and

Professor, Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, UCLA, and Associate Dean, Graduate Division.

Literature on plagiarism, at the outset of this search, seemed well defined and sufficiently narrow in scope. As the authors of this review went deeper into this topic, they discovered that was hardly the case. This problem may be attributed, in part, to the interdisciplinary nature of this topic and the ethical challenges of accessing and using information technology, especially in the age of Internet. Writings have been reported in the literatures of education, psychology, and library and information studies, each looking at academic dishonesty from different perspectives. The literature is aimed at instructors, scholars in education, developmental psychology, as well as college librarians and school media specialists. Some writings come from software houses that provide detection services; there were plenty of advertisements from paper mills announcing thousands of canned reports to students. However, we have not seen attempts to connect these seemingly disparate bodies of literature. For example, seminal writings by John Dewey, Jean Piaget, and Lawrence Kohlberg could provide a solid theoretical framework in moral reasoning and a good starting point to build upon.^1-5 Their work should be considered by education and library communities in efforts to design any well grounded academic honesty policies and programs for learners across the educational spectrum.

These two dimensions, literature on moral judgment, and the general definitional agreement of what is meant by plagiarism, provided the main structure for this literature review.

After discussing motivation and specifications for this search, we will examine several literatures for effective pedagogical approaches that instructors can use to design academic integrity programs, in particular plagiarism, that would be appropriate for secondary and college level students. Students reason differently when presented with specific moral dilemmas.^4-5 A moral dilemma, according to The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "involves a situation in which the agent has only two courses of action available, and each requires performing a morally impermissible action."⁹ This problem has also been brought to Ercegovac's attention in her own classroom experience with different populations of learners, with secondary school students and with college students (1991-present). Defining plagiarism, distributing neatly prepared citation templates for different formats, and saying that plagiarism is wrong, punishable, easily detectable, and against honor codes, simply is not enough, especially when applied generically across the board.

Instead, we made the conjecture that if we use knowledge about distinct phases of moral capacities among children, adolescents, and college students, we might be able to design appropriate educational programs that account for these differences that exist among groups of learners. Units on academic integrity could be included throughout the educational cycle and across disciplinary lines (e.g., sciences, the arts). We need more effective pedagogical tools to engage students in real life moral dilemmas at their levels of moral reasoning.

Broader headings to plagiarism for the purposes of searching online databases include:

cheating (education) or academic dishonesty or

academic misconduct

copyright infringement

intellectual property

moral judgment (reasoning) or moral thinking

moral development or character building

More specific headings to plagiarism are:

cyberplagiarism or internet in education

internet cheating, cheating behavior (web)

Another related topic is the concept of honor code. Other headings used to qualify search results relate to age groups: middle school children, high school children, secondary school children, youth, adolescents, teenagers, and college students. The intersection of the following three boxes represents the literature we sought to find:

plagiarism and web related and age group

related terms related

terms terms

Library of Congress Subject Headings (21^st ed.) lists the following useful headings for the field of plagiarism:

The main heading "cheating" from the perspective of education may be subdivided geographically; it is Used For (UF) "academic dishonesty," "student cheating," and "student dishonesty." The heading of "plagiarism" which may also be subdivided geographically, is seen as Narrower To (NT) "authorship," "copyright infringement," "literary ethics," "literature," "quotation," and "torts." It is Related To (RT) the headings of "imitation in literature" and "originality in literature." Another main heading is "plagiarism in music."¹⁰

Surprisingly, Sears List of Subject Headings, has no headings under "plagiarism," "cheating," or "intellectual property." There are headings such as "honesty" that is Used For (UF) "dishonesty," and the heading "moral education" that is UF "character education" and "ethical education."¹¹

These two cataloging sources are used to describe publications in academic and school libraries as well as public libraries. While the two sets of subject headings differ in their treatment of headings that are to be used to describe contents of publications on various forms of cheating, we found equal amount of writings on these topics for both college and secondary school readers.

