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 Table of contents

1. The student lifeworld and the meanings of plagiarism................................................................................. 1

Bibliography...................................................................................................................................................... 13

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Document 1 of 1

The student lifeworld and the meanings of plagiarism

Author: Ashworth, Peter; Freewood, Madeleine; Macdonald, Ranald

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ABSTRACT
As plagiarism is a notion specific to a particular culture and epoch, and is also understood in a variety of ways
by individuals, particular attention must be paid to the putting of the phenomenological question, What is
plagiarism in its appearing? Resolution of this issue leads us to locate students' perceptions and opinions within
the lifeworld, and to seek an initially idiographic set of descriptions. Of twelve interview analyses, three are
presented, (a) A student who took an especially anxious line, his morality having to do with the fear of being
shamed were he to be accused of plagiarism in his work (b) A student who saw academic development as the
movement from dependence on respected authors such that the novice's work is near plagiaristic, to autonomy
and self-assured originality. (c) A student whose degree involved painting and art history-disciplines with very
distinct understandings of plagiarism. To combat plagiarism, then, one must not assume that students have a
prior grasp of the unequivocal meaning of the notion, but must accept that a process of acculturation is required.

Treatments of academic plagiarism tend to presuppose a common ideological ground in the creative, original
individual who, as an autonomous scholar, presents his/her work to the public in his/her own name. (Scollon,
1995, p. 1)
Plagiarism is an issue of pressing current concern, for it seems to be increasing in Higher Education in those
western countries in which research has been done. Examples are provided by Whitely &Keith-Spiegel (2002)
for the United States, by Stefani and Carroll (2001) for Britain, and O'Connor and Lovelock (2002) for Australia.
The incidence of plagiarism in British Higher Education has been part of this general trend, then, but it has
taken place at a time of considerable change in the university system generally-notably a move from an elite to
a mass system. For this reason, the factors that commentators have suggested are responsible for the increase
in plagiarism in Britain may be different in detail from those noted in other countries. In Britain (e.g. Ashworth et
al., 1997), the increase has been ascribed to various things. Changing methods of assessment, with a lessened
role for formal, invigilated (i.e. proctored) examinations and a greater place given to various kinds of
coursework-term papers-and projects (Rust [2002] provides a review) have been implicated in the growth of
plagiarism. So has the centrality of communication and information technologies in student learning. In
particular the Internet allows the student to cut from a huge range of sources and paste into their own work.
(There is for various reasons, some to do with the style of work required, less use of "term paper mills" in
Britain, but for the US situation see Weisbard, 2002; Standler, 2000; Davis, 2002.) As Scanlon and Neumann
(2002) write:
What is not yet as clear is how these technologies are shaping a new generation of students' conception of
what does and does not constitute fair use of the countless texts so readily available at their desktops. How
students use the Internet to complete research and to write papers, and how we respond to electronic textual
appropriation, are and will be critical matters for university faculty and administrators as information technology
continues its dramatic growth within higher education.
Another factor which has been implicated in the increase of plagiarism is the growth in emphasis on group-
based learning (Thorley and Gregory, 1994) with the attendant ambiguity over collective and individual
ownership which this can bring (Ashworth et al., 1997). Finally, the claim that the discourse of "consumer" has

