The Perceptions and Attitudes of International Students Towards Plagiarism.

AbstractConcern about plagiarism and academic dishonesty among international students studying in Western institutions has emerged in the academic literature. Debates about the reasons leading to the increased number of students breaking the academic integrity rules are lively in many academic forums. Some researchers have linked plagiarism with cultural norms, values and behaviours, identifying culture as the reason for the tendency to plagiarise among international students.This study argues that culture is not decisive in shaping students' understanding and attitude towards referencing and plagiarism. It involves an action research project undertaken with international students enrolled in a diploma program at La Trobe Melbourne and suggests that plagiarism is the outcome of complex personal and situational factors. Students' English proficiency, the inherent writing style in their home country, their motivation, their learning style (passive or active), together with the different approaches to referencing adopted by different teachers, appear to be the key factors that significantly affect students' ways of managing citing and referencing in their own work. These factors need to be taken into consideration in the design of activities aimed at familiarising international students with the issue of academic integrity in Western institutions and providing them with adequate support to be able to manage it.Keywordsplagiarism, referencing, higher education, international education, cultural factorsIntroductionThere has been considerable attention given to the issue of plagiarism in higher education recently. Plagiarism, defined by the Oxford Dictionary (2012) as "the practice of taking someone else's work or ideas and passing them off as one's own", is considered as an issue of academic dishonesty (East, 2010) and is often explicitly mentioned in the academic policies of Western institutions. Despite the efforts of different institutions to help students be aware of and avoid plagiarism, there still exists a concern that plagiarism in higher education is increasing across the board (East, 2010; Hayes & Introna, 2005; Zimitat, 2012). The increasing numbers of international students studying in Western institutions have been accompanied by a growing unease about plagiarism among those students. The students often come from different cultural backgrounds and have learning styles different from those encountered in the West.They are also considered to be more likely to plagiarise by lecturers and researchers in the West (East, 2010). There have been many articles investigating why tertiary students in general, and international students in particular, plagiarise. First, the development of information technology has provided students with easily accessible material on the internet and has made it easier for them to commit plagiarism, but also "made it easier to detect this practice of academic dishonesty" (Comas-Forgas & Sureda-Negre, 2010, p. 228). Second, students may not actually understand what plagiarism entails (Carroll, 2002). There is also a lack of clarity about what constitutes plagiarism and how it is detected (AngelilCarter, 2000; Biggs, 1994). Moreover, language barriers and the differences in learning styles are considered to be major reasons for plagiarism among international students (AngelilCarter, 2000; Bretag, Horrocks, & Smith, 2002; Carroll, 2002; Handa & Power, 2005; MacKinnon & Manathunga, 2003; Park, 2003; Pennycook, 1996; Sowden, 2005). It has also been suggested that many international students hold a different moral perception of plagiarism and its significance compared with the perception held in the West (Bamford & Sergiou, 2005; Introna, Hayes, Blair, & Wood, 2003). Many students come from countries where "learning and assessment typically focus on the content of a text book" (Hayes & Introna, 2005, p. 215), so it does not seem to be easy for them to be critical or to raise their own opinions, tending to copy ideas from books and other sources instead (Handa & Power, 2005; Pennycook, 1996). …