We searched Education Index and Library Literature Index, ProQuest, OCLC's FirstSearch databases on December 7, 2002, and again in April and May of 2003. Finally, a search of the online library catalog, Orion2® at UCLA, retrieved several monographs within our specification. Since the interest has been in the body of literature on plagiarism in the Web environment or cyber-plagiarism, the search covered a five-year publication period (1997 to 2002, conveying 1996 to early 2003 papers). The retrieved items are published in journals, newspapers, reports (from ERIC database), doctoral dissertations (one by Burke and another by Marcoux),^12-13 collection of articles, conference presentations, and monographs. From the initial search result of over 300 items at the time of this writing, we selected about one third of these items. We have included publications written for instructors and librarians with limited number of papers presented at regional conferences and reports.

Numerous other writers have attempted to define the concept of plagiarism. In an excellent bibliography on plagiarism that reviews nearly seven hundred publications between 1900 and 1995, Anderson discusses different definitions in the historical, chronological, cultural, and disciplinary contexts.¹⁶ Angélil-Carter also discusses the development of the notion of plagiarism, along with copyright, from the historical perspective.¹⁷ She tries to convey that plagiarism is an elusive concept and has been treated differently in different contexts. As Angélil-Carter writes in her Introduction, she wanted to "understand plagiarism differently," and to communicate that understanding to teachers and writers of academic discourse. (p. 3) Stearns defines plagiarism as "intentionally taking the literary property of another without attribution and passing it off as one's own, having failed to add anything of value to the copied material and having reaped from its use an unearned benefit."¹⁸ Stearn's definition comes from several sources including Black's Law Dictionary, The Oxford English Dictionary, Webster's Third New International Dictionary of the English Language Unabridged, and from St. Onge's work.¹⁹

In one of her General Education classes at Colgate University, Howard found that one third of her students plagiarized an assigned paper.²⁰ She characterized students' plagiarism as "patchwriting," defined as "copying from a source text and then deleting some words, altering grammatical structures, or plugging in one synonym for another." (p. xvii). Babbie writes that "presenting someone else's words or ideas as your own--in any form--constitutes plagiarism." He equates plagiarism with lying, stealing, and insulting.²¹ Cabe also distinguishes different types of plagiarism: direct plagiarism, truncation, where strings are deleted in the beginning or ending, excision (strings are deleted from the middle of sentences), insertions, inversions, substitutions, change of tense or person or number or voice, undocumented factual information, inappropriate use of quotation marks or paraphrasing.²² The Council of Writing Program Administrators, CWPA, thinks of plagiarism as a deliberate use of "someone else's language, ideas, or other original (not common-knowledge) material without acknowledging its source."²³ This definition is extended to printed and digital materials, manuscripts and other works. Plagiarism is interrelated to intellectual property, copyright, and authorship, and discussed from the perspective of multiculturalism.²⁴

Klausman makes three distinctions between direct plagiarism, paraphrase plagiarism, and patchwork plagiarism.²⁵ Lasarenko offers exercises to help students understand the differences between summarizing and paraphrasing practices, and how both can result in plagiarism if the original sources are not cited.²⁶ Along this line, a book by Lathrop and Foss is written as a practical guide to educators and parents of secondary school students who wish to avoid these types of plagiarism.²⁷ Harris's Handbook (p. 25)¹⁴ has been useful to Ercegovac' workshops that she has developed to teach middle school and upper school students and teachers. Niels (not paged) tells us that "many students are ignorant of the guidelines pertaining to academic integrity and even when they do understand they often attribute differing values to their importance."²⁸ In two separate studies with college students at St. John's University, New York, Roig asked students to determine which of ten rewritten versions were plagiarized.²⁹ He found that 40 percent to 50 percent of the students did not identify plagiarized versions. Roig suggests that students in his tests were unclear as to what plagiarism means.

