A More Optimistic Way to Teach Academic Integrity: Standing with Honor on the Shoulders of Giants
June 1, 2020
A healthy academic community treats its members as honest people. As scholars, we presume that our colleagues earned their degrees without cheating, that they report the results of their research accurately, that they write their own papers. When we think of our colleagues as honest in these ways, we are presuming academic integrity on their part.
Thanks, Mairi. I love the metaphor of “standing on the shoulders of giants” and the emphasis on the positive goal of academic integrity.
In the communal societies of the Majority World (where I have lived) I have found that a negative emphasis on “plagiarism” breaks relationship and invites students to find ways around policies, while students respond to positive approaches that help them see how a policy might facilitate growth.