thesis statement for cheating in school

Why Do Students Cheat?

• Posted July 19, 2016
• By Zachary Goldman

In March, Usable Knowledge published an article on ethical collaboration , which explored researchers’ ideas about how to develop classrooms and schools where collaboration is nurtured but cheating is avoided. The piece offers several explanations for why students cheat and provides powerful ideas about how to create ethical communities. The article left me wondering how students themselves might respond to these ideas, and whether their experiences with cheating reflected the researchers’ understanding. In other words, how are young people “reading the world,” to quote Paulo Freire , when it comes to questions of cheating, and what might we learn from their perspectives?

I worked with Gretchen Brion-Meisels to investigate these questions by talking to two classrooms of students from Massachusetts and Texas about their experiences with cheating. We asked these youth informants to connect their own insights and ideas about cheating with the ideas described in " Ethical Collaboration ." They wrote from a range of perspectives, grappling with what constitutes cheating, why people cheat, how people cheat, and when cheating might be ethically acceptable. In doing so, they provide us with additional insights into why students cheat and how schools might better foster ethical collaboration.

Why Students Cheat

Students critiqued both the individual decision-making of peers and the school-based structures that encourage cheating. For example, Julio (Massachusetts) wrote, “Teachers care about cheating because its not fair [that] students get good grades [but] didn't follow the teacher's rules.” His perspective represents one set of ideas that we heard, which suggests that cheating is an unethical decision caused by personal misjudgment. Umna (Massachusetts) echoed this idea, noting that “cheating is … not using the evidence in your head and only using the evidence that’s from someone else’s head.”

Other students focused on external factors that might make their peers feel pressured to cheat. For example, Michima (Massachusetts) wrote, “Peer pressure makes students cheat. Sometimes they have a reason to cheat like feeling [like] they need to be the smartest kid in class.” Kayla (Massachusetts) agreed, noting, “Some people cheat because they want to seem cooler than their friends or try to impress their friends. Students cheat because they think if they cheat all the time they’re going to get smarter.” In addition to pressure from peers, students spoke about pressure from adults, pressure related to standardized testing, and the demands of competing responsibilities.

When Cheating is Acceptable

Students noted a few types of extenuating circumstances, including high stakes moments. For example, Alejandra (Texas) wrote, “The times I had cheated [were] when I was failing a class, and if I failed the final I would repeat the class. And I hated that class and I didn’t want to retake it again.” Here, she identifies allegiance to a parallel ethical value: Graduating from high school. In this case, while cheating might be wrong, it is an acceptable means to a higher-level goal.

Encouraging an Ethical School Community

Several of the older students with whom we spoke were able to offer us ideas about how schools might create more ethical communities. Sam (Texas) wrote, “A school where cheating isn't necessary would be centered around individualization and learning. Students would learn information and be tested on the information. From there the teachers would assess students' progress with this information, new material would be created to help individual students with what they don't understand. This way of teaching wouldn't be based on time crunching every lesson, but more about helping a student understand a concept.”

Sam provides a vision for the type of school climate in which collaboration, not cheating, would be most encouraged. Kaith (Texas), added to this vision, writing, “In my own opinion students wouldn’t find the need to cheat if they knew that they had the right undivided attention towards them from their teachers and actually showed them that they care about their learning. So a school where cheating wasn’t necessary would be amazing for both teachers and students because teachers would be actually getting new things into our brains and us as students would be not only attentive of our teachers but also in fact learning.”

Both of these visions echo a big idea from “ Ethical Collaboration ”: The importance of reducing the pressure to achieve. Across students’ comments, we heard about how self-imposed pressure, peer pressure, and pressure from adults can encourage cheating.

Where Student Opinions Diverge from Research

The ways in which students spoke about support differed from the descriptions in “ Ethical Collaboration .” The researchers explain that, to reduce cheating, students need “vertical support,” or standards, guidelines, and models of ethical behavior. This implies that students need support understanding what is ethical. However, our youth informants describe a type of vertical support that centers on listening and responding to students’ needs. They want teachers to enable ethical behavior through holistic support of individual learning styles and goals. Similarly, researchers describe “horizontal support” as creating “a school environment where students know, and can persuade their peers, that no one benefits from cheating,” again implying that students need help understanding the ethics of cheating. Our youth informants led us to believe instead that the type of horizontal support needed may be one where collective success is seen as more important than individual competition.

Why Youth Voices Matter, and How to Help Them Be Heard

Our purpose in reaching out to youth respondents was to better understand whether the research perspectives on cheating offered in “ Ethical Collaboration ” mirrored the lived experiences of young people. This blog post is only a small step in that direction; young peoples’ perspectives vary widely across geographic, demographic, developmental, and contextual dimensions, and we do not mean to imply that these youth informants speak for all youth. However, our brief conversations suggest that asking youth about their lived experiences can benefit the way that educators understand school structures.

Too often, though, students are cut out of conversations about school policies and culture. They rarely even have access to information on current educational research, partially because they are not the intended audience of such work. To expand opportunities for student voice, we need to create spaces — either online or in schools — where students can research a current topic that interests them. Then they can collect information, craft arguments they want to make, and deliver their messages. Educators can create the spaces for this youth-driven work in schools, communities, and even policy settings — helping to support young people as both knowledge creators and knowledge consumers. 

Additional Resources

• Read “ Student Voice in Educational Research and Reform ” [PDF] by Alison Cook-Sather.
• Read “ The Significance of Students ” [PDF] by Dana L. Mitra.
• Read “ Beyond School Spirit ” by Emily J. Ozer and Dana Wright.

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School effectiveness and student cheating: Do students’ grades and moral standards matter for this relationship?

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• Volume 22 , pages 517–538, ( 2019 )

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Cheating is a more or less prominent feature of all educational contexts, but few studies have examined its association with aspects of school effectiveness theory. With recently collected data from upper-secondary school students and their teachers, this study aims to examine whether three aspects of school effectiveness—school leadership, teacher cooperation and consensus, and school ethos—are predictive of student’s self-reported cheating, while also taking student- and school-level sociodemographic characteristics as well as student grades and moral standards into consideration. The study is based on combined data from two surveys: one targeting students and the other targeting teachers. The data cover upper secondary schools in Stockholm and includes information from 4529 students and 1045 teachers in 46 schools. Due to the hierarchical data, multilevel modelling was applied, using two-level binary logistic regression analyses. Results show significant negative associations between all three aspects of school effectiveness and student cheating, indicating that these conditions are important to consider in the pursuit of a more ethical, legitimate and equitable education system. Our findings also indicate that the relationship between school effectiveness and student cheating is partly mediated by student grades and moral standards.

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1 Introduction

Upper secondary school has been put forward as a critical period in life for people’s moral and ethical development (McCabe and Trevino 1993 ). Although cheating in school is an essentially individual act, strongly linked to the individual’s morality and ethical compass, the inclination to cheat also depends on contextual circumstances (Day et al. 2011 ; Wowra 2007 ). Thus, previous studies have shown that both individual and contextual factors play a role in student’s tendency to cheat (McCabe et al. 2012 ).

The problem of a school’s cheating prevalence can roughly be divided into two dimensions, both of which contain elements of equity and fairness. The first dimension relates to the school’s obligation to provide as fair an assessment of each student’s performance as possible (Lundahl 2010 ). This is important in its own right, but also serves as a foundation of the school’s credibility when it comes to fostering the moral and ethical development of their students. The second dimension concerns the societal goals of equitable allocation of life opportunities, meaning that someone who cheat may take someone else’s place in the competition for higher education and future employment. This kind of injustice becomes particularly critical during upper secondary school when students compete for places in higher education with their final grades.

Research conducted within the field of school effectiveness has pointed to the importance of school contextual features for introducing adolescents into adulthood and counteracting unwanted behaviours (Granvik-Saminathen et al. 2018 ; Ramberg et al. 2018a ; Rutter and Maughan 2002 ; Teddlie and Reynolds 2000 ), but few studies have been carried out on the importance of school effectiveness for student cheating (McCabe et al. 2012 ). The existing literature is also limited regarding studies that have had the opportunity to take individual students’ moral values into consideration when examining potential external causes of student cheating (Yu et al. 2017 ).

With data that combine student and teacher information from two separate data collections performed in 2016, comprising teachers and students in 46 upper secondary schools in Stockholm, we intend to contribute to this field of research by examining whether high teacher-ratings of three features of school effectiveness (school leadership, teacher cooperation, and school ethos) is predictive of low self-reported student cheating, while controlling for a number of social and demographic background characteristics. We will also investigate the potential mediating role of students’ grades and moral standards for the studied associations.

1.1 Student cheating

There is no commonly accepted, standard definition of academic dishonesty (Schmelkin et al. 2008 ), but it usually refers to behaviours such as cheating on exams or homework tests, copying other student’s homework and assignments, unauthorized cooperation with peers, and plagiarism (Arnett et al. 2002 ), with that in common that they are related to the individual’s moral identity (Wowra, 2007 ). Among these different immoral behaviours, it has been shown that both students and teachers consider cheating on exams as the most serious breach of the rules (Bernardi et al. 2008 ). As with the concept of academic dishonesty, there is no commonly held definition of student cheating (McCabe et al. 2012 ), but several types of acts are generally included as markers of student cheating, all of which have in common that they are wrongful acts intended to improve the student’s own or others’ “apparent” performance. A definition in line with this can be found in the Swedish Higher Education Ordinance ( 2002 /2010) which states that cheating refers to the use of “prohibited aids or other methods to attempt to deceive during examinations or other forms of assessment of study performance” (chapter 10, para1). Common ways of cheating on homework tests or examinations are to swap papers/answers with peers, bring crib notes, use unauthorized equipment, look at another student’s test, let someone else look at their own, obtaining a copy of the test prior to taking it in class, taking a test for another student, or by failing to report grading errors of an exam (Bernardi et al. 2008 ; Smith et al. 2002 , 2004 ).