Learners need to be introduced to appropriate academic conduct. All these different forms of academic dishonesty should be explained to students regardless of their academic status. However, we need to develop appropriate levels of presentation to different levels of students' moral reasoning. This link has not been exploited as yet in the published literature. It is an opportunity for educators and librarians to together explore this challenging area.

With regard to different forms of academic cheating, both Information Literacy Standards for Higher Education and Information Power: Building Partnerships for Learning give specific performance indicators for colleges and secondary schools, respectively.^30-31 For example, Information Literacy (IL) standards (ACRL) contain ample guidance with regard to ethical use of information in indicators 5a, 5c-d (per standard 2), indicator 1c (per standard 3), indicators 1c-d (standard 4), and indicators 3a-b (per standard 5). Information Power (ALA) offers guidance to library media specialists under the heading of Social Responsibility Standards, specifically indicators 2-3 in standard 8. Since both sets of standards promote the use of a wide variety of sources in students' research (e.g., textual, graphical, geo-spatial, motion pictures, three-dimensional objects, and musical), examples in IL units need to be drawn from a variety of formats, moral scenarios, and from different disciplines.

In summary, the reviewed literature is primarily focused on plagiarism issues found among college students, including community colleges.^12,15,32-37 A subset of that literature is concerned with plagiarism problems among business students, engineers, scientists, and dentistry students.^34,38-43 A substantial amount of papers deals with ways to reduce plagiarism.^25,27,44-52 Numerous writings are concerned with detection tools and strategies, awareness of paper mills, and general trends.^53-59 Important studies were written for secondary school readers.^28,60-68

The most important writings, however, come from the work of Dewey, Piaget, and especially Kohlberg. Another body of literature studies variables that are strongly associated with academic cheating.^12,69-76

Under the "Extent of the Problem," Kibler reviews literature that demonstrates that various forms of academic dishonesty have been with us since ancient civilizations, and that academic dishonesty, for a variety of reasons, has increased.¹⁵ Harris in his Plagiarism Handbook notes that a "free-term-paper site, run by a 16-year-old, receives 13,000 hits a day." (p. v).¹⁴ Harris gives an example of a librarian who studied plagiarism herself and could not order a paper from a paper mill because the site was "flooded with 800 orders a day." (p. vi) The Handbook marshals lively instructional cartoons that could be used in teaching and discussing the subject of plagiarism. Humes gives anecdotes from his own observations and interviews with students, administrators, and parents at an academically outstanding High School in Cerritos, California.⁸² Niels cites a massive study of high achievers conducted by Who's Who Among High School Students in 1993. The study found "nearly 80% admitted to some form of dishonesty, such as copying someone else's homework or cheating on an exam."²⁸ Niels again, "of the private school students, nearly 60% indicated that in their schools cheating is either 'fairly common' or 'everybody does it.'" (pages not given)

Roberts, Anderson and Yanish found that in the self-reported surveys of 422 college students at a mid-sized four-year public university, 91.7 percent reported they had engaged in at least one type of academic misconduct during the surveyed year (p. 8).⁷⁹ Virginia Polytechnic Institute reported that various forms of academic cheating have more than tripled, from 80 in 1995/96 to 280 in 1997/98.⁸⁰ Virginia Tech is one among numerous campuses that has seen a rise of plagiarized information stolen from the Internet, e-mail, and other digital communication services.³⁴

Authors from Harvard University and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign found that in their introductory political science course in the spring of 2000, about one out of eight papers seemed problematic.⁸³ Another survey found that 54 percent of Penn students "considered copying homework to be cheating," and 61 percent would not "report a case of cheating to the Office of Student Conduct."⁸⁴

In his article, "Peer trouble: How failsafe is our current system at ensuring the quality and integrity of research? Not very," says Crace.⁴⁰ The author reports on a recent study by the University of Minnesota of 4,000 researchers "that one in three scientists plagiarized, 22 percent handled data 'carelessly' and 15 percent occasionally withheld unfavorable data." In the scientific professional world, several recent incidents reported that stellar scholars at two highly regarded research institutions (Bell Labs, and separately at the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab), faked data.⁸⁵

