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Policy on Academic Honesty
Policy Statement
Students at Kempenfelt Bay School are learning to research information from a variety of sources, to glean the meaningful content of that information, and to assimilate it in such a way that it portrays their own thoughts and perspectives.
Our goal is for students to recognize authorship of work in a variety of formats, be able to credit the creators of that work and to incorporate it in an academically honest way into their own assignments.
All faculty are responsible for ensuring the understanding of academic honesty by our students. The I.B. Learner Profile is an essential component in this process and is the vehicle through which teachers and students apply the aspects of good practice to their assignments.
Students learn that:
- using the words and ideas of another person to support one’s arguments while following accepted practices, is an integral part of any intellectual endeavour, and integrating these words and ideas with one’s own in accepted ways is an important academic skill
- all ideas and work of other persons, regardless of their source, must be acknowledged
- passages that are quoted verbatim must be enclosed within quotation marks and references provided
- plagiarism can take many forms including:
- representation of the ideas or work of another person as the candidate’s own
- allowing one’s work to be copied or submitted for assessment by another student
- duplication of the work for different assessment components
- downloading of a free research paper
- buying a paper from a commercial paper mill
- copying an article from the Web or an on-line or electronic database
- translating a foreign web article into English
- copying a paper from a local source
- cutting and pasting to create a paper from several sources
- quoting less than all the words copied
- changing some words but copying whole phrases
- paraphrasing without attribution
- faking a citation
Implementation of the Policy
Through partnership with the teacher-librarian, students are taught a research process that is consistent from grade to grade (The Big 6). Learning to take notes from primary and secondary sources is emphasized and through discussion, peer mentoring and teacher conferencing, students apply these skills to present a work that is representative of their own ideas and perspectives. A handbook on plagiarism and how to cite works properly is provided to each student.
The Big 6
- Task Definition: What needs to be done?
- Information Seeking Strategies: What resources can I use?
- Location and Access: Where can I find these resources?
- Use of Information: What can I use from these resources?
- Synthesis: What can I make to finish the job?
Evaluation: How will I know I did my job well?
Consequences
We believe that students will learn to develop the necessary tools of organization, planning and research, so that resorting to academic honesty will not be necessary. Students are supported academically through each of the research steps, in a variety of subjects, so that the process becomes second nature. If during the early stages of information gathering and combining of ideas, it appears that the student is not following the process correctly, he or she will be guided by a faculty member to review the appropriate steps to complete the work honestly.
If a student is not able to follow this process appropriately and turns in material that indicates a lack of academic honesty, the consequences are as follows:
1st occasion: student will be asked to re-do the work with direct input from the teacher, parents will be informed through a meeting with the teacher and student
2nd occasion: student will be asked to re-do the work but will received a zero, parents will be informed through a meeting with the teacher, student and Associate Head of School
3rd occasion: student will be asked to re-do the work but will receive a zero, parents will be informed through a meeting with teacher, student, Associate Head of School and Head of School, and suspension or expulsion is possible
To be reviewed June 2010
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