High Schoolers and Cheating

A small study of 100 high school juniors from a mid-Western high school, published in the Mid-Western Educational Researcher, shows, yet again, that cheating is rampant. According to Kenneth Kiewra, professor of educational psychology at the University of Nebraska Lincoln, and one of the study’s authors, “Students generally understand what constitutes cheating, but they do it anyway. They cheat on tests, homework assignments and when writing reports. In some cases, though, students simply don’t grasp that some dishonest acts are cheating.”

Among the findings:

* 89 percent said glancing at someone else’s answers during a test was cheating (87 percent said they’d done that at least once)

* 94 percent said providing answers to someone during a test was cheating (74 percent admitted doing so)

* 47 percent said that providing test questions to a fellow student who had yet to take a test was academically dishonest (nearly 70 percent admitted doing so)

* 23 percent said doing individual homework with a partner was dishonest (91 percent admitted doing so)

* 39 percent said writing a report based on the movie instead of reading the book wasn’t cheating (53 percent admitted doing so)

Read more here.