Anderson reports numerous highly regarded journals that discuss instances among scientists and applied scientists.¹⁶ These are published in scholarly journals such as American Journal of Pharmacological Education, American Journal of Roentgenology, American Scientist, Nature, Science, Science News, and Scientific American. Other cases of plagiarism were reported in literature related magazines, such as American Literature, English journal, Journal of Information Ethics, and Saturday Review of Literature. Popular magazines, including Business Week, Forbes, Harper's, The New Republic, and Wall Street Journal, also cite cases of plagiarism on campuses, and among various professions. Standler, an attorney at law, marshals examples of statutes from fourteen states about sales of term papers; he gives detailed accounts of plagiarism by students, professors, and cases against commercial agencies that sell papers.⁸⁶

To answer the question, how prevalent is cheating, the answer from the literature suggests some disturbing facts on the state of academic dishonesty in the United States. Questions we wanted to learn next were about prevention techniques, variables that might be used to predict this kind of behavior (e.g., age, gender, GPA, discipline, social and demographic factors), and pedagogical strategies based on the developmental and moral reasoning theory.

Several writers offer prevention techniques to instructors against cyber-plagiarists who know how to steal from the Web and online services. Bugeja suggest the following prevention strategies: become an expert searcher, know your search engines, use a phrase from the first paragraph, choose odd or awkward phrases in text searches, among other tips.⁴⁴ To this list, McMurtry has added academic honesty policy, giving specific instructions in assignments, awareness of paper mills, and plagiarism detection services.⁸⁷ A comprehensive list of traditional sources of information need to be a requirement for all students.⁸⁸ Renard distinguishes between unintentional, sneaky, and lazy Internet cheaters, and warns instructors to be aware of cheat sites, to assign specific topics, to tie in the assigned topics to students' experiences, demand rewrites, and teach proper bibliographic attribution.⁵² Braumoeller and Gaines found that while verbal and written warnings not to plagiarize had a negligible effect on rates of plagiarism, plagiarism-detection software, such as EVE and WordCHECK, proved to be successful in discouraging students to plagiarize.⁸³ An approach taken in Harris's Handbook against plagiarism is in teaching students about plagiarism-related issues rather than assuming that they know what plagiarism is (Chapter 2).¹⁴ He uses anecdotes, cartoons, and plain language to demonstrate differences between plagiarism and copyright issues, good citing practices and careless note-taking techniques, differences between paraphrasing, summarizing, and copying sentences and paragraphs. An important section is directed toward explaining reasons why plagiarism is unethical, and the benefits of citing sources. In Chapter 3, Harris discusses useful techniques that teachers can use to design assignments to reduce plagiarism. Other writers share their tips on how to cope with issues related to academic dishonesty.^89-91

Moeck examines the problem of cheating among community college students and offers techniques for detection and prevention of academic dishonesty, in general.³⁵ Moeck offers a list of paper mills and another of cybercheating prevention software. Other prevention techniques include discussing the issues in the classroom, allowing students to rewrite papers, and establishing campus honor codes.^48-49 Based on responses obtained from 2,200 students on 21 college campuses, McCabe and Trevino concluded that schools with honor codes had fewer repeat offenders.⁹² This finding has policy implications, and honor codes have been widely practiced in numerous campuses. Other writings emphasized the importance of feedback as well as making the distinction between different types of plagiarism.^25,29,51 Stebelman reminds us to rethink assignments, to teach students that papers on the Web are not free of "legal and ethical intellectual property considerations," (p. 48), and to refrain from posting students' work on a course Web site.⁹³