Numerous surveys have been conducted over the years to compile the extent of cheating at both the upper secondary and university levels, predominantly in the US. In reviews of these surveys it appears that as much as up to two thirds of college students, and even higher proportions in high school, reported some kind of cheating behaviour during their last academic year (Davis et al. 2011 ; McCabe et al. 2012 ). This picture is strengthened by findings from another study covering about 23,000 high school students (grades 9–12) in the US, where about 50 percent stated that they had cheated at least once during a test in school in the year prior to the survey (Josephson Institute 2012 ). Although research shows that cheating is not restricted to a certain country or geographical area, the number of studies in geographical contexts other than the US is much more limited (Davis et al. 2011 ; Shariffuddin and Holmes 2009 ). One of the few studies that compared the extent of cheating on exams between nations, based on 7,200 university students from 21 countries, found that the rates and beliefs about cheating differ by country, and that countries known to be the least corrupt had the lowest proportions of student cheating. Consequently, Scandinavian countries displayed a lower level of cheating than most other nations (Teixeira and Rocha 2010 ). However, to the best of our knowledge, there is no sizeable study that has examined the prevalence of academic cheating in Sweden.

1.2 Characteristics related to student cheating

1.2.1 individual characteristics.

One of the most common characteristics examined in relation to student cheating is gender. Several studies report that males are more prone to cheat and that they have more permissive attitudes towards cheating than females (e.g., Arnett et al. 2002 ; Hensley et al. 2013 ; Jereb et al. 2018 ). Other studies show that even though there seems to be a small direct effect of gender on student cheating, it is mainly a set of social mechanisms related to gender (e.g. shame, embarrassment, self-control) that account for the existing differences between males’ and females’ cheating behaviour (Gibson et al. 2008 ; McCabe et al. 2012 ; Niiya et al. 2008 ).

Another variable that has been extensively investigated in relation to student cheating is academic achievement (most often operationalized as GPAs or grades). Students with lower grades tend to be more likely to cheat than those with higher grades (e.g. Burrus et al. 2007 ; Klein et al. 2007 ; McCabe and Trevino 1997 ). Socioeconomic background (e.g. parents’ education, income and occupation), on the other hand, appears to be of less importance for student cheating according to the existing literature (Kerkvliet 1994 ; McCabe and Trevino 1997 ; Whitley 1998 ).

The relationship between migration background and student cheating is a complex issue and the literature is scarce. While research does not seem to point to any major disparity between different ethnic groups, students with a foreign language can experience greater difficulties in understanding the content of the education (Mori 2000 ), and therefore be more inclined to cheat.

As could be expected, permissive attitudes toward cheating have been found to increase the likelihood of engaging in such behaviours (Farnese et al. 2011 ; Whitley 1998 ). However, girls’ cheating behaviour seem to be more strongly affected by perceiving cheating as morally wrong (Gibson et al. 2008 ). Furthermore, students with lower stress resistance, higher risk willingness, lower work ethic and lower motivation seem to be more likely to cheat (Davis et al. 2011 ). Excessive demands from parents and personal desires to excel in school have also proved to be important motivations for student cheating (McCabe et al. 1999 ).

1.2.2 Contextual characteristics

While individual characteristics and influences from the family can increase a student’s incentives to cheat, the contextual conditions offered by the school can also be more or less favourable for acting upon such incentives (Nilsson et al. 2004 ). It is a matter of fact that students are more likely to cheat when they perceive the risk of being detected as slight, and when the consequences of potential detection are regarded as low (Bisping et al. 2008 ; Cizek 1999 ; Gire and Williams 2007 ; McCabe and Trevino 1993 ; Whitley and Keith-Spiegel 2002 ). For instance, schools with clearly formulated rules against cheating tend to have lower rates of such behaviour (McCabe and Trevino 1993 ; McCabe et al. 2001 ). The school’s ability to detect and impose penalties for students who cheat is of course also important (McCabe et al. 2012 ).

One of the most influential contextual factors for cheating is the extent to which students perceive that their peers cheat (McCabe et al. 2012 ), that is how normalized such behaviour has become at the school. Normalization of cheating is when a permissive culture is developed through a shift in the collective attitudes of the students, whereby cheating is increasingly viewed as less blameable and morally wrong the more often individual students perceive that their peers cheat (McCabe et al. 2012 ; O’Rourke et al. 2010 ). Previous research has shown that schools with a strong focus on competition and achievement tend to invoke an increased amount of cheating among its students (Anderman and Koenka 2017 ; Anderman and Midgley 2004 ), whereas schools that emphasize the value of learning itself tend to display a lower amount of cheating (Miller et al. 2007 ). Taken together, the school’s culture, or ethos, appears to have a crucial impact on students’ inclination to cheat.

1.2.3 Implications of student cheating

Cheating in school is linked to an increased risk for future unethical actions, both in further education and later working life (e.g. Carpenter et al. 2004 ; Graves 2011 ; Lucas and Friedrich 2005 ; Lawson 2004 ; Whitley 1998 ). Having developed a cheating behaviour in one social context is thus likely to spill over to another (Bowers 1964 ). Fonseca ( 2014 ) discusses the problematic consequences of student cheating in terms of two main aspects. The first concerns how ethics, morals and social trust in school become damaged through cheating, and the second concerns how the learning of an individual student is affected. Thus, student cheating means that the trust of the school as an institution for allocation of future education opportunities and positions in work life becomes weakened (Whitley and Keith-Spiegel 2002 ). The fact that cheating leads to a knowledge assessment of the student that is not correct also means that the student’s prerequisites for continued learning is negatively affected.

1.3 School effectiveness

Research on school effectiveness deals with school organizational factors and the way in which they shape student’s learning and behaviour. According to the theory of effective schools, certain contextual features are crucial for the school’s possibility of creating positive student outcomes and for counteracting negative behaviours (e.g. Grosin 2004 ; Rutter et al. 1979 ; Sellström and Bremberg 2006 ). As maintained by Scheerens ( 2016 ), there is a strong consensus within the field about which school contextual factors that are of particular importance for student outcome, namely those that are concerned with a strong and clear school leadership, development of and cooperation between teachers, and the overall school ethos. These three features of school effectiveness can be understood as hierarchically ordered, where agents in the higher level of the school structure (e.g. school leadership) has the potential to influence processes at the intermediate level (e.g. teachers and other school staff), which in turn affect conditions at the lower level (i.e. students) (Blair 2002 ).

Studies have shown that school leadership is of great importance for student outcomes (Låftman et al. 2017 ; Ramberg et al. 2018a , b ), but that the effects should be understood as indirect since they are often mediated through, for example, the teachers’ collegial work and the culture of the school as a whole (Muijs 2011 ). Teacher cooperation involves conditions for meeting and creating opportunities for communication, exchange of ideas, joint planning and collegial support, which is also a prerequisite for consensus on important educational and organizational issues (Ramberg et al. 2018b ; Vangrieken et al. 2015 ; Van Waes et al. 2016 ). The concept of school ethos, finally, refers to the norms, values and beliefs permeating the school and manifesting themselves in the way that teachers and students relate, interact and behave towards each other (Modin et al. 2017 ; Rutter et al. 1979 ). Research within the field of school effectiveness has pointed to the importance of these school contextual features for counteracting unwanted student behaviours such as bullying (Modin et al. 2017 ) and truancy (Ramberg et al. 2018a ). It seems reasonable to assume that they also have an impact on the extent of student cheating at the school.

1.4 The Swedish upper secondary school context and student cheating

The Swedish upper secondary school is mainly governed by the Education Act (SFS 2010 :800) and the Upper Secondary School Ordinance (SFS 2010 : 2039). No specific guidelines for cheating are given in these documents, besides the fact that cheating behaviour should be treated as a disciplinary matter. Procedures for dealing with student cheating and their disciplinary actions, should be developed within the frames of each school’s own rule policy. However, according to SFS ( 2010 : 2039), it appears that principals at the upper secondary level may decide to suspend a student if he or she has used unauthorized methods or otherwise tried to mislead any assessments of their performance or knowledge. Since there are no central laws or regulations concerning student cheating, it is reasonable to assume that there is a great variation between schools in rates of cheating and the ways in which these matters are handled.

The Swedish school system in general, and upper secondary school in particular, has undergone massive reforms over the past two decades, resulting in heavily economized and market-adapted changes combined with a grade system that consists of a sharp line between approved grades and failure (Lundahl et al. 2014 ; Ramberg 2015 ). In a competitive school market, failed grades often mean that individual students will face difficulties to establish themselves in the labour market. On behalf of the school, a high proportion of failed grades means that the attractiveness of the school decreases, and that teachers risk disadvantageous wage allocations. Therefore, it is not difficult to see that all involved parties in this market-oriented school system will “fight” for approved grades in order to survive. The distinction between failed and approved grades constitutes a harsh border between failure and success for both the individual student, the teacher, and the school. The pursuit for passed grades may therefore invoke a higher degree of cheating among students as well as a higher tolerance among teachers for a school culture of cheating (Fonseca 2014 ).

