“Everybody Knows that Cheating Is Wrong, But Everyone Does it Anyway”: Educational Paradoxes of Fair Cheating
Vol.18,No.2-3(2013)
Good and Evil in Education
This empirical study shows that Swedish upper secondary students and teachers perceive the control of procedures for knowledge checks and grading so inadequate that the distribution of final assessment risks being unfair. In a market-oriented competitive school system, managed by objectives and results, grades tend to be regarded as the best measure of educational quality. Student grades thus become important for individual students, teachers and schools. Particularly important as educational hard currency is the lowest acceptable grade level, that distinguishes failures from result-achievement. Data from discussions on norms indicate that students and teachers (all of whom discussed the matters separately) show a clear justice-based tolerance for school-cheating perceived as re-securing a fair distribution of grades. The teachers are particularly tolerant to cheating students who would risk failing grades had they not cheated. Explicit prohibitions of cheating are thereby outcompeted by negotiated social norms of justice that implicitly encourages some forms of cheating. The well-known double agenda is kept as a hidden truth and thereby reproduced.
cheating; upper secondary school; justice; norm; market-orientation
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