As more schools become wired and students more computer savvy, instructors are "complaining that new technologies have made it all too easy for students to gather the ideas of others and present them as their own".⁹⁴ McKenzie presents "Seven antidotes to prevent highway robbery in an electronic age." Antidote #1 distinguishes between levels and types of research, gives instruction to educators to go beyond 'just factual' scavenger hunts and to challenge students to use facts to explain, solve problems, and make decisions. Antidote #2, 'other people's ideas,' "inspires plagiarism as the student gathers other people's ideas and then passes them off as her or his own." (p.4) Some practical suggestions are given to go beyond 'conventional thinking.' Other antidotes encourage students to "emphasize essential questions" (antidote #3), "to make their own answers" (antidote #4), to learn how to paraphrase, summarize, and cite the sources of ideas or information (per antidote #5). Antidote #6 suggests the use of color-coded text that students use to differentiate between the ideas of others (black ink) and students' fresh ideas, reactions, or insights (green ink). This author used some of these techniques with seventh grade students during Information Literacy (IL) units in note-taking within English and History lessons. Finally, antidote #7 deals with issues involved in self-evaluation techniques.⁹⁴ Whiteman and Gordon, English teachers at Mount Lebanon Senior High School in Pittsburgh, suggest that teachers need to be creative in their assignment topics, to change assignments regularly, to stay away from general and biographical-like essays, and to "assign essays that can't be bought."⁶⁸ Niels reports that the entire academic program at the Central Park East Secondary School (CPESS) in New York City is organized around the five main questions: Whose viewpoint is being described? What evidence is there? How is this connected to other things? What are the alternatives? How is this relevant? Niels develops an argument that in order to deal with various forms of cheating behavior, we need to look at contextual factors that influence cheating, which is moral education.²⁸ Kibler agrees that the moral climate of the institution impacts the rate of cheating.¹⁵

Brown and Howell studied the effectiveness of statements of plagiarism on students' behaviors.⁹⁵ The study concluded that there was a positive influence between students who read carefully worded statements and respective academic behaviors.

Many engineering and computer science departments have developed software that detects programming plagiarism.^39,96 Some computer science students, although aware of such detection programs and harsh punishment actions, still copy codes.⁸⁰ Rather than relying on tutorials for digital art assignments (e.g., Adobe's Illustrator), Clayton and Watkins suggest focusing on concept mastery and customizing assignments.⁴⁵

In his chapter on "The Moral Atmosphere of the School", Kohlberg summarizes important findings by educational sociologists, such as Emile Durkheim, Philip Jackson, Robert Dreeben, and Edgar Friedenberg.⁵ Kohlberg introduces us to a concept of "hidden curriculum" in which characteristics of the crowds, the praise, and the power (authority) are of major influences on the development of children. "After the family the school is the first social institution an individual must deal with, the place in which he learns to handle himself with strangers" (Friedenberg, Coming of Age in America, 1963, in Kohlberg, p. 149). Kohlberg's research builds on that tradition and on the notions of Dewey and Piaget, and finds that the development of moral reasoning is sequential progression through distinct stages. Kohlberg believes that the role of the teacher is to translate moral ideology into a working social atmosphere in which students understand the meaning of the "hidden curriculum" based on the universal principle of justice underlining respect of all people. In this context, teachers have considerable flexibility to implement "hidden curriculum" within respective school cultures.

Burke studied factors that influence faculty response to academic dishonesty at a multi-campus, two-year college.¹² His "research investigated faculty: 1) perceptions of the extent of academic honesty, 2) perceptions of, and attitudes toward Academic Dishonesty Policy and policy implementation, 3) responses to academic dishonesty, 4) attitudes concerning values education, and 5) attitudes about responsibility for reducing academic dishonesty." (p. 3) The study delineated perceptions, responses, and attitudes among faculty grouped by employment status, campus, seniority, and discipline. Seven hundred forty two faculty members completed a 25-question survey. The results indicated that faculty do not perceive academic dishonesty to be a serious problem. Faculty believed themselves to be familiar with current policy and procedure, and are not concerned with policy implementation. The surveyed faculty members believe that they have a primary role in values education. Of the faculty surveyed, 86 percent have suspected, and 65 percent have been certain of, academic dishonesty in their classrooms. The majority of the surveyed members do not regularly follow institutional policy; most handle incidents of cheating and plagiarism on the individual basis. They believe that the responsibility for reducing academic dishonesty lies primarily with students and individual faculty. The fact that eighty six percent of the studied faculty have suspected academic dishonesty in their classrooms, and did not perceive this to be a major problem, should be investigated further.

