Development of Academic Cheating from Kindergarten to High School

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Abstract

Academic cheating is a worldwide problem. It refers to an intentional act performed surreptitiously and illegitimately for academic gain. Academic cheating has serious negative consequences at personal, institutional, and societal levels. Despite extensive research on this issue with university students and early work with children in the 1920s, limited research has been done to examine the development of academic cheating from kindergarten to high school. This symposium brings together four teams of international researchers to present empirical findings to bridge this significant gap in literature. Paper 1 involved Chinese children from 3 to 6 years to investigate whether telling young children about story characters’ emotional reactions to cheating would affect their decision to cheat on a math test. Paper 2 involved multi-ethnic children in the United States and Canada to examine whether children’s understanding of mental states such as false beliefs are associated with their actual cheating behaviors on academic tests. Paper 3 surveyed a very large and diverse group of middle and high school American students to investigate the developing relations between academic cheating and their feelings of belongingness and school engagement. Paper 4 used both survey and natural observation methods with American high school students to test the hypothesis that students cheat because they and their teachers differ in terms of both the definition of cheating and learning goals. We hope this symposium will serve as a forum for researchers to discuss critical issues in the field, and spur future research on this theoretically and practically important issue.

Sub Unit

• Moral Development

Chairs

• Kang Lee, University of Toronto

• Li Zhao, Hangzhou Normal University, P. R. China

Individual Presentations

• Hearing about Another Child’s Negative Emotional Reaction to Dishonesty Causes Young Children to Cheat Less - Presenting Author: Li Zhao, Hangzhou Normal University, P. R. China; Yi Zheng, Hangzhou Normal University; Paul Harris, Harvard University

• The Role of Children’s Theory of Mind Understanding in Academic Cheating Behavior - Presenting Author: Elizabeth Lynn Gerhardt, Saint Mary’s University; Tz-yu Duan, University of British Columbia (UBC); Kanza Batool, University of Toronto; Kaitlyn Monica Wilson, University of New Brunswick; Catherine Ann Cameron, University of British Columbia (UBC); Kang Lee, University of Toronto

• Cheating Trajectories Across Grades 6-12: Why Belonging and Engagement Matter - Presenting Author: Sarah Becket Miles, Stanford University; Denise Clark Pope, Stanford University; Samantha Selby, Stanford University

• Why High Schoolers Cheat: Evidence from Interviews and Observations - Presenting Author: Talia Waltzer, University of California - San Diego; Aarushi U. Shah, University of California at Berkley; Fiona C DeBernardi, Cornell University; Audun Dahl, University of California - Santa Cruz