Defiance to Intellectual Honesty: An Investigation on Plagiarism Among CTE Students in Academic Writing

Abstract

This research study investigates the prevalence of plagiarism among College of Teacher Education (CTE) student researchers and explores the contextual and situational factors contributing to this behavior. The research was conducted by evaluating the similarity rate of CTE student researchers' papers using Turnitin and administering a questionnaire to gauge their awareness and engagement in plagiarism. The findings reveal a high percentage of similarity rates among the research papers, with an average degree of similarity index of 53%. Surprisingly, despite receiving regular supervision from research advisers and undergoing a course on research and academic writing, CTE student researchers continue to produce papers with substantial similarities. The questionnaire responses indicate that 90.2% of the respondents are aware of what plagiarism entails; however, they still “sometimes” engage in plagiaristic practices. Furthermore, 97% acknowledge that using someone else's processes, results, or words without proper attribution is a form of plagiarism. The study highlights several reasons, as generated from interviews, why CTE student researchers engage in plagiarism. These include a tendency to disregard plagiarism detection software, copying others' work without paraphrasing, and directly copying and pasting sections from external sources without appropriate attribution or quotation marks. Contextual and situational factors such as the widespread availability of information and communication technology (ICT) and the Internet, lack of teacher control, attitude, and poor self competency contribute to students' defiance of intellectual honesty. In conclusion, despite possessing adequate knowledge about plagiarism, CTE student researchers still exhibit plagiaristic behaviors, as confirmed by both the Turnitin evaluation and the research questionnaire. Efforts to address these issues should consider improving students' understanding of ethical writing practices, enhancing academic writing skills, and implementing stricter controls to discourage plagiarism in CTE research papers.