Studies written by Jolly and by Schneider support Burke's findings.^97,75 Schneider reports that while college instructors complain about student cheating and plagiarism, many do little or nothing about it. Few file formal complaints against individual students find the campus judicial process time consuming, and penalties often unrelated to the offense. At institutions with honor codes, the issues can be different. In the report by Schmelkin and her colleagues, there was little or no agreement among surveyed faculty (n=160) as to what constitutes academic cheating.⁹⁸ Marcoux's doctoral work studied college faculty's awareness level of the Kansas State University's honor code and cheating policies.¹³ The faculty's responses varied and indicated that they had not received training in how to handle cases of academic cheating.

Johnston's article, while outside our timeline, is discussed here because it reflects on a moral dilemma she dealt with relating to cheating that occurred during one of her unproctored exam.⁹⁹ The cheating dilemma happened in her Moral Development and Education course by some upper division students at Colgate University in New York. She decided to use that incident as a teaching challenge and "role-taking" technique. The latter has been a fundamental concept that has guided much of inquiry and intervention in moral psychology and education. When Johnston confronted her class, she was alarmed with the range of students' responses. Some were surprised if no one cheated, some did not know how to deal with cheating if it occurred, many students rated cheating on a continuum, some viewed cheating as 'refreshing the memory', others were bothered that students majoring in education in that particular class cheated. Students were equally divided about moral decision- making as a group. Johnston's analysis of cheating takes her to search for causes of cheating behaviors beyond pressure and individual integrity. She believes that the notions of attachment and equality in the classroom are critical. She writes, "it occurs because students do it if they won't 'get caught' and being caught by their peers is not problematic." (p. 290)

It seems to the reviewers that there is a lack of alignment between offences and punishment, and lack of communication between administrators, faculty, parents, and students. Other problems are related to students' state of readiness to understand issues involved in academic dishonesty and plagiarism, and in relationships with peers, teachers, and as part of their educational climate as a whole.

The reviewed literature identified specific variables that are positively associated with academic dishonesty behaviors. This type of research is important but not dominant in the literature. We will first look at several recent studies that examine the relationship in the context of the Internet. Then, we will pay special attention to research pieces that empirically developed different phases of moral reasoning among different age groups. In the Section on "Further Work", we will describe work that might benefit from these studies as we continue to control, reduce, and educate the future generations of learners in ethical uses of information.

In a broader context, we sought to find societal indicators that strongly and positively correlate to academic dishonesty. Again, we turned to The State of Americans: This Generation and the Next to find possible answers to this question.⁷⁰ The book marshals evidence on changing youth behavior (ch. 1), economy and poverty (chapters 3, 5), crime and punishment (ch. 4), changing structure of American families (ch. 4), and American education (ch. 6). Over time, it seems that teenagers have become more skeptical in dealing with people (p. 2), more disinterested in presidential elections, and academic cheating has doubled. "Virtually every high school student in 1989 (97%) admits having let another student copy from his or her work." (p. 4). The trend of college students parallels that of secondary schools students. Importantly, nuclear family correlates positively and strongly with students' academic performance (GPA scores), cheating behavior, drug use, and teenagers' trust in others.

Similarly, Ashworth and his colleagues examined attitudes of nineteen colleges with regard to academic cheating and plagiarism in U.K.⁶⁹ They found that factors such as lack of trust, alienation from the school, large classes, collaborative learning styles, and lack of understanding what plagiarism really meant, were positively correlated with academic cheating and plagiarism.

