicate "more than 75% of college undergraduates had cheated at least once - an all-time high - and 20-30 % regularly". (1) Who's Who Among American High School Students found that 80% of a recent group of 700,000 top students admitted to cheating. (2) Cheating in academic settings has reached an all-time high, and become so widespread that TV's Dr. Phil even devoted part of a recent program to this phenomenon, hosting a teacher and several students to discuss the cheating situation in their school. Using a smart-board, he demonstrated how some instructors use Turnitin.com* to have students run their papers through the program and attach the print-out report to their paper when they submit it to the instructor.

~ Blue Books ~ Body Parts ~ Cell Phones ~ Changing Answers ~ Codes ~ Copying ~ Crib Sheets ~ Etched Pencils ~ Gum Wrappers ~ Hats ~ Illegal Access to Tests ~ Impersonation ~ IPods ~ Plagiarism ~ Search Engine Translation ~ Water Bottles ~

~ Articles online ~ Books ~ Videos ~ Web Sites ~

Quizzes and Examinations

In an effort to assist TCC faculty in detecting and thwarting attempts at cheating on classroom exams, the following list has been prepared based on reports from students and faculty, articles from magazines and newspapers, databases, websites, and media programs. If you are aware of other techniques not represented on this list, please let us know and we'll add those in to share with your colleagues. Our intention is to assist in preventing cheating from occurring. Some old methods have a new twist to them, and there may be some you've never heard of !

For our students reading this document, it isn't a list of suggestions ! Indeed, if you try these in a classroom, you're more likely to get caught as more faculty are now aware of the possibilities.

First offense students caught cheating are in violation of the TCC Student Handbook, Standards of Conduct, Article I sec P, and Article IV, sec B, and are subject to sanctions included in Article V, sec B, which can include a grade of zero (0) for the exam, a grade of "F" for the course, and a written entry in their academic file. Further infractions invoke other procedures as listed.

Cell Phones

- ah yes, those annoying devices have become a key player in a lot of cheating on exams these days - for example -

• - - using the phone to take a picture of the exam page/s to send to other students
• - - using the phone to store information to be retrieved at a later time
• - - text-messaging - some students have become so adept at this that they can type in a message while holding the phone under the desk out of sight, then wait for the vibration of an answer from a co-conspirator and surreptitiously read the reply.
• - - searching the Internet to look up facts and information online while taking a test

Suggested: BAN ALL CELLPHONE handling in the classroom. Cellphones must either remain inside a closed backback or purse from the time the test is distributed until the student leaves the classroom, or if students lack a backpack or purse, collect the phones on a desk near the instructor or in the front of the room prior to distributing the exam. Announcing this policy in class prior to the exam may be useful as a deterrent.

Ban Other Electronic Gadgets that can be programmed include graphing calculators, Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) , programmable watches, palm pilots, and of course laptop computers. Those headphones may not be playing music from an IPod, instead, students have pre-recorded information and are listening to audio-crib information! There have even been reported instances at the university level of micro-video cameras used with co-conspirators in nearby locations sending answers back to the test-taker on communication devices. James Bond 007 in the classroom.

Water Bottles

- new version of crib sheets - seems some students have been found to have peeled off the labels, written data on the label, then replaced the label covering back on the bottle - except that when you look into the bottle you can read the formulas / dates / or other recorded information hidden on the inside.
Suggestion: BAN WATER BOTTLES from visible access. Give students options to: Zip it up inside backpack, leave it in front of classroom near instructors desk, or trash it.

Old Fashioned Cheat/Crib Sheets

are still around and with computer technology they are easier then ever, since students can type up multiple 'cheat sheets' of information, reduce the font-size down to itsy-bitsy, making them much smaller then a handwritten copy might be, then tuck them away inside a calculator cover, hide up a sleeve, in a pocket, inside a blue book, inside the brim of a cap, head scarves, etc. One on-line cheat guide suggests making them small enough to eat in case a suspicious instructor comes by. Use of food packages, gum, chips, cookies, etc are also popular items for crib sheets .
Suggestion: constant vigilance for clandestine behavior. No Food items allowed. One study found that an instructor leaving the classroom during an exam or other students not covering their papers were interpreted as open invitations to cheat. (3) Enlist additional proctors for large classrooms so more then one set of eyes is keeping everyone honest.