The aim of the present study is to examine the relationship between three teacher-rated aspects of school effectiveness—school leadership, teacher cooperation and consensus, and school ethos—and student’s self-reported cheating in upper secondary school. We hypothesize that higher ratings of these effectiveness features are related to a lower degree of student cheating, even when socio-demographic background characteristics at both the student- and at the school-level as well as individual grades and moral values have been taken into consideration in the analysis.

The following hypotheses are formulated:

The teachers’ ratings of each of the three features of school effectiveness (school leadership, teacher cooperation and school ethos) is negatively associated with degree of student cheating.

These associations remain when controlling for sociodemographic characteristics at both the student-and school-level.

Students’ self-reported grades serve as a mediator in the relationship between each of the three studied school effectiveness characteristics and student cheating.

Students’ self-reported moral values serve as a mediator in the relationship between each of the three studied school effectiveness characteristics and student cheating.

The associations between each of the three studied school effectiveness characteristics and student cheating remain also when controlling for student grades and moral values.

The study is based on data from two separate surveys, both of which were performed in 2016: the Stockholm School Survey (SSS), and the Stockholm Teacher Survey (STS). The SSS is carried out every second year by Stockholm Municipality among students in the 2nd grade of the upper secondary school (aged 17 to 18 years); henceforth called eleventh grade students (N = 8324, response rate 77.1%). All public schools are obliged to participate, whereas independent schools are invited to participate on a voluntary basis. The questionnaires are administered by teachers and filled in by the students in the classroom. The SSS covers a wide range of questions with a specific focus on alcohol, smoking, drugs and crime, but areas such as family background, personal qualities, psychological health, grades and cheating are also included. The STS was conducted by our research group, targeting all upper-secondary level teachers (grades 10–12) (N = 2443, response rate 57.9%) in Stockholm Municipality through a web-based questionnaire. The overall aim of the STS was to gather information about schools through teachers’ ratings of their working conditions, the school leadership, teacher cooperation and consensus, and school ethos, and to link these school-contextual aspects to students’ responses from the SSS. The two surveys were merged, which means that only schools who participated in both surveys were included, resulting in a study sample covering information from 6129 students and 1204 teachers across 58 schools. We have also linked school-level information from official records to our data (Swedish National Agency of Education 2016 ). Due to missing information in these official records, 12 schools (comprising 528 students) were lost. Additionally, students with missing information on any of the variables used in the analyses were excluded (n = 1072), resulting in a final study sample of 4529 eleventh grade students and 1045 upper-secondary school teachers across 46 schools.

Student data from the Stockholm School Survey were collected anonymously, and were not considered as an issue of ethical concern, according to a decision by the Regional Ethical Review Board of Stockholm (2010/241-31/5). The Stockholm Teacher Survey was approved by the Regional Ethical Review Board of Stockholm (2015/1827-31/5).

2.2 Variables

2.2.1 dependent variable.

Student cheating was created from the question: ‘Have you cheated on a homework test or an examination at school this year?’, followed by the response options ‘No’; ‘Yes, once’; ‘Yes, 2–3 times’; ‘Yes, 4–10 times’; ‘Yes, 10–20 times’ and ‘Yes, more than 20 times’. The variable was dichotomized into those who reported cheating 0–3 times vs. those who reported cheating four times or more. The reason for this relatively conservative cut-off was to make certain that we only capture serious cases of cheating with this measure.

2.2.2 Main independent variables (school-level)

The main independent variables consist of three teacher-rated dimensions of school effectiveness: school leadership, teacher cooperation and consensus, and school ethos. These dimensions were developed from three batteries of questions in the STS meant to capture the most essential theoretical components of effective schools. All items included in the three dimensions of school effectiveness are presented in Table  1 . The response alternatives for the items were: ‘Strongly agree’; ‘Agree’; ‘Neither agree nor disagree’; ‘Disagree’; and ‘Strongly disagree’. In order to check if the items were related as expected, exploratory factor analysis (EFA), followed by confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) were performed. School-level means for each of the three measures were calculated and merged with student-level data, whereupon they were z-transformed (mean value = 0, standard deviation = 1) in order to facilitate comparison between their coefficients. Values from all items were added to form an index with higher scores indicating higher teacher ratings of the dimensions of school effectiveness. As shown in Table  1 , all indices have a good or reasonably good model fit and high internal consistency.

2.2.3 Potential confounders (school-level)

At the school-level, five variables retrieved from the Swedish National Agency’s database, are adjusted for as potential confounders: proportion of students with a foreign background (i.e. born outside Sweden or having both parents born outside of Sweden) ; proportion of students with parents with post - secondary education ; students - per - teacher ratio ; and proportion of teachers with a pedagogical degree . School type, finally, refers to whether the school is public or independent.

2.2.4 Potential confounders and mediators (student-level)

Several variables at the individual level that could act as potential confounders or mediators were adjusted for in the analyses. Gender was coded as ‘boy’ (value 0) or ‘girl’ (value 1). Parental education was created from the question ‘What is the highest education your parents have?’ with the following response options to be ticked separately for the mother and the father: ‘Compulsory’; ‘Upper secondary school’; and ‘University’. The variable was coded into those who reported no parent with post-secondary education or missing information (value 0), those with one parent with post-secondary education (value 1), and those reported having two parents with post-secondary education (value 2). Migration background was measured by asking ‘How long have you lived in Sweden?’ followed by the response alternatives: ‘All my life’; ‘10 years or more’; ‘5–9 years’; and ‘less than 5 years’. The variable was coded into those who lived in Sweden their whole life (value 0), those who lived in Sweden ten years or more (value 1), and those reported living in Sweden less than ten years (value 2). Grades were measured as the summation of the student’s self-reported grades in the foundation subjects Swedish, mathematics and English from the previous term. Grades (A–F) were given numerical values (A = 5, B = 4, C = 3, D = 2, E = 1, and F or no grade = 0), resulting in an approximately normally distributed index ranging between 0 and 15. Moral index was created from the question ‘How well do the following statements describe you as a person?’ followed by the statements: ‘I lie to get benefits or to get out of doing tough things’; ‘I ignore rules that stop me from doing what I want to do’; ‘I think it’s OK to take something without asking as long as you don’t get caught’; and ‘It’s wrong to cheat at school’. Each item had four response alternatives: ‘Describes very poorly’, ‘Describes rather poorly’, ‘Describes rather well’, and ‘Describes very well’. The scores from each statement were summed into an index ranging between 4 and 16, with low values indicating high moral standards.

2.3 Statistical method and analytical strategy

Due to the hierarchical nature of the data, multilevel modelling was applied. Two-level binary logistic random intercept models were estimated. Since studies comparing Odds Ratios (OR) between logistic regression models have been shown to be problematic (Mood 2010 ), we have also performed multilevel linear probability models as sensitivity analyses. The three independent variables were highly correlated (r = .68–.80) and were therefore analyzed in separate models to avoid multicollinearity problems (Djurfeldt and Barmark 2009 ). In order to estimate the variation of student cheating between schools, we first estimated an empty model with no independent variables. The Intra Class Correlation (ICC) for binary outcomes gives approximate information about the variance that can be ascribed to the school-level (Wu et al. 2012 ).

The posed hypotheses are addressed in a series of models where the assumed confounders and mediators are successively taken into consideration. Model 1 targets hypothesis 1 by examining the associations between the three independent school effectiveness variables and student cheating. The second and third models aim to answer hypothesis 2 by exploring the possible impact of confounders at the individual- and school-level. Models 4–5, investigate the mediating role of student grades and moral standards in order to answer hypothesis 3 and 4, respectively. Model 6, finally, examines whether the studied associations remain even when student grades and moral values are controlled for. In order to assess whether the goodness of fit was significantly improved when the potential mediators were added to the models, the Likelihood Ratio Test was used.

Regarding the mediation analyses, we rely on Baron and Kenny’s ( 1986 ) four-step model for testing mediation. The first step consists of making sure that the independent variable is significantly associated with the dependent variable, and the second step of ensuring that the independent variable is significantly related to the presumed mediator. In the third step, the mediator should be significantly related to the independent variable. The fourth step, finally, consists of making sure that the previously significant relationship between the independent variable and the dependent variable decreases (or becomes non-significant) when the assumed mediator is included in the model (Baron and Kenny 1986 ). The first three steps are examined through bivariate associations, while the final step is examined in the last three models of the regression analyses.

The left-hand side of Table  2 presents descriptive statistics for all of the variables used in the analyses. About eight percent of the students in this study reported that they had cheated four or more times on a homework test or an examination during the past school year. There are slightly more girls than boys represented in the sample, and about 42 percent reported having two parents with post-secondary education, while about 25 percent reported having one parent with post-secondary education. The majority of students have lived in Sweden all of their lives, but about 17 percent report having a migration background. The mean grade in the three foundation subjects is 8.6, and the mean score on the index assessing moral values is 7. There is a substantial variation between schools in the three (unstandardized) measures of school effectiveness as indicated by their range. This is also the case for the school-level indicators of parents’ educational level and foreign background. Likewise, the average teacher density and the degree of qualified teachers differ substantially between schools. About 40 percent of the students in our sample attended an independent upper secondary school, which reflects the high proportion of independent schools in the municipality of Stockholm.