In competitive classrooms across the board, under parents' pressure to produce high grades, many students, including those from professional schools, have been found guilty of academic misconduct and plagiarism.^40,42,100,71 This finding has been well documented with scores of studies about high school students by Niels.²⁸ Kibler divides his literature review into Personal Characteristics of Cheaters and Situational Factors Involved in a Student's Decision Whether to Cheat.¹⁵ Among the situational factors, important ones include unproctored tests, penalty systems, teaching styles (authoritarian style incites cheating, overly difficult tests, hopelessness, soft teachers), climate of the school, and "likely to get caught." (p. 257-9)

Schab writes that high school graduates cheat due to 'fear of failure,' because 'parents demand and expect good grades' in order for their children to be admitted to top universities; other reasons given were that everyone cheats, and that teachers were "too soft on these issues." ⁷⁴ (p. 840) One writer's observations at Whitney High School in Cerritos, California, reports that one student said "a parent told him it was okay to cheat if he earned an A, because his future was at stake. Just don't get caught, he warned."⁸² (p.104) Other students in the same school complain that cheating is rampant due to too many homework assignments. They then "share" the burden among themselves, copy from friends, (p.199), and rely on paper mill services (p.267).

In the study mentioned earlier, Roberts, Anderson and Yanish examined the relationship between demographic variables and academic dishonesty among undergraduates.⁷⁹ A total of 422 students from 22 classes completed a 27-item self-reported survey that was designed to measure their involvement in seventeen types of academic misconduct. The survey also obtained data on class standing, age, gender, GPA, and college major. Results revealed that being male and/or younger than 24 years of age were characteristics associated with greater involvement in academic misconduct. "The greatest amount of collaboration was reported by Business students, while the least amount was reported by students in the Performing and Visual Arts. Conversely, Performing and Visual Arts majors reported the highest incidence of making up excuses to avoid handing in a term paper or taking a test on time". (p. 10) The authors did not find significant difference in self-reported academic misconduct between students and respective GPA scores.

Earlier studies on cheating among college students are discussed as a function of gender, academic status, age, GPA scores, and college majors.⁷² The authors used a questionnaire to obtain data on self-reported frequency of 21 cheating behaviors (n=943 sophomores and juniors from 19 disciplines). This "first large-scale study of cheating carried out in the United Kingdom" (p. 238) calculated the frequency with which each reason was given for both cheating and for not cheating. Reasons given for cheating include time pressure, to get a higher grade, because everybody does it, to help a friend, and laziness. Students gave reasons for not cheating "because it is immoral," "situation did not arise," "it was unnecessary," and "personal pride." (p. 233) The study found that men cheated more, that cheating declines with age, and that it occurs more frequently among science and technology majors than among other disciplines.

Pennycook writes about some of the complexities of text, ownership, memorization, and plagiarism.⁷³ The author suggests that plagiarism needs to be understood in terms of relationships between text, memory, learning, literacy, and cultural differences.

Six hundred ninety-eight college students from nine universities completed a survey on Internet plagiarism.⁸¹ A substantial minority of the surveyed students reported they used the Internet to copy and paste text into their own papers without giving credit to sources they used in their writings.

Buranen in her piece, "But I wasn't cheating: Plagiarism and cross-cultural mythology," presents experiences with ESL (English as a Second Language) students and their writing problems and practices.¹⁰¹ In many cases, students lack a combination of vocabulary skills, factual knowledge, and bibliographic conventions. According to Buranen, cultural differences may also influence students' attitudes toward "borrowing" and "'ownership' of ideas or of text."¹⁰¹ (p.66) Cultural perspective has been further explored by Dryden in the context of Japanese education.¹⁰² (pp.75-85) Angélil-Carter writes about developing writing skills in general and not limited to non-English language students.¹⁷ She writes, "This is what is so difficult for the novice writer of academic discourse (or for any writer) -- it is the control of the voices so that the authorial voice speaks through them…" (p. 35). Nearly seventy years earlier, Edwards wrote about "good and bad borrowing," differences between imaginative and unimaginative borrowing, and those between a derivative artist and a thief.¹⁰³ Says Edward, "…many of them seem to be so craft-conscious in their writing, so full of reminiscences and echoes of other poets, and so thoroughly traditional in outlook and style, that the extremely Romantic critic must be puzzled by their apparent lack of originality."

