Stephen+S+The+Wrong+Focus

Know

Ironically, those who denounce cheating most vociferously often support competitive practices like ranking students or grading on a curve that promote cheating.

Cheating is less common in classrooms where the learning is genuinely engaging, where each student sees others as resources rather than rivals

Want to know

What kinds of teaching elicit cheating? And what assumptions and values lead us to define some acts as cheating in the first place?

By definition, cheating is a violation of the rules. Are those rules reasonable? Who devised them and who benefits from them?

Why do we place a premium on working alone and cramming forgettable facts into short-term memory?

Learn

 (1)Instructors have no real relationship with their students, (2) students experience academic tasks as pointless or overwhelming, (3) //how well // students are doing (e.g., grades and test scores) matters more than //what // they’re doing, or (4) achievement is construed competitively such that the goal is to outperform others.

These results invite us to stop playing “gotcha” or focusing on the mechanics of cheating and trying to stay a step ahead of the students.

Collaborating with one’s peers while doing an assignment or consulting anything other than one’s memory during a test.

What’s defined as cheating in one classroom may be permitted or even encouraged down the hall, where the instructor values cooperation and focuses more on thinking than on memorizing

Every discussion whose unexamined premise is that anything called “cheating” should be stamped out represents another missed opportunity to look at the actions of teachers as well as the (re)actions of students, at classroom and cultural structures rather than just individual behaviors.