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partially replaced the discourse of "student" in debate on the meaning of participation in Higher Education has
been thought to affect attitudes to plagiarism. Consider this official statement:
This Charter explains the standards of service that students, employers and the general public can expect from
universities.... Customers of universities and colleges also have responsibilities and the Charter reminds you of
some of them. But the focus is on the meeting of your legitimate needs. If you are not satisfied with the service
you receive, the Charter explains what you can do to get it put right.... You should receive a high standard of
teaching and research supervision. This includes effective management of your learning by teaching and other
staff. You should also be given the opportunity to register your views. (Department for Education, 1993, p. 2, 12.
Original emphasis)
Though the connection between such a consumerist outlook and plagiarism has not been tested, it is likely that
regarding the university as responsible for delivering education to the student, rather than thinking of the student
as actively and energetically engaged in the securing of their own development, will have the effect of reducing
respect for assessment as a fateful examination.
Plagiarism is just one mode of academic misdemeanour, of course (Whitely &Keith-Spiegel, 2002, p. 17, give a
typology of academic dishonesty). But one of the characteristics that makes plagiarism different from other
forms of cheating is the elevated status and culturally specific meaning given to it. Thus, the University of
Guidelines for Faculties on the Avoidance of Plagiarism state that:
Plagiarism attacks the fundamental principles of scholarship and the foundations upon which the academic
community rests. (Edinburgh University, 1999)
In the face of the threat posed by plagiarism to the norm of autonomous work, it is often felt that rules of great
specificity are needed to cover the range of student work, and the rules have to be sufficiently robust to stand
legal challenge. It was mainly in order to have evidence to assist in the framing of such rules that we were
invited by Sheffield Hallam University to undertake a study of the meaning of plagiarism for students.
The Cultural and Historical Location of Plagiarism
Discussion of the historical and cultural meaning of plagiarism could take a large number of forms. The history
of publication is one approach-and it seems (according to Scollon, 1995, drawing on Patterson's history of the
concept of copyright) that, at the inception of the notion of copyright, it was not intended to protect the rights of
authors but to restrict competition among the printer/publishers who were members of the Stationer's Company
of London. (Plagiarism occurs in the 1701 records of the Company in connection with the protection of
publishers' ownership of their wares.) Writings became a form of property first, then, for the sellers of the
publications. Copyright was not granted to authors for another thirty years.
Another approach to the location of the meaning of plagiarism would be through the cultural history of the idea
of individual originality. Here, Haidu (1977) has observed that the modern value of creativity in authorship
contrasts with a value of conventionality in authorship which he regards as the "distinguishing trait" of literary
practice in the Middle Ages. He points out that it is more appropriate to regard "repetition," not as simply "the
same again", but as focussing on the virtue of the restatement of timeless truth.
Repetition is referred ... to the abstract Form that gives meaning and validity to each of the particular
concretizations; each repetition therefore constitutes a further revelation of value, since it brings to our eyes
again that aspect of the abstract Form that can be concretized and visualized, (p. 880)
Given this episteme, the nearest to truth in art is that which rehearses the Forms most abstractly. Thus, the
formal structures seen in books of grammar and rhetoric are highly valued, whereas such arts as poetry are
"tolerable and justifiable primarily as containing examples of the true art which exists as an abstract series of
forms" (pp. 880-1). So Mediaeval Neoplatonism valued each rehearsal of the abstract truth, and regarded as
secondary "creative" products which are distant from the Forms.
Now of course the Mediaeval world was a vast, complex and intellectually disputatious1 one. Haidu's analysis is
convincing regarding a certain trend of thought, but there were others. Suffice it to say that his account of a

