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As teachers of critical reading and writing, the “scandal” instructors of English probably discuss with our students most often is plagiarism. In fact, many students have learned to live in fear of being accused of plagiarism. As Rebecca Moore Howard states, “the pedagogical obsession with citation becomes a pedagogical obsession with denying students [their own] authorship.” Hanging over students’ heads are dire threats to their academic futures: failing a course, permanent transcript notations, suspension, or even expulsion. Research has shown, however, that most of the instances we might consider plagiarism have a correlative relationship to students’ lack of metacognitive critical reading and lack of comprehension about the mores of academic research and writing. In other words, students often are “breaking rules” as they are “making texts” not out of malice but out of ignorance. For students in transition courses—basic writing, first-year composition, and introductory literature courses—our work with them bleeds past content into schema required of them in college-level courses, including intellectual property. To make things even more scandalous, our own academic research schemas are changing because of the ways the internet has shifted our understanding of intellectual property and citation guidelines. |