The first column of the right hand side of Table  2 presents the bivariate associations between the independent variables and the studied outcome. All variables, except students-per-teacher-ratio and percentage of teachers with a pedagogical degree at the school, are significantly associated with student cheating. These findings also confirm the first and third steps of Baron and Kenny’s ( 1986 ) model for testing mediation, namely that our main independent variables (school leadership, teacher cooperation and consensus and school ethos) as well as our hypothesized mediators (grades and moral values) are significantly associated with the studied outcome. Furthermore, the results of the bivariate analyses show a somewhat higher degree of reported cheating among students in independent schools, among boys, among students with lower parental education, and among students having lived their whole life in Sweden. The results in the two final columns of Table  2 confirm that the second step of Baron and Kenny’s criteria for testing mediation is largely fulfilled as well, namely that our three main independent variables are significantly associated with the two hypothesised mediators. The only exception is the absence of a significant association between teacher cooperation and students’ moral values. This means that we can already now conclude that there is no mediating effect of students’ moral values in the relationship between the school’s degree of teacher cooperation and student cheating.

Table  3 presents the main findings of the study in a series of five models where potential confounders (Models 2–3) and mediators (Models 4–6) at the school- and student-level are successively introduced. The empty model reveals an ICC of 0.1010, indicating that roughly 10 percent of the variation in student cheating can be attributed to conditions at the school level. As expected, higher levels of all three teacher-rated features of school effectiveness (Model 1) are associated with lower student-reported cheating. The estimate for school leadership indicates that each standard deviation increase in leadership quality is associated with a decreased odds of student cheating corresponding to OR = 0.73 ( p  =  0.003 ). The analogous estimates for teacher cooperation and school ethos are OR = 0.77 ( p  =  0.012 ) and OR = 0.63 ( p  <  0.001 ), respectively. Thus, school ethos is the strongest predictor of student cheating among the three studied school effectiveness features. This is also evident from the ICC values, where a larger drop in the estimate vis-à-vis the empty model can be seen for school ethos (ICC = 0.0391) than for school leadership (ICC = 0.0769) and teacher cooperation (ICC = 0.0804). It thus seems like quite a large part of the observed differences between schools in student cheating operate via the school’s teacher-rated ethos.

The odds ratios for all three indicators of school effectiveness remain practically unaltered when sociodemographic characteristics at both the school-level (Model 2) and student-level (Model 3) are adjusted for. Thus, even though the inclusion of these variables is associated with a further reduction of the ICC values, the adjusted odds ratios remain practically the same as in the crude model, suggesting that their confounding effect is minor. When adding grades as a potential mediator in Model 4, however, the odds ratios for student cheating decreases markedly in relation to both school leadership (OR = 0.81, p  =  0.028 ) and school ethos (OR = 0.71, p  <  0.001 ), indicating that students’ increased tendency to cheat when their grades are low serves as a mediator between these two indicators and student cheating. When it comes to the importance of teacher cooperation for student cheating, however, grades do not seem to affect the association to the same extent.

In Model 5, we replace grades by the moral index in order to explore whether the students’ moral standards might serve as a mediator between our indicators of school effectiveness and student cheating. Here too, a clear drop in odds ratios vis-à-vis Model 3 takes place for school leadership and school ethos, but not for teacher cooperation. This suggests that students’ increased tendency to cheat when their moral standards are low serves as another mediator in the association between these two features of school effectiveness and student cheating.

In Model 6, finally, we include both grades and moral index score in the model to explore the extent to which they overlap in their effect on the studied relationship. While the odds ratios for school leadership and school ethos decreases somewhat further, this is not really the case for teacher cooperation. This suggests that both grades and moral standards are important mechanisms in the association between school leadership and student cheating as well as in the association between school ethos and student cheating. While moral standards do not seem to be important for the link between teacher cooperation and student cheating, there does seem to be a small effect of grades (Model 4). Both teacher cooperation and school ethos remain with a statistically significant effect on student cheating in the final model. However, when both of the assumed mediators are controlled for, the direct effect of school leadership on student cheating is no longer significant at the 5% level. This further supports the supposition that they do serve as mediators in the studied association.

4 Discussion

This study examined whether higher levels of teacher-rated school effectiveness in terms of school leadership, teacher cooperation and consensus, and school ethos are associated with a lower degree of cheating among upper-secondary students in Stockholm, and whether grades and moral standards operate as mediators of these relationships. The results lent support to our first hypothesis by showing that each of the three studied school effectiveness indicators were significantly related to student cheating. Thus, the higher the teachers’ average ratings of their school’s effectiveness in terms of leadership, teacher cooperation and especially ethos, the less likely it is for students attending that school to cheat. These associations largely remained when sociodemographic conditions at both the student- and school-level were adjusted for, thus confirming our second hypothesis. This finding is in line with previous research showing that students’ social background is of less importance for their inclination to cheat (Kerkvliet 1994 ; McCabe and Trevino 1997 ; Whitley 1998 ).

Research within the field of effective schools have pointed to the importance of a strong and clear school leadership, collegial cooperation between teachers as well as a prosperous school ethos for counteracting negative behaviours and improving student outcomes in a variety of areas (Grosin 2004 ; Rutter et al. 1979 ; Sellström and Bremberg 2006 ). Our study adds to these findings by showing that a school’s adherence to the principles of effective schools also seem to counteract student cheating. An underlying idea of these principles is that the school leadership should provide the necessary conditions for processes at lower levels of the school structure (the classroom- and student-level) to come into force (Blair 2002 ). This involves having a clear and pronounced educational vision and a strategy where rules and consequences are clearly formulated and communicated to teachers and students. A teaching staff which is encouraged by the management to convey and enforce ethical behaviour among their students in a systematic manner would—from the perspective of effective schools—then be able to create a school ethos characterized by zero-tolerance towards cheating.

As stated previously, the concept of school ethos refers to the norms, values and beliefs permeating the school and manifesting themselves in the way that teachers and students relate, interact and behave towards each other (Rutter et al. 1979 ). It is not surprising that ethos was the strongest predictor of student cheating in this study since this could be viewed as the “end-product” of how a school is led, and thus what students actually experience in their every-day school life. If a school’s ethos is characterized by a lack of concern for ethical behaviour, cheating is likely to increase and rub off on additional students, eventually becoming a normalized behaviour. Previous studies have, for example, shown that the degree of student cheating is lower in schools where there are clear rules against and consequences of such behaviour, and where the risk of detection interest is high (Bisping et al. 2008 ; Cizek 1999 ; Gire and Williams 2007 ; McCabe and Trevino 1993 ; Whitley and Keith-Spiegel 2002 ).

Personal characteristics and circumstances can of course also affect a student’s inclination to cheat. In this study, we firstly explored whether the students’ grades and moral values acted as mediators in the studied relationship, and secondly whether our three indicators of school effectiveness were linked to student cheating regardless of student grades and moral values. Results showed a clear reduction of the school effectiveness estimates when student grades were introduced in the models, thus confirming our third hypothesis that grades serve as a mediator in the studied associations. The mediating effect was however weaker for teacher cooperation, than for school leadership and school ethos. In line with previous research in this field (e.g. Rutter and Maughan 2002 ; Sellström and Bremberg 2006 ), these results suggest that students who attend schools with a strong adherence to the principles of school effectiveness tend to receive higher grades which, in turn, leads to weaker incentives to cheat (and vice versa). That students with lower grades tend to be more inclined to cheat is also something that has been demonstrated in previous research (Burrus et al. 2007 ; Klein et al. 2007 ; McCabe and Trevino 1997 ). Our findings add to the existing literature by showing that grades in fact seem to act as a mediator in the association between school effectiveness and student cheating.

The fourth hypothesis concerned the potentially mediating role of students’ moral values in the association between school effectiveness and student cheating, and was largely confirmed as well. For teacher cooperation, however, no mediating effect of moral values could be detected in relation to student cheating. Our results nevertheless show that a school’s leadership and ethos are important for shaping the moral standards of their students, and through this, their inclination to cheat. When grades and moral values were simultaneously controlled for in the final model, the estimates for both teacher cooperation and school ethos remained statistically significant, whereas the estimate for school leadership became non-significant. This largely confirms our fifth and final hypothesis that features of school effectiveness also have an effect on student cheating regardless of the student’s personal circumstances and characteristics in terms of grades and moral values. In terms of interpretation of these findings, it seems reasonable to assume that students who cheat because they do not see any moral problems with it are more likely to express an “inherent lack of morality” (which they bring into school), whereas students who cheat despite considering it as morally wrong are more likely to have adopted this behavior in school.

Upper secondary school constitutes an important stage in life in which ethical and moral values are shaped for the future. The degree to which the school manages to convey and enforce ethical behaviour is vital for their students’ chances of developing a sound “moral compass” to guide them in their future choices and decisions, and for their prospects of becoming a trusted colleague and a good citizen along their continued life-path. Previous research has shown that immoral acts such as cheating are likely to spill over into other social contexts (Bower 1964 ) and that cheating during upper secondary school is linked to future unethical actions, both in further education and later in working life (Carpenter et al. 2004 ; Graves 2011 ; Lucas and Friedrich 2005 ; Lawson 2004 ; Whitley 1998 ).

The presence of cheating within the educational system also has equity implications. Here, the most apparent injustice is the fact that students who refrain from cheating are disfavoured vis-à-vis those who “successfully” cheat when it comes to allocation of higher education places. Besides the obvious injustice that such a state of affair involves for the non-cheating students, it also risks undermining education as an institution for fair allocation of future life opportunities. Another unjustness concerns those who actually develop a cheating behavior in school and the long-term consequences that this may entail for the individual student (Carpenter et al. 2004 ; Graves 2011 ; Lucas and Friedrich 2005 ; Lawson 2004 ; Whitley 1998 ). In our study, we found tangible differences between schools in the proportion of students who cheated (ICC = 10%). This variation was to a large extent accounted for by differing degrees of adherence to our school effectiveness indicators, especially school ethos. Thus, depending on which school a student attends, he or she will run a greater or lesser risk of developing a cheating behaviour, which could be regarded as an injustice in its own right.

