The Relation Between Academic Motivation and Cheating

Abstract

Academic cheating occurs frequently in schools. Cheating is a deliberative act, in that students make a conscious decision to engage in academic dishonesty. Students’ achievement goals, which are malleable, often guide the ways that students make such decisions. Educators can incorporate various instructional practices and support academic policies that enhance positive motivational beliefs (e.g., mastery goals), potentially reducing academic dishonesty.

Notes

1. It should be noted that these studies almost exclusively focused on the relations of mastery approach (as opposed to mastery-avoid) goals and goal structures to cheating.

2. It is worth noting that providing students with excessively detailed rubrics should be avoided. Doing so can undermine student creativity and deep cognitive processing, thereby causing the intended positive effects of rubrics to backfire. These guidelines should also be followed when providing exemplars of student work (as in the following; Bol, 2004).