Kohlberg empirically identified different stages of moral development and grouped them into the following three broad levels (Table 1 below).^4-5 Kohlberg used moral dilemmas to elicit subjects' beliefs and opinions at different stages of their development. Based on the children's reasoning, Kohlberg identified and classified reasoning into progressive stages of moral development.

Table 1: Kohlberg's stages of development in moral reasoning

Research is needed to study predictors that might suggest students' behavioral patterns at different phases of their reasoning development. Attention is also needed in the areas of mapping research results to pedagogical units and specific disciplinary lesson plans, diagnostic and assessment tools that both librarians, media specialists, and instructors could customize for their curricular needs.

Table 2 below suggests areas that are needed now in our information literacy programs across the educational ladder. In filling the cells below, we can provide a solid basis not only to college librarians and school media specialists, but also to school and university faculty, and policy makers.

Table 2: Research agenda: studying plagiarism in digital age

Dr. Ercegovac wishes to thank Tom Gilder, Head of Windward School for supporting, in part, this project. Special thanks go to Dr. David Unger, the Director of Counseling Services for Windward Upper School, who pointed out the importance of Kohlberg's work for our understanding of moral reasoning of adolescent learners.

Reprinted from the 1909 edition by permission of the Philosophical Library (New York: Greenwood Press, 1969).

2. Jean Piaget, The Moral Judgment of the Child (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997).

3. Jean Piaget, Science of Education and the Psychology of the Child (New York: Orion Press, 1970).

4. Lawrence Kohlberg, "Moral Stages and Moralization: The Cognitive-Developmental Approach", in Moral Development and Behavior: Theory, Research, and Social Issues, edited by T. Lickona. (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1976).

5. Lawrence Kohlberg, "The Moral Atmosphere of the School," in Peter Scharf, ed., with introduction by Lawrence Kohlberg. Readings in Moral Education, 149-63. (Minneapolis, MN: Winston Press, 1978).

6. Webster's College Dictionary, (New York: Random House, 1991).

7. Oxford English Dictionary, 2^nd ed. J. Simpson and E. Weiner, eds. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989). 20 vols., suppl.

8. West's Encyclopedia of American Law. (1998 ed.) s.v. plagiarism.

10. Library of Congress Subject Headings, 21^st ed., Prepared by the Cataloging Policy and Support Office, Library Services, (Washington, DC: Library of Congress, Cataloging Distribution Service, 1998).

11. Sears List of Subject Headings, 17^th ed. Joseph Miller, ed. (New York: The H.W. Wilson Company, 2000).

12. Jonathan L. Burke, Faculty Perceptions of and Attitudes Toward Academic Dishonesty at a Two-Year College. Unpublished doctoral diss. (Athens, Georgia: 1997). Report No: ED431486.

13. Helene Elizabeth Marcoux, Kansas State University Faculty Perspectives, Opinions, and Practices Concerning Undergraduate Student Academic Dishonesty and Moral Development. Unpublished doctoral diss. (Kansas State University, 2002).

14. Robert A Harris, The Plagiarism Handbook: Strategies for Preventing, Detecting, and Dealing with Plagiarism. Cartoons by Vic Lockman, based on ideas by the author. (Los Angeles: Pyrczak, 2001).

15. William L. Kibler, "Academic Dishonesty: A Student Development Dilemma," NASPA Journal 30(Summer 1993): 252-67.

16. Judy Anderson, Plagiarism, Copyright Violation, and Other Thefts of Intellectual Property: An Annotated Bibliography with a Lengthy Introduction (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1998).

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