Research has shown that student cheating can be activated by perceiving that many of one’s peers tend to cheat and get away with it (McCabe et al. 2012 ; O’Rourke et al. 2010 ). School environments with a strong emphasis on competition and achievement have also been found to evoke cheating behavior in the student population (Anderman and Koenka 2017 ; Anderman and Midgley 2004 ). At the structural level too, Fonseca ( 2014 ) argues that an educational system characterized by competition and market-forces is likely to increase student cheating. The present study was conducted within Stockholm’s upper secondary school market, which is characterized by far-reaching market adaptations and competition between schools, which means that studies in other contexts are needed in order to broaden the knowledge about how various features of school effectiveness are related to student cheating.

4.1 Strengths and limitations

A major strength of our study design is the combination of data from two separate sources, as well as the access to official statistics about the school’s sociodemographic composition. Since school effectiveness was measured by teachers’ ratings, and cheating was reported by the students themselves, this considerably reduces the risk bias due to common methods variance. In this study we used a conservative cut-off for student cheating (four times or more during the past school year), which could be questioned. The main reason for this decision was based on the assumption that students with low grades and/or low moral standards cheat more frequently and systematically. However, sensitivity analyses using measures of cheating with less conservative cut-offs revealed very similar results to the ones presented in this study.

As suggested in previous research (Cassady 2001 ), there is always a risk of bias in self-reported data. This may especially concern student cheating since individuals tend to underestimate their degree of socially undesirable behaviours (Kerkvliet 1994 ). However, we do not see any particular reason why such a bias would have affected the investigated relationships with our teacher-rated measures of school effectiveness. The results from this study should nevertheless be considered with some limitations in mind. First, the findings are based on eleventh grade students in Stockholm municipality, which means that generalizations to other geographical contexts and ages should be made with caution. Secondly, the study builds on cross-sectional data, preventing us from making any conclusions regarding causality. A certain amount of reverse causality may exist due to a possible selection of cheating students to schools with lower levels of adherence to school effectiveness. It would be desirable to explore this question further based on longitudinal data. Third, there are more advanced statistical ways of investigating mediating effects. The model used (Baron and Kenny 1986 ) is nevertheless a well-established tool for investigating potential mediating effects. Fourth, we are aware of the limitations of using self-reported grades from students (Cassady 2001 ). However, we have compared our data on grades with corresponding statistics retrieved from the Swedish National Agency for Education for all upper secondary students in Stockholm, and the distributions did not differ to any substantial degree.

Finally, approximately one third of the students in our sample stated that they had cheated at least once on a homework test or examination during the present school year. This is a lower proportion than reported in other studies, predominantly from the US, where as many as two thirds declared having cheated (Davis et al. 2011 ; Josephson Institute 2012 ; McCabe et al. 2012 ). The lower rate of self-reported cheating in our data may be due to a narrower definition, since we only asked about cheating on homework tests or examinations, while other studies also include cheating through, for example, plagiarism. Other studies have also found that the degree of cheating is lower in Scandinavian countries than most other nations (Teixeira and Rocha 2010 ).

4.2 Conclusions

In this study we have pointed to the importance of three school contextual characteristics for student cheating. Schools with high teacher-ratings on leadership, collegial cooperation and ethos, were found to have a lower degree of cheating among their students. We also found evidence that student grades and moral standards operate as mediators in the relation between school effectiveness and student cheating. Targeting organizational factors that strengthen these school contextual conditions is likely to lower the level of cheating among students. Reducing the level of cheating is, in turn, an important prerequisite for creating a more equitable allocation of educational opportunities, and for preventing individual students from “down-grading” their moral compass during their schooling.

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Ramberg, J., Modin, B. School effectiveness and student cheating: Do students’ grades and moral standards matter for this relationship?. Soc Psychol Educ 22 , 517–538 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11218-019-09486-6

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Why Students Cheat—and What to Do About It

A teacher seeks answers from researchers and psychologists. 

“Why did you cheat in high school?” I posed the question to a dozen former students.

“I wanted good grades and I didn’t want to work,” said Sonya, who graduates from college in June. [The students’ names in this article have been changed to protect their privacy.]

My current students were less candid than Sonya. To excuse her plagiarized Cannery Row essay, Erin, a ninth-grader with straight As, complained vaguely and unconvincingly of overwhelming stress. When he was caught copying a review of the documentary Hypernormalism , Jeremy, a senior, stood by his “hard work” and said my accusation hurt his feelings.

Cases like the much-publicized ( and enduring ) 2012 cheating scandal at high-achieving Stuyvesant High School in New York City confirm that academic dishonesty is rampant and touches even the most prestigious of schools. The data confirms this as well. A 2012 Josephson Institute’s Center for Youth Ethics report revealed that more than half of high school students admitted to cheating on a test, while 74 percent reported copying their friends’ homework. And a survey of 70,000 high school students across the United States between 2002 and 2015 found that 58 percent had plagiarized papers, while 95 percent admitted to cheating in some capacity.

So why do students cheat—and how do we stop them?

According to researchers and psychologists, the real reasons vary just as much as my students’ explanations. But educators can still learn to identify motivations for student cheating and think critically about solutions to keep even the most audacious cheaters in their classrooms from doing it again.

Rationalizing It


First, know that students realize cheating is wrong—they simply see themselves as moral in spite of it.

“They cheat just enough to maintain a self-concept as honest people. They make their behavior an exception to a general rule,” said Dr. David Rettinger , professor at the University of Mary Washington and executive director of the Center for Honor, Leadership, and Service, a campus organization dedicated to integrity.

According to Rettinger and other researchers, students who cheat can still see themselves as principled people by rationalizing cheating for reasons they see as legitimate.

Some do it when they don’t see the value of work they’re assigned, such as drill-and-kill homework assignments, or when they perceive an overemphasis on teaching content linked to high-stakes tests.

“There was no critical thinking, and teachers seemed pressured to squish it into their curriculum,” said Javier, a former student and recent liberal arts college graduate. “They questioned you on material that was never covered in class, and if you failed the test, it was progressively harder to pass the next time around.”

But students also rationalize cheating on assignments they see as having value.

High-achieving students who feel pressured to attain perfection (and Ivy League acceptances) may turn to cheating as a way to find an edge on the competition or to keep a single bad test score from sabotaging months of hard work. At Stuyvesant, for example, students and teachers identified the cutthroat environment as a factor in the rampant dishonesty that plagued the school.

And research has found that students who receive praise for being smart—as opposed to praise for effort and progress—are more inclined to exaggerate their performance and to cheat on assignments , likely because they are carrying the burden of lofty expectations.

A Developmental Stage

When it comes to risk management, adolescent students are bullish. Research has found that teenagers are biologically predisposed to be more tolerant of unknown outcomes and less bothered by stated risks than their older peers.

“In high school, they’re risk takers developmentally, and can’t see the consequences of immediate actions,” Rettinger says. “Even delayed consequences are remote to them.”

While cheating may not be a thrill ride, students already inclined to rebel against curfews and dabble in illicit substances have a certain comfort level with being reckless. They’re willing to gamble when they think they can keep up the ruse—and more inclined to believe they can get away with it.

Cheating also appears to be almost contagious among young people—and may even serve as a kind of social adhesive, at least in environments where it is widely accepted.  A study of military academy students from 1959 to 2002 revealed that students in communities where cheating is tolerated easily cave in to peer pressure, finding it harder not to cheat out of fear of losing social status if they don’t.

Michael, a former student, explained that while he didn’t need to help classmates cheat, he felt “unable to say no.” Once he started, he couldn’t stop.

Technology Facilitates and Normalizes It

With smartphones and Alexa at their fingertips, today’s students have easy access to quick answers and content they can reproduce for exams and papers.  Studies show that technology has made cheating in school easier, more convenient, and harder to catch than ever before.

To Liz Ruff, an English teacher at Garfield High School in Los Angeles, students’ use of social media can erode their understanding of authenticity and intellectual property. Because students are used to reposting images, repurposing memes, and watching parody videos, they “see ownership as nebulous,” she said.

As a result, while they may want to avoid penalties for plagiarism, they may not see it as wrong or even know that they’re doing it.

This confirms what Donald McCabe, a Rutgers University Business School professor,  reported in his 2012 book ; he found that more than 60 percent of surveyed students who had cheated considered digital plagiarism to be “trivial”—effectively, students believed it was not actually cheating at all.

Strategies for Reducing Cheating

Even moral students need help acting morally, said  Dr. Jason M. Stephens , who researches academic motivation and moral development in adolescents at the University of Auckland’s School of Learning, Development, and Professional Practice. According to Stephens, teachers are uniquely positioned to infuse students with a sense of responsibility and help them overcome the rationalizations that enable them to think cheating is OK.

1. Turn down the pressure cooker. Students are less likely to cheat on work in which they feel invested. A multiple-choice assessment tempts would-be cheaters, while a unique, multiphase writing project measuring competencies can make cheating much harder and less enticing. Repetitive homework assignments are also a culprit, according to research , so teachers should look at creating take-home assignments that encourage students to think critically and expand on class discussions. Teachers could also give students one free pass on a homework assignment each quarter, for example, or let them drop their lowest score on an assignment.

