Hayes, N (2003) Alienation and plagiarism: coping with otherness in our assessment practice. Working Paper. The Department of Organisation, Work and Technology, Lancaster University.
Abstract
The dramatic increase in the number of overseas students studying in the UK and other western countries has required academics to re-evaluate many aspects of their own, and their institutions practice. This paper considers differing cultural attitudes and perceptions among overseas students towards plagiarism, and the implications this may have for postgraduate education in the UK. Based on focus groups, questionnaires and informal discussions, we report the views and perceptions of plagiarism among students on two postgraduate management courses, both of which had a high constituency of overseas students. We show that plagiarist practices are often the outcome of many diverse, complex and culturally situated influences, and consider the appreciation of these differing cultural assumptions to be fundamental in pre-emptively responding to issues of plagiarism among overseas students