Are we educating educators about academic integrity? A study of UK higher education textbooks

A substantial proportion of university students report committing plagiarism and related forms of misconduct. An academic integrity-focused approach to addressing plagiarism emphasises the promotion of positive values alongside education of staff and students about good, and bad, practice in writing, studying and assessment design. The concept was developed many years ago and is seen as desirable, yet it is not clear whether academic integrity features prominently in the education of academics themselves. We analysed source texts for postgraduate certificates in higher education (or equivalent) at UK universities. Overall, academic integrity was poorly addressed in these texts, and the language used (‘cheating’, ‘plagiarism’) was not reflective of an academic integrity-based approach. Newer issues, such as the purchasing of custom written assignments (contract cheating), were barely addressed. We conclude that the concept of academic integrity needs to be integrated into mainstream discourse around teaching in UK higher education.     

Pulling together: keeping track of pedagogy,design and evaluation through the development of scenarios—a case study

This case study describes the multipurpose use of scenarios in a large multinational research project (MOBIlearn) whose aims are to design and develop a pedagogically sound mobile learning environment. Maintaining effective communication and design focus in large consortia is a well‐known problem (see Carroll, 2000 Carrol JM (2000) Making use: scenario‐based design of human‐computer interactions Cambridge MA MIT Press  [Google Scholar]), and we describe the role of scenarios in addressing this. Scenarios were initially used to simply envision the future system in order to inform design, but as the project progressed, the role of the scenarios grew to encompass (i) relating system design and implementation to pedagogy by providing a common frame of reference for developers and pedagogic experts; (ii) through a process of refinement, defining the evaluation strategy for the user trials; and (iii) allowing us to keep the user at the heart of the development project. Thus, scenarios helped to resolve the difficulty identified by Taylor (2004 Taylor J (2004) A task‐centred approach to evaluating a mobile learning environment for pedagogic soundness in: J. Attewell & C. Savill‐Smith (Eds) Learning with mobile devices London Learning and Skills Development Agency 167 171  [Google Scholar]) of how to bring together the relatively high level issues of pedagogic evaluation and the more technical user‐centred system evaluation. The development of a first‐aid training scenario is used as an illustrative example.     

Speech acts in young children: Vygotsky’s contribution

What influence has Vygotsky’s work had on recent research in language acquisition? Vygotsky’s influence first emerged in the United States, and more specificaly in J. S. Bruner’s work. It is often implicit, and now essentially concerns one domain of language acquisition, the development of speech acts in children. Vygotsky’s approach has a certain number of points in common with the so-called “pragmatic” theories derived from the philosophy of language: the nature of signs, utility in the study of conscience and utility in phylogency The main point of divergence between the Vygotsky perspective and the one proposed in pragmatic theory concerns ontogency: ontogency was one of the focal points of Vygotsky’s work, and pragmatists are not interested in the question of ontogeny as such. From the proximal zone of development, and from the transition from an inter-psychological phase to an intra-psychological phase, Bruner developed the notions of tutoring, scaffolding and interaction format. Applying the notion of format to interactions involving children older than 2 allows to account for the early production of certain utterances. Some very recent studies have shown that Vygotsky’s approach can be discussed from two angles: the link between the adult’s assistance and the child’s language learning, and the role of asymmetry in the adult/child relationship during language acquisition.     

原地反击

不依赖我们人类自身,感染我们的病毒就无法传播.找出潜藏在人体细胞中的致病因子也许就能生产出阻止流行病的药物.     

Communication in General

COMMUNICATION YEARBOOK 11 edited by James A. Anderson (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 1988, 648 pp.—$41.95, ISBN 0-8039-3138-7)

TARNISHED GOLD: THE RECORD INDUSTRY REVISED by R. Serge Denisoff (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books/Rutgers, 1986, 487 pp.—$34.95/16.95, ISBN 0-88738-06809 [cloth], 0-88738-618-0 [paper])

INSIDE MTV by R. Serge Denisoff (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books/Rutgers, 1988, 373 pp.—$24.95, ISBN 0-88738-173-1)

THE END OF CONVERSATION: THE IMPACT OF MASS MEDIA ON MODERN SOCIETY by Franco Ferrarotti (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1988, 192 pp.—$37.95, ISBN 0-313-26087-7)

LAWS OF OUR FATHERS: POPULAR CULTURE AND THE U.S. CONSTITUTION by Ray and Glenn Browne (Bowling Green, Ohio: Popular Culture Press, 1986—$24.95/12.95, no ISBN given)

POPULAR CULTURE IN THE MIDDLE AGES edited by Josie Campbell (Bowling Greene, Ohio: Popular Culture Press, 1986—$19.95/9.95, no ISBN given)

THE PREDICAMENT OF CULTURE: TWENTIETH-CENTURY ETHNOGRAPHY, LITERATURE, AND ART by James Clifford (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988—$30.00/15.95, no ISBN given)

THE SILENT MAJORITY: NONRESPONDENTS ON SAMPLE SURVEYS by John Goyder (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1988—$39.00, no ISBN given)

MEDIA IN SOCIETY: READINGS IN MASS COMMUNICATION edited by Caren J. Deming and Samuel L. Becker (Glenview, IL: Scott, Foresman, 1988, 435 pp.—price not given, ISBN 0-673-15820-9)     

TEACHING ABOUT AGING IN THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL: A ONE‐YEAR FOLLOW‐UP

This study followed up on a 7‐day, 5th‐grade intergenerational project on aging. The “Age Doesn't Matter” (ADM) project was interdisciplinary; incorporating dance, health education, history, art, and poetry to teach about growing older. Older adults came to the school to interact with the students and the students also went on field trips to a nursing home and a retirement hotel. Thirteen of the original 19 ADM students were still in the same school 1 year after the project's completion. These students were matched by grade, gender, and race with a comparison group (n = 13) one year after the project's completion. Three experts in the field of gerontology were asked to blindly review the students' responses to open‐ended questions about aging and to rate each student concerning his or her attitudes toward aging. The ADM students were judged to have significantly (p < .05) more positive attitudes toward aging than the comparison group students.     

Written computer-mediated requests for help by French-speaking students: An analysis of their forms and functions

The present study regarded the self-regulated vs. not-self-regulated function and the indirect vs. direct (i.e., polite vs. impolite) linguistic form of middle school students’ requests for help. Natural data (149 requests were sent via an online homework-help forum by French-speaking seventh to ninth graders) was used. Nearly 60% of the requests were self-regulated and 70% were indirect (polite). Moreover, self-regulated functions (detailed or general requests about mathematics) were frequently combined with indirect request forms (embedded imperatives, question directives, or hints), suggesting that these students were capable of metacognitive reflection on their homework and followed the pragmatic communication rules of traditional student-teacher situations.