Academic Honesty and Plagiarism: Unartful Contact Zones

Type of Presentation

Individual paper/presentation (20 minute presentation)

Target Audience

Higher Education

Location

Room 1220 B

Proposal

As teachers, regardless of subject matter or grade level, we are caught in the middle of heater discussions about the nature of plagiarism and academic honesty in the digital age. Despite best efforts and practices to curb plagiarism in the classroom, many instructors struggle to know how to approach these issues with students during class and on a one-on-one level. With these concerns in mind, the purpose of this presentation is to engage with how instructors can best educate students toward ethical, responsible, and creative uses of sources in their academic writing.

Building off of Mary Louise Pratt’s seminal work “Arts of the Contact Zones,” this paper will argue that many instances of student plagiarism can best be understood as unartful, but very real, “social spaces where cultures meet, clash, and grapple with one another, often in contexts of highly asymmetrical power relations” (34). This paper argues that student plagiarism is often (though not always) involved in conflicting messages (academic and social) about how and when to use sources, and highlights a pedagogy that begins by discussing the competing contact zones students engage with and how those cultures influence how students come to understand how to use source material.

Works Cited

Pratt, Mary Louise. “Arts of the Contact Zones.” Profession (1991): 33-40. JSTOR. 04 Apr. 2015.

Short Description

This paper seeks to explore ways in which some instances of student plagiarism is similar to Mary Louise Pratt's notion of the contact zones--“social spaces where cultures meet, clash, and grapple with one another, often in contexts of highly asymmetrical power relations” (34). This paper argues that student plagiarism is often (though not always) involved in conflicting messages (academic and social) about how and when to use sources, and highlights a pedagogy that begins by discussing the competing contact zones students engage with and how those cultures influence how students come to understand how to use source material.

Publication Type and Release Option

Presentation (Open Access)

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Sep 25th, 8:30 AM Sep 25th, 9:45 AM

Academic Honesty and Plagiarism: Unartful Contact Zones

Room 1220 B

As teachers, regardless of subject matter or grade level, we are caught in the middle of heater discussions about the nature of plagiarism and academic honesty in the digital age. Despite best efforts and practices to curb plagiarism in the classroom, many instructors struggle to know how to approach these issues with students during class and on a one-on-one level. With these concerns in mind, the purpose of this presentation is to engage with how instructors can best educate students toward ethical, responsible, and creative uses of sources in their academic writing.

Building off of Mary Louise Pratt’s seminal work “Arts of the Contact Zones,” this paper will argue that many instances of student plagiarism can best be understood as unartful, but very real, “social spaces where cultures meet, clash, and grapple with one another, often in contexts of highly asymmetrical power relations” (34). This paper argues that student plagiarism is often (though not always) involved in conflicting messages (academic and social) about how and when to use sources, and highlights a pedagogy that begins by discussing the competing contact zones students engage with and how those cultures influence how students come to understand how to use source material.

Works Cited

Pratt, Mary Louise. “Arts of the Contact Zones.” Profession (1991): 33-40. JSTOR. 04 Apr. 2015.