Preventing Cheating

A recent Ed Week article discussed cheating, its ramifications on students and a study done on the subject. The gist of the article is that cheaters overinflate their academic ability and potentially set themselves up for a feedback loop of poorer and poorer performance. After a student cheats, s/he ends up telling her/himself that the grade received was earned. Then on subsequent tests, the cheater thinks s/he will do better because of the last grade received (the one received through cheating) but ends up doing much worse than predicted thus adding more pressure to cheat next time. Thus a cycle is born.

The researchers looked at causes for cheating, which include the usual suspects: disinterest in material, feeling the teacher is unfair, pressure to get good grades or to get into a good college, etc. (This is no real news - we've been talking about this for years.) From my perspective this study signifies that students are not connected to what they're studying and feel like they are powerless. Cheating may be one of the only ways they feel they can control the outcome. 

The meaning we derive from this research has so much potential. To me, it means that we ought to have classrooms where students have a voice about what they study, why they do it and how it's done. Apparently, I see things a little differently. The most disturbing part of this article was not about the cheaters, but it came when I read this:

"Ms. Chance and Mr. Fremer said teachers and administrators should try to reduce opportunities for students to cheat, but should also help them establish classwide and schoolwide codes for academic integrity, and then reinforce the importance of that code before every assignment."

A group does all of this research and finds out the real destructive potential on the individual student, and they advise teachers to reduce opportunities for cheating and to develop more codes to put upon students?! That seems like a cop out and like such a waste of potential. Maybe they just wanted to focus on the research and not what to do with it (but felt they needed to say something on the subject). I guess it's up to everyone else to utilize this information in the best ways possible.