What Groups of Traditional Community College Students Tend to be More Involved in Academic Misconduct and Why?
Academic misconduct is defined as any kind of cheating related o formal academic exercise. It has occurred since the early development of the science and became widespread at all levels of education nowadays. Finally, there have been formed groups of traditional community college students which particularly tend to be more involved in academic misconduct. First of all, it should be said that the younger students, particularly at their Sophomore year at college, are more likely to be involved in cheating. Meanwhile, students’ perception of the seriousness of violation is intertwined with the level of academic dishonesty.
Its further impact on the behavior and the level to which particular behavior is considered as common acceptable, cannot be underestimated (Schmelkin, Gilbert & Silva, 2010, p. 156).Still, there exist no relationship between moral development and one’s likelihood to cheating (Ebony & Sassi, 2011). In addition, in some way the rules have changed and now the old rules no longer apply. That means that now it is important to remember about the way of citing sources correctly and using some materials for free “as hallmark of student’s digital literacy” ( Thomas & Sassi, 2011, p. 52).Students who suffer from high academic procrastination, as well as those who are involved in extracurricular activities, are more likely to cheat, as they have more demands on personal time. Neutralizing attitude influences cheating behavior both directly and indirectly, increasing the effect of individual attitude, so that observing others cheating depended on own cheating behavior as well (Rettinger, & Kramer, 2009, p. 293-294).
Finally, the least correlation of academic misconduct is observed among students of different nationalities, races and classes. Nevertheless, local cultural traditions and collectivist behavior of society in whole supports higher level of cheating (McCabe, Feghali, & Abdallah, 2008, p. 464).
References
Davis, S. F., Drinan, P. F., & Gallant, T. B. (2011). Cheating in school: What we know and what we can do. John Wiley & Sons.
East, J. (2010). Judging plagiarism: a problem of morality and convention. Higher Education, 59(1), 69-83.
Eastman, J. K., Iyer, R., & Reisenwitz, T. H. (2011). The impact of unethical reasoning on different types of academic dishonesty: an exploratory study. Journal of College Teaching & Learning (TLC), 5(12).
McCabe, D. L., Feghali, T., & Abdallah, H. (2008). Academic dishonesty in the Middle East: Individual and contextual factors. Research in Higher Education, 49(5), 451-467.
Patricio, A. B. (2014). Academic dishonesty among industrial psychology students (Doctoral dissertation).
Rettinger, D. A., & Kramer, Y. (2009). Situational and personal causes of student cheating. Research in Higher Education, 50(3), 293-313.
Simkins, M. A. M. (2009). Why do college student cheat? Journal of Business Ethics Retrieved July 2, 2014 from http:// provost.bilkent.edu
Schmelkin, L. P., Gilbert, K. A., & Silva, R. (2010). Multidimensional Scaling of High School Students' Perceptions of Academic Dishonesty. The High School …