2. Be thoughtful about your language.   Research indicates that using the language of fixed mindsets , like praising children for being smart as opposed to praising them for effort and progress , is both demotivating and increases cheating. When delivering feedback, researchers suggest using phrases focused on effort like, “You made really great progress on this paper” or “This is excellent work, but there are still a few areas where you can grow.”

3. Create student honor councils. Give students the opportunity to enforce honor codes or write their own classroom/school bylaws through honor councils so they can develop a full understanding of how cheating affects themselves and others. At Fredericksburg Academy, high school students elect two Honor Council members per grade. These students teach the Honor Code to fifth graders, who, in turn, explain it to younger elementary school students to help establish a student-driven culture of integrity. Students also write a pledge of authenticity on every assignment. And if there is an honor code transgression, the council gathers to discuss possible consequences. 

4. Use metacognition. Research shows that metacognition, a process sometimes described as “ thinking about thinking ,” can help students process their motivations, goals, and actions. With my ninth graders, I use a centuries-old resource to discuss moral quandaries: the play Macbeth . Before they meet the infamous Thane of Glamis, they role-play as medical school applicants, soccer players, and politicians, deciding if they’d cheat, injure, or lie to achieve goals. I push students to consider the steps they take to get the outcomes they desire. Why do we tend to act in the ways we do? What will we do to get what we want? And how will doing those things change who we are? Every tragedy is about us, I say, not just, as in Macbeth’s case, about a man who succumbs to “vaulting ambition.”

5. Bring honesty right into the curriculum. Teachers can weave a discussion of ethical behavior into curriculum. Ruff and many other teachers have been inspired to teach media literacy to help students understand digital plagiarism and navigate the widespread availability of secondary sources online, using guidance from organizations like Common Sense Media .

There are complicated psychological dynamics at play when students cheat, according to experts and researchers. While enforcing rules and consequences is important, knowing what’s really motivating students to cheat can help you foster integrity in the classroom instead of just penalizing the cheating.

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• Impact and Prevention of Technology Concerning Student Cheating

BY ANNABEL MONAGHAN

The vast majority of Americans – 95 percent – today own a mobile phone. In 2015, 64 percent of American adults owned a smartphone and that percentage has grown to almost 77 percent in recent years. For adults aged 18 to 29, a whopping 94 percent own smartphones, according to Pew Research Center.

While the growing popularity of smartphones is often seen as “progress”, it is also having a monumentally negative impact on the tertiary education sector.  The increased use of technology has contributed to the simplification and ease of copying homework assignments – and cheating in general – across schools and tertiary institutions around the world. Despite the fact that repercussions for cheating are severe, involving possible suspension or expulsion, 62% of U.S. students have reported seeing or hearing of another student using a connected device to cheat on an exam, quiz or project. In the U.K., there has been a 42% rise in cheating cases involving gadgets such as mobile phones and hidden earpieces since 2012, and in Australia cheating via technology is also on the rise at universities, with engineering and international students the most likely offenders. In one study across eight national universities and four colleges in Australia, it was found that a “widespread tolerance for cheating” existed among students and staff, with 68 percent of university staff admitting they had found “suspected contract cheaters” among their students in the past.

“Contract cheating” is perhaps the most serious form of academic dishonesty, involving students putting out a tender for others to complete their homework, coursework and assessments. But most students are cheating in a far simpler way: by switching on their mobile devices and snapping a photo of a classmate’s work, enabling them to copy that homework almost word for word in order to avoid doing it themselves. Students are also using mobile phones or earpieces during exams, by activating their device’s infrared, Bluetooth, or texting applications to share exam information with other test takers.

With the rise of technology, academic cheating is becoming more and more prolific, with hundreds of thousands of websites now offering custom-written papers, selling cheat aids and publishing how-to-cheat videos, teaching students anything from how to load programmable calculators with exam responses to how to replace a water bottle’s nutrition information with mathematics notes. Students are cheating in extremely advanced ways – with some even resorting to the use of a virtual private network to protect their activities.

But teachers are catching up, quickly.

The learning center Happy Numbers notes, “using new technologies, including text-matching software and plagiarism websites, webcams, biometric equipment, as well as drawing on strategies such as virtual students and cheat-proof tests, it is ever so slowly becoming harder to plagiarize other students work”. Surprisingly, teachers often find they have the most success in identifying plagiarism by simply Googling phrases they find in students’ papers. But more tech-savvy professors and teachers set up web “honey pots” – phony Web pages that answer specific questions allocated by them for homework with blatantly out-of-date or inaccurate information. Innovative technologies like Computerized Adaptive Testing (CAT) provide a way of improving the accuracy of assessment by addressing cheating concerns, by using an algorithm to choose test items based on students’ strengths and weaknesses. Using this method, every student takes a different test. As a result of new “anti-cheat” innovations like these, the U.S. has seen the percentage of students who admit to cheating – which rose from 20 percent in the mid-1900s to over 50 percent in 2002 – drop down to around 10 percent in recent years.

But the reality is, advances in technology will continue allowing for easy, accessible sharing unless significant steps are taken to address the problem.

Some attribute the rise in student cheating to an ever-increasing workload, others see it as a changing work ethic seen in the Millenial and Gen Z groups. Some see a direct correlation between the rise of standardized testing and cheating. Others hold accountability policies responsible: they have pressured educators to raise test scores. Whatever the cause, it’s evident the education sector needs to address the phenomenon soon before cheating becomes the status quo, as opposed to a rare lapse in judgment.

To ensure you don’t find yourself falling for the same traps other students have and “accidentally” plagiarizing your next assessment, try to implement the following measures. Develop a more efficient weekly schedule so that you can spend more time on each subject – and assessment – so that when deadlines approach you aren’t tempted to find a “quick solution” to completing your work. If in doubt, don’t copy and paste a piece of work found online but if you must, ensure it is correctly referenced. Don’t give in to peer pressure and share your work with others, because developing a habit of cheating – either for yourself or for others – creates a poor work ethic that can damage your future. And lastly, always remember your ethics. They will get a lot further than an A+ will.

Annabel Monaghan is a writer with a passion for education and edtech. She writes education and career articles for The College Puzzle with the aim of providing useful information for students and young professionals. If you have any questions, please feel free to email her at [email protected]. 

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Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Cheating in school'

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Consult the top 23 dissertations / theses for your research on the topic 'Cheating in school.'

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Boysen, Colby James. "Teachers and Cheating: The Relationship Between the Classroom Environment and High School Student Cheating." Digital Commons at Loyola Marymount University and Loyola Law School, 2007. https://digitalcommons.lmu.edu/etd/250.

Workman, David. "Lying and cheating behavior in school children /." View online, 1995. http://repository.eiu.edu/theses/docs/32211998757516.pdf.

Armstead, Penelope Kathryn. "What factors affect cheating in secondary school and why?" Thesis, University of Plymouth, 2001. http://hdl.handle.net/10026.1/1840.

Zito, Nicole Alisa. "Engaging Middle School Students in School Work and its Effect on Cheating." Thesis, Boston College, 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/2345/625.

Harnest, Pat W. (Pat Williams). "The Perceptions of Student Academic Honesty by Faculty and Students in a School of Nursing." Thesis, North Texas State University, 1986. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc330795/.

Rowland, Amy Manning. "A descriptive analysis of Georgia high school teachers' perceptions of academic dishonesty." Click here to access dissertation, 2007. http://www.georgiasouthern.edu/etd/archive/spring2007/amy_k_manning/Rowland_Amy_M_200701_edd.pdf.

Perdew, McKenzie Elizabeth. "To Cheat or not to Cheat: Impact of Learning Disability Status on Reasons for Cheating." TopSCHOLAR®, 2018. https://digitalcommons.wku.edu/theses/3077.

Hartounian, Paramsten. "The Relationship between Cognitive Moral Development and Attitudes toward Academic Cheating of Armenian High School Students at an Armenian Private School in Southern California." Thesis, Pepperdine University, 2018. http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=10837126.

Over the past fifty years, cheating among high school students increased substantially and affected the morale of students (Simha, Armstrong, & Albert, 2012). According to a nationally representative survey of 36,000 U.S. adolescents, some 60% of high school students confessed to cheating on a test during the previous school year, and that the behavior among these students had spiked over the past 50 years (Murdock, Beauchamp, & Hinton, 2008). Armenian high school students agree that cheating is morally wrong; however, their actions do not reflect this belief (Bowers, 1964; McCabe & Trevino, 1996; Semerci, 2006). The study aims to address gaps in the literature by using Kohlberg’s (1958) theory of moral development (as cited in Hannah, Lester, & Lester, 2005) to examine how academic dishonesty, such as cheating, is associated with the moral development level of Armenian private high school students in Southern California, and the extent to which, if at all, this relationship is moderated by the degree of students’ performance orientation. No prior research is known to have been done with this specific cultural group in a high school setting.

Young, Robert D. "Exploring the ethical mindset of students." Theological Research Exchange Network (TREN), access this title online, 2006. http://dx.doi.org/10.2986/tren.088-0146.

Fonseca, Lasse. "Gymnasieelevers uppfattningar kring eget skolfusk." Thesis, Växjö University, School of Education, 2006. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:vxu:diva-818.

