Cheating: It depends how you define it

Cheating in academia is defined multidimensionally and might include dishonesty, fraud, stealing, and unauthorized use. This behaviour appears to be on the rise in higher education, though it may be somewhat subjective. Beyond the ethical issue of cheating, inadequately learned skills and unqualified practitioners put lives at risk (e.g., medicine, engineering), as well as the institution’s reputation and integrity in producing proficient graduates. We asked Canadian students and faculty from a two-year college to define academic cheating in their own words and rate a number of behaviours to indicate their perception of whether the behaviour should be considered cheating or not. Overall, there was a great overlap between the themes evoked in students’ and faculty’s definitions of cheating. Differences between students’ and faculty’s ages might suggest a different degree of moral reasoning which may have impacted the responses. This study further contributes to knowledge about cheating because we surveyed college students (rather than university students), which are greatly under-represented in the literature

Identity Status: The Impact on Academic Performance

The purpose of this mixed methods study was to understand how environmental factors contributed to identity achievement with potentially positive effects on academic performance for fifth grade students. Early adolescents have not been studied partly because of the predominant acceptance of Erikson\u27s (1968) theory of identity development. Four questions guiding the study were (a) whether adolescents acquired an Achieved identity status earlier than previous research has suggested, (b) if environmental issues such as familial obligations expedited identity achievement, (c) if identity status impacted academic performance, and (d) what was the impact of an Achieved identity on academic performance. Participants were 78 fifth-grade students (39 girls and 39 boys) ages 10-13 from two schools in the southwestern United States. Their ethnicities included Latino (51%), Black (18%), White (10%), Other (9%), Biracial/Multiracial (8%), and Asian/ South Pacific Islander (4%). The organizing theory for the study was Marcia\u27s (1966) development of identity statuses and its constructs of exploration and commitment as determinants of identity status (Diffused, Foreclosed, Moratorium, and Achieved). Participants completed two quantitative measures of ego identity--the Ego Identity Process Questionnaire (EIPQ) by Balistreri, Busch-Rossnagel, & Geisinger (1995) and the Extended Objective Measure of Ego Identity Status (EOM-EIS-II) by Adams, Bennion, & Huh (1989) and one semi- structured interview. The results identified a majority of the participants as Diffused status (n = 11, 55%), or Foreclosed status (n = 6, 30%). Only three were Moratorium status (n = 3, 15%), and none were Achieved status. Children who appeared mature and responsible, for example taking care of younger siblings, were burdened with issues of daily survival that took precedence over school. Conversely, children without responsibilities could focus on school and think about their future