Abstract
Educational institutions rely on academic citizenship behaviors to construct knowledge in a responsible manner. However, they often struggle to contain the unlawful reuse of knowledge (or academic citizenship transgressions) by some learning communities. This study draws upon secondary data from two televised episodes describing contract cheating (or ghostwriting) practices prevalent among international student communities. Against this background, we have investigated emergent teaching and learning structures that have been extended to formal and informal spaces with the use of mediating technologies. Learners’ interactions in formal spaces are influenced by ongoing informal social experiences within a shared cultural context to influence learners’ agency. Building upon existing theories, we have developed an analytical lens to understand the rationale behind cheating behaviors. Citizenship behaviors are based on individual and collective perceptions of what constitutes as acceptable or unacceptable behavior. That is, learners who are low in motivation and are less engaged with learning may collude; more so, if cheating is not condemned by members belonging to their informal social spaces. Our analytical lens describes institutional, cultural, technological, social and behavioral contexts that influence learner agency.
Highlights
Educational institutions are framed inside societies; they exist as intellectual communities whose main purpose is to demonstrate leadership and contribute towards building scholarly and professional knowledge
Contract cheating or what is commonly referred to as ghostwriting is unlike traditional plagiarism; it is designed to defeat text matching software wherein paid contractors produce original content, so that authorship can be validated as student-produced work (Amigud and Dawson 2019)
This study has provided a new interpretation of why academic integrity transgressions occur among learner communities
Summary
Educational institutions are framed inside societies; they exist as intellectual communities whose main purpose is to demonstrate leadership and contribute towards building scholarly and professional knowledge. The institutional fraternity roles go beyond classrooms as they make connections with people and society in the buildup of scholastic activities across various subject disciplines In doing so, they seek ways to bring in different forms of societal engagements into an academic context in a responsible manner, and vice versa, to advance knowledge forms (Nørgård and Bengtsen 2016). Institutions have limited abilities to invalidate student authorship if the ghostwritten content is not discovered by any text-matching software as unlawfully gained content These contract cheating sites openly operate their online essay mills/factories and are difficult to prosecute since litigation laws are non-uniform across national boundaries (Draper and Newton 2017)
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