Syften för denna studie har varit: ”att beskriva en variation av uppfattningar hos gymnasieelever på teoretiska gymnasieprogram vad gäller hur de uppfattar och resonerar omkring sitt eget skolfusk i förhållande till fenomen som eleverna själva uppfattar som betydelsefulla för det egna skolfusket” och ”att belysa elevers uppfattningar om sitt eget skolfusk genom fyra allmänt kända teoretiska perspektiv som kan antas tangera den förförståelse av elevers skolfusk som antas vanligt förekommande hos lärare på motsvarande gymnasieprogram.”

Begreppet skolfusk har definierats och data har därefter samlats in genom kvalitativt utformade enkäter som besvarats av 36 gymnasielever från det studieförberedande samhällsvetenskapsprogrammet. Forskningsansatsen har varit fenomengrafisk och analysmetoden kontextuell analys.

Huvudresultatet utgörs av fem kategorier som på kvalitativt skilda sätt beskriver elevernas uppfattningar kring skolfusk. Kategorierna har rubricerats efter det totala materialets mest meningsbärande aspekt, nämligen elevernas uppsåt/avsikt/intention med sitt skolfusk som utgörs av variationerna ”att klara av en tillfälligt besvärlig situation”, ”att utmana/provocera/protestera emot (skol)systemet”, ”att överleva i en skolsituation som upplevs för svår”, ”att höja betyg” och ”att slippa anstränga sig”.

Empirin har också tolkats genom fyra teoretiska perspektiv som i studien ansetts representativa för lärares förförståelse kring elevers skolfusk. Av resultatet framgår att ett flertal elever i sina uppfattningar om eget skolfusk ensidigt orienterar sig åt prestationspsykologiska, sociologiska eller mikroekonomiska perspektiv.

The aims of this study have been: “to describe a variation of conceptions among upper secondary pupils in theoretical education programs concerning how they apprehend and reason about their own school cheating in relations to phenomena that the pupils themselves judge as meaningful for their own school cheating” and “to illustrate pupils conceptions of their own school cheating through four common known theoretical perspectives which can be considered to touch upon the precomprehension of pupils school cheating that is considered as frequent among teachers in corresponding education.”

The conception school cheating has been defined and data have been collected through qualitatively designed questionnaires which have been answered by 36 upper secondary pupils in social science education preparing for ensuing studies. The research approach has been phenomenografical and the method of analyzing contextual analysis.

The main result is constituted by five categories which in qualitative different ways describe the pupils conceptions of school cheating. The categories have been classified on the basis of the most meaningful aspect of the total data, “the pupils intentions of their school cheating” which is constituted by the variations “to manage a temporary troublesome situation”, “to challenge/provoke/protest upon the (school)system”, “to survive in a school situation which is experienced as to difficult”, “to raise grades” and “to avoid effort”.

Empirical data have also been interpreted through four theoretical perspectives which in the study have been considered representative for teachers precomprehension of pupils school cheating. The result shows that a majority of pupils is one-sided orientated in their conceptions of their own school cheating towards perspectives of either achievement-psychology, sociology or micro-economics.

Middleton, Marissa. "An examination of academic dishonesty in secondary online english education." Honors in the Major Thesis, University of Central Florida, 2012. http://digital.library.ucf.edu/cdm/ref/collection/ETH/id/589.

Tas, Yasemin. "The Interplay Of Students." Master's thesis, METU, 2008. http://etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/2/12609266/index.pdf.

Epps, Joel M. "Individual Characteristics as Predictive Variables of the Level and Impact of Contrapower Harassment of Faculty Teaching in Schools of Pharmacy." ScholarWorks, 2016. https://scholarworks.waldenu.edu/dissertations/2209.

Ross, Lauren. "The prevalence of cheating in National Standardised Assessments in South African schools : applying the Jacob and Levitt (2003) method to the Annual National Assessments of 2013." Master's thesis, University of Cape Town, 2016. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/22939.

Huang, Tzuling, and 黃姿陵. "A Criminological Examination of High School Students’ Academic Cheating and Interpersonal Interaction." Thesis, 2015. http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/01526357997798241153.

Ping-Chang, Wu, and 巫秉璋. "A Study on Academic Cheating Behaviors and Its Causes in Elementary School Students." Thesis, 2009. http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/48600179480597129126.

Ming-Chih, Lan, and 藍明智. "A ANALYSIS OF COGNITIVE DIFFERENCE OF ACADEMIC CHEATING BEHAVIOR IN ELEMENTARY SCHOOL STUDENTS." Thesis, 1995. http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/06121233866483861818.

Huang, Yao-Hsing, and 黃耀興. "A Study on Academic Cheating Behaviors and Its Causes in Junior High School Students." Thesis, 2011. http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/15680053472002757100.

CHEN, CHIEN-CHIH, and 陳建志. "A Credentialism-Based Investigation on Cheating Behaviors on Exams of Junior High School Students." Thesis, 2011. http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/73298191148345918631.

Wu, Yu-Shan, and 吳毓珊. "A Study of the Cheating Behavior of Senior High School Students based on Theory of Planned Behavior." Thesis, 2008. http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/53771442786706155101.

HSIAO, WEI-TING, and 蕭偉廷. "A Study of the Relationship among the Senior Vocational School Student’s Online Game Cheating Attitude, Motivation and Behavior." Thesis, 2019. http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/7ky4b4.

Yao, Chao-Fan, and 姚招帆. "The Relations Among Junior High School Students' Goal Orientatons, Self-Efficacy, Learning Strategies, Self-Handicapping Strategies And Cheating." Thesis, 2006. http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/69093261661096322198.

Vodrážková, Jana. "Postoje žáků ke školnímu podvádění." Master's thesis, 2018. http://www.nusl.cz/ntk/nusl-372651.

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Case Study UT Star Icon

Cheating: Atlanta’s School Scandal

Teachers and administrators at Parks Middle School adjust struggling students’ test scores in an effort to save their school from closure.

In 2006, Damany Lewis was a 29-year-old math teacher at Parks Middle School in Atlanta. The school was in a run-down neighborhood three miles south of downtown that was plagued by armed robberies. Lewis himself had grown up in a violent neighborhood. He empathized with his students and was devoted to their success. A colleague described Lewis as a “star teacher” and a “very hard worker, who will go the extra mile.”

Lewis was a teacher when Beverly Hall was Atlanta’s school superintendent. Hall believed that business approaches and the values of the market system could save public education. She set accountability measures for the Atlanta school district and created performance objectives that were tougher than those of No Child Left Behind, the federal program that became law in 2002. Teacher evaluations were linked to students’ performance on standardized tests. Schools whose students did not make appropriate progress toward the standardized test goals received escalating sanctions that culminated in replacement of the faculty and staff, and restructuring or closing of the school.

Parks Middle School was in dire straights because it had been classified as “a school in need of improvement” for the previous five years. Unless 58 percent of students passed the math portion of the standardized test and 67 percent passed the language arts portion, Parks Middle School could be closed down. Its students would be separated and bussed across town to different schools.

“[It] was my sole obligation to never let that happen,” Lewis later told Rachel Aviv in an article about these events in The New Yorker . Lewis had pushed his students to work harder than they ever had in preparing for the test. But he knew that it would be very difficult for many of them to pass. Christopher Waller, the new principal of Parks, had heard that teachers in the elementary schools that fed into Parks had changed their students’ answers on the standardized tests under the guise of erasing stray pencil marks. Waller asked Lewis and other teachers to do the same. Lewis found the exams of students who needed to get a few more questions right in order to pass. He changed their answers. If he did not change their scores, Lewis feared that his students would lapse into “why try” attitudes. They would lose their neighborhood school and the community that had developed within it.

Thanks to Lewis and other teachers, Parks students did better than ever on the standardized tests. Neekisia Jackson, a former student at Parks at the time, recalled, “Everyone was jumping up and down,” after a teacher announced the school had met the goals of No Child Left Behind for the first time. Jackson continued, “We had heard what everyone was saying: ‘ Y’all aren’t good enough .’ Now we could finally go to school with our heads held high.”

The same process of changing answers continued at Parks through 2010. By that time, nine other teachers were helping Lewis change answers.

In October of 2010, 50 agents of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation visited Parks and other Atlanta schools. The investigators concluded that teachers and administrators at 44 schools had cheated in the manner that Lewis had. In July of 2012, 110 teachers who had confessed or been accused of cheating were placed on administrative leave, including Lewis. Later that year, Lewis’ employment was terminated.

This case study is based on an article by Rachel Aviv entitled, “Wrong answer: In an era of high-stakes testing, a struggling school made a shocking choice,” that appeared in The New Yorker on July 21, 2014.

Discussion Questions

1. What are the reasons and rationalizations that could have prompted Mr. Lewis to have moral myopia and avoid focusing on the fact that he was falsifying students’ test scores? Alternatively, what could have prompted Mr. Lewis not to have moral myopia?

2. Who are the stakeholders in this case study, and what was at stake for each party? How might each have influenced Mr. Lewis’ actions? Explain.

3. Assume Mr. Lewis decided to break away from moral myopia and gave voice to his values. What do you think he should have done and why? Your answer should include, but not be limited to, the arguments that Mr. Lewis should have made, to whom, and in what context. Present a plan of action.

4. In this case study, what were the benefits of falsifying students’ test scores? What were the harms? Do you think cheating can ever be ethically justifiable? Why or why not?

5. Have you ever been in a situation in which you were presented with the opportunity to cheat on a test or other assignment? Describe the situation. What did you do and why? Looking back, would you have done anything differently? Why or why not?

Related Videos

Moral Myopia

Moral myopia is a distortion of moral vision that keeps ethical issues from coming clearly into focus.

