California State University, Dominguez Hills
University of Wisconsin, Parkside
Latest update: July 15, 2000
jeanne
Susan

This Pass or Prepared? is based on developing theoretical perspectives for idees dans l'air, things we "all know." I will add links to lecture summaries as they go up. Tag me. jeanne

Let's look at the title of an article in a Francis and Taylor journal, Deviant Behavior : Taylor and Francis Journals. Link to alphabetical listing in left most frame, then to D, then to Deviant Behavior, then to Volume 19, Issue 3: "Academic Dishonesty and Low Self-Control: An Empirical Test of General Theory of Crime."

Suppose you walk into an academic discussion on this topic, "Academic Dishonesty and Low Self-Control: An Empirical Test of General Theory of Crime." If you have a good general grasp of social theory, you should be able to call on some of your theoretical perspectives, ask intelligent questions, and join the discussion. In this Pass? or Prepared? we are going to practice doing just that: joining in academic discourse.

Answer the following questions based on just the given title and what you know about sociological theory:

1. What do you suppose the focus of the article will be?

   One Plausible Answer

   Cheating. There is lately much discussion of cheating on academic campuses.

2. Take a look at the faculty statement of academic integrity in our catalog or on the CSUDH Website. Third paragraph under Academic Integrity. What are some of the "cultural differences with regard to the owner-ship of ideas and the importance of individual efforts?" (About an eighth of the way down the file.)

   One Plausible Answer

   Well, one difference would be the tendency of a cultural setting to function in collaboration or in competition. Present U.S. culture tends to emphasize the competitive. But specific ethnic and cultural groups emphasize collaboration and support. The Harvard Business School in recent years has offered far more emphasis than formerly on cooperative and collaborative work, for the corporate world cannot afford petty squabbles of intense internal competition. They consume energy needed elsewhere.

   Women often find themselves in cultural contexts that prize collaboration and support for the whole over intense individualized competition. Although some women have chosen to adopt the adversarial pattern of intense competition, others are not so sure that male pattterns are sufficiently adaptive in themselves to warrant their being reproduced in women's lives.

   These are certainly differences that will be reflected in "how the work is done" and "whose work it is." When a team has worked together collaboratively to study, to discuss concepts and applications, whose work is it?

3. What does the faculty statement seem to define as "dishonesty?"

   One Plausible Answer

   The faculty statement on academic integrity continues: "Nonetheless, the university expects all students and other campus members to document the intellectual contributions of others and to ensure that the work they submit is their own." That would seem to suggest that turning in the work of "others" as your own would be "dishonest." Tthis is precisely what Earl Babbie suggests in his essay on plagiarism.

Copright: Jeanne Curran and Susan R. Takata, June 2000. "Fair Use" encouraged.

Academic Dishonesty and Low Self-Control: An Empirical Test of General Theory of Crime

This is a title from the Table of Contents in Deviaant Behavior, Volume 19, Issue 3.