Bibliography

Wrong answer: In an era of high stakes testing, a struggling school made a shocking choice http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/07/21/wrong-answer

Atlanta School Workers Sentenced in Test Score Cheating Scandal http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/15/us/atlanta-school-workers-sentenced-in-test-score-cheating-case.html

As sentencing nears for Atlanta teachers, many condemn their conviction http://www.latimes.com/nation/nationnow/la-na-atlanta-teachers-20150407-story.html

A teachable moment from Atlanta’s school cheating scandal https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/a-teachable-moment-from-atlantas-school-cheating-scandal/2011/08/04/gIQAMcuE1I_story.html

The Roots of Atlanta’s Cheating Scandal http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/04/atlanta-cheating-scandal-117158

America is criminalizing Black teachers: Atlanta’s cheating scandal and the racist underbelly of education reform http://www.salon.com/2015/04/08/america_is_criminalizing_black_teachers_atlantas_cheating_scandal_and_the_racist_underbelly_of_education_reform/

Accountability on Trial http://www.usnews.com/opinion/knowledge-bank/2015/04/03/atlanta-school-cheating-convictions-unhelpful-for-education-reform

Why the Atlanta cheating scandal failed to bring about national reform http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/apr/01/atlanta-cheating-scandal-education-reform

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94 Cheating Essay Topic Ideas & Examples

🏆 best cheating topic ideas & essay examples, ⭐ good research topics about cheating, 👍 simple & easy cheating essay titles, ❓ questions about cheating.

• Education: Why Do Students Cheat? Lack of adequate skills and knowledge are some of the reasons that lead to the loss of confidence by students. Teachers should evaluate their students in order to determine the most important teaching methods that […]
• Why People Cheat In the world of sports, a lot of people have been perplexed by the tendencies of great teams to cheat despite prior warning regarding the consequences of cheating.
• The Consequences of School Cheating Cheating also leads to corrupted morals since students begin to cheat more frequently and try to rationalize their dishonesty. Academic dishonesty also affects personal relationships since friends and family can begin to question one’s honesty […]
• Cheating in High Schools: Issue Analysis It is, therefore, right to say that cheating is widespread in every part of the world, and it is escalating in all levels of education.
• Why Students Cheat in Public Schools? However, even some of the students who retain a suitable connection to school take part in cheating. The majorities are found in public institutions and are a much diversified set of students.
• Academic Integrity: Addressing Contract Cheating It is also worth noting that academic integrity is an aspect that one acquires and develops in the process of gaining experience and awareness of the importance of such things as honesty and responsibility.
• Trust & Threat Messaging and Academic Cheating Each student was randomly assigned to one of the four conditions, with 71 in the traditional exam condition, 81 in the collective-punishment trust-exam condition, 82 in the individual-punishment trust-exam condition, and 62 in the no-punishment […]
• Problem of Cheating in Nursing Programs The most common types of cheating in nursing include copying tests and homework, referring to materials during tests, and collaborations without permission. Investigations on the causes of academic dishonesty acts are critical to achieving academic […]
• Cheating in the Test: Issue Review He may have believed that the college entrance exam is not very significant at the moment and that there is nothing wrong in cheating for a test which will decide whether he should be admitted […]
• Why College Students Cheat: Discussion In the case of the Internet, it has become a tool for students to cheat because information is readily at their fingertips.
• Is Cheating Okay or Not: Discussion The one involved in cheating is seen to do so at the expense of others and with the aim of getting more where one has invested less.
• Using Technology to Cheat: Discussion Easy access to the internet is one of the reason why there has been a drop in academic honesty and responsibility specifically in the case of plagiarism as there are indications of extensive plagiarism in […]
• “Why We Cheat” by Fang Ferric and Arturo Casadevall For example, if students cheat in class, their peers may start to do so too when they see that there is no punishment for lying. It is possible to say that many humans cheat because […]
• Cognitive Dissonance in Dealing With Exam Cheating John’s plan was to use less than two hours in the test with a plan to utilize the rest of the time texting his friends.
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• Reasons for Academic Cheating The students are on the other hand have to yield for the pressure and the easiest way of enabling this is by cheating in the examination.
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• The Cheating Culture: Why More Americans Are Doing Wrong to Get Ahead
• Revisiting Revise: Testing Unique and Combined Effects of Reminding, Visibility, and Self-Engagement Manipulations on Cheating Behavior
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Cheating in High School: A Response to Student Questions

While cheating can feel like the easy way to go, it's more costly than expected..

Posted February 22, 2021

I sometimes get asked about practical psychology by adolescents. Here are some questions from a student interested in my opinions about cheating in high school and a version of the responses I gave.

In general, the purpose of cheating is to get or get away with what one is not honestly entitled to. Examples of cheating in high school can include when a student copies someone else’s work, sneaks answers into a test, passes signals with a classmate, plagiarizes content written elsewhere, or falsifies historical information about themselves.

1. How do you think cheating in high school can affect a student’s life?

I believe the effects of cheating are educationally, socially, and psychologically expensive. Consider a few common costs the cheater must pay.

• You have taken advantage of those who play by the rules. “I’m getting away with what others are not.”
• You have pretended to have knowledge that you do not have and so created a false impression of yourself. “I’m not as capable as I appear.”
• You bypassed study and so may not truly learn what you need to know. “Cheating to get ahead has put me behind.”
• You have misled important others into believing what is not true. “I’m leading a double life with those who trust me.”
• You have broken school rules, causing worry about what will happen if you are found out. “I hope I don’t get caught.”
• You have cheated on true ability and honest effort, lessening self-confidence . “Cheating is the only way I can do well enough.”
• You have lied to others and hence treated yourself as a liar by acting dishonestly. “I’m not the person everyone thinks I am.”
• You have unfairly competed with peers and thus with friends. “Credit they worked for I stole instead.”
• You have relied on cheating and so may be tempted to cheat again. “If I sneaked by on this, maybe I can sneak by on that.”
• You have cheated yourself out of the effort that strengthens self-discipline. “Getting out of work, now I don’t work as hard.”
• You have created an unrealistic impression for people to judge you by. “Others now expect more of me than I can deliver.”

What a mess!

2. Do you think cheating can become a long-term habit?

Any behavior can become habit-forming through repetition if it is practiced long enough. The power of habituation is that it is familiar and efficient. It allows a person to repeat actions automatically, without much oversight of thought.

If cheating becomes a habit, then the person can come to act like cheating is the ordinary way to perform adequately. And now, the long-term cheater has created a scary world to live in. They must play constant cover-up to hide what they have been doing and how much they really don’t know.

As cheating increasingly feels like the best way to go, it becomes harder to stop. Now the person becomes dependent on it to get by and get ahead. “I need cheating to achieve.”

So, repeated cheating can be entrapping to get into and tough to give up. However, when you recover the capacity for honest performance, which may not be as high for a while, relief from stressful pretense, from social concealment, and self-respect can all be reclaimed.

3. Where do you think the stress for students to cheat comes from? Do you think parents can play a role in contributing to a student’s decision to cheat?

I suppose, in response to pressures to achieve from very demanding parents, a young person could be tempted to cheat to measure up to their high expectations, although I have not personally encountered this. For sure, I haven’t seen any parents who declare to their teenager : “Achieve at all costs; we don’t care how!”

This said, I have witnessed:

• Tired students who consider a little cheating to give themselves a break.
• Rebellious students who want to beat the system by outsmarting it.
• Desperate students who believe cheating is the only way to pass.
• High-striving students who seek a competitive edge.

In general, I believe cheating is more common among academically ambitious students who care a lot about achievement than lower-motivated students who may not. After all, why cheat if accomplishment doesn’t matter much?

4.What kinds of advantages do you think cheating can offer for students in the short term? Do you think cheating is worthwhile in the long term?

Short-term, cheating provides an easy way to get around demands for study. Of course, cheating still requires effort; however, the work it takes may feel worth the work it avoids: “Cribbing information took some time, but at least I didn’t have to prep for the test.”

Long-term, I don’t think the tradeoffs are usually worthwhile. What is gained is less than the costs you pay.

5. All of our classes are online at the moment, which means that it has become more difficult for teachers to catch cheating. How do you think this change could influence students and their decisions?

It’s a given: If motivated, tech-savvy students will figure out how to manipulate virtual instruction. I cannot imagine all the resourceful ways. The Internet is an outlaw world for those players who love to game it. And this creates another temptation to cheat: to exploit openings in the online system, to outwit it to one’s advantage.

So, it is probably worthwhile for teachers and students to discuss and specify the “classroom” procedures and honor code they want in place when remote learning is the rule.

As for teachers “catching” a student cheating, most have enough work to do without policing deceptive students, confronting offenders, reporting misconduct to administration, and encountering unhappy parents when an infraction has been charged. It can feel easier to ignore possible cheating and look the other way.

6. Is there anything you would like to say to students who turn to cheating?

Cheating happens. Research surveys about cheating in high school found online suggest that 50 percent or more of students self-report having done it at one time or another. So, cheating in high school is apparently often tried.

On balance, I personally don’t think the gains are worth the costs because when you cheat, you cheat yourself out of an education , you cheat on others who are working hard, and worst of all, you end up treating yourself as a fraud. How sad is that?

Carl Pickhardt Ph.D. is a psychologist in private counseling and public lecturing practice in Austin, Texas. His latest book is Holding On While Letting Go: Parenting Your Child Through the Four Freedoms of Adolescence.

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