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Mediaeval view of scholarship does allow us to show that the meaning of plagiarism is not a universal. The
person who perpetrates plagiarism now must be seen as out of step with the/an episteme of the present time-
perpetrating a transgression which must be understood in the light of a range of meanings of "personal
intellectual products" in contemporary western society.
A third approach to the study of plagiarism as a historical and cultural entity is to look at contemporary cultural
variations. Pennycook (1996)-himself an experienced teacher of English in the Far East-discusses the way that
Chinese students are often dismissively described by western educators as rote learners, and the traditional
Chinese approach, emphasizing memorization, is described as an "outmoded pedagogical practice" (p. 219).
But Pennycook makes a plea for the proper examination of the Chinese emphasis on absorption of the text. He
argues that it reflects a view of the world in which the interpretive power of the linguistic formulation takes
precedence over "external reality," so that mastery of the text enables the student to attain an appropriate
perception of the world. This-rather than the typically representationalist approach of the West-gives a key place
to memorisation, and as a consequence the notion of plagiarism has a very different role in that culture.
What I am trying to suggest, therefore, is the possibility that the memorization of texts is not a pointless practice
from this point of view, because the issue is not one of understanding the world and then mapping language
onto it but rather of acquiring language as texts as a precursor to mapping out textual realities. (Pennycook,
1996, p. 222)
Taking these sources of evidence together, plagiarism can be seen to be part of a particular cultural
configuration. It assumes, I think without question, the individual ownership of intellectual work; personal
authorship, creativity or originality, and the view that knowledge has a history; and past authors must be
acknowledged. All these things are (as we might say) implicated in a certain western, modernist episteme. We
should not be caught unawares, then, by the fact that students from certain cultures find it puzzling not to be
allowed to put forward expert writing by a renowned authority as their answer to an essay or exam question. It
also ought not to surprise us that even students of western background have to be carefully inducted into what
can be seen as the quaint local norms of the academy. The University of Edinburgh statement quoted earlier
indicates how central the values are which plagiarism threatens. Ensuring students understand plagiarism must
be regarded therefore as an enculturation task. For students to fully appreciate what plagiarism is and why it will
be punished they need to possess not just a clear understanding of what constitutes plagiarism, or the skills
needed to avoid it, but also to understand why it is imbued with its particular status.
Student Perceptions of Cheating and Plagiarism
Generally speaking, research on student cheating has used questionnaire surveys and attitude scales. For
example, the Roberts and Toombs Perceptions of Cheating Scale (1993) invites the research subjects to score
a number of cheating scenarios in terms of their relative seriousness. The British research team which opened
up work in this area (Franklyn-Stokes and Newstead, 1995; Newstead, Franklyn-Stokes and Armstead, 1996;
Norton, Tilley, FranklynStokes and Newstead, 2001) also used this method. In earlier work by our research
team (Ashworth et al., 1997), we questioned the value of such methods, for, despite the fact that such research
has produced findings which are of considerable interest, the usefulness of studies of this nature is lessened by
such presuppositions as that the meaning of plagiarism is unequivocal. This assumption of consensus does not
deal with the question of precisely how plagiarism is understood by students, within the broader question of how
they live their studentship. It sets aside the possibility that there may be quite idiosyncratic conceptions. We just
do not know enough about the student perspective.
In our earlier work (Ashworth et al, 1997; Ashworth and Bannister, 1998) we found a number of novel features
of cheating in general, as it related to student experience:
The ethics of peer loyalty and fellow-feeling, and of learning. Students typically had strong moral beliefs related
to cheating. The difficulty was that there was a difference between these values and the official, academic ones.
A pervasive student value was of fellow-feeling and peer loyalty. This could lead the student to believe that

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copying and collusion were justifiable where a fellow student was in genuine difficulties. Another value for some
students was the centrality of learning those things which are seen as significant, and prioritising them over the
less fateful areas of their course. So it was seen as entirely justifiable to get through those units which were
regarded as unimportant, by whatever means was available, in order to concentrate on more significant work.
Opportunities and excuses. The university was regarded as somewhat blameworthy for certain features of the
assessment regime. Thus, some methods of assessment were seen as affording much greater opportunities for
cheating because of their informal nature. There were also what were seen to be institutional shortcomings:
Imposing an unsustainable amount of assessment; attempting to assess individually work that was carried out
in the context of group based learning; giving inadequate guidance on the regulations concerning cheating and
plagiarism.
Symbolic ambiguity-the reduction of fatefulness in assessment. The informal context in which coursework
exercises were completed was contrasted with the controlled, invigilated environment of unseen examinations.
The symbolism and the fatefulness of the formal end-of-session examination hall was seen as watered down in
other forms of assessment; these were less credible.
Alienation and cheating. General discontent with how students perceived themselves to be regarded by
academic staff was not only due to large classes and lack of faculty-student contact. Tasks which did not
engage the student also conveyed the impression of staff disrespect.
Putting the phenomenological question: What is plagiarism in its appearing?
The intention of the study reported here is to attend to the meaning of plagiarism within the student experience
as closely and fully as possible in its own terms. The methodology is phenomenological, by which we mean that
the focus is restricted to the elucidation of what the student means plagiarism to be, in the context of their lived
and felt experience, without imposing an external conceptual framework (e.g. a moral one). In order to enter the
lifeworld of the student in interviewing about plagiarism or in later analysis of what is said, the researcher must
set aside presuppositions (Ashworth, 1996; 1999) concerning the nature of plagiarism and attend to its meaning
for that person.
We may Set Aside the Foundational Quest
The classic studies of phenomenology which have a bearing on psychosocial life were focused on the
description of the essential features of the phenomenon at hand, following Husserl's quest for
phenomenologicallyclarified foundational concepts for each of the special sciences including (especially)
psychology.
[Every experiential science] must rise above the level of vague inductive empirical procedure. If it is to become
rigorous science, its first concern must be to establish those essential laws which govern its province a priori,
therefore, before any additional consideration of the contingently factual. The situation is no different for
psychology. The knowledge that an infinity of essential laws, to be investigated systematically, here precedes all
that is contingently factual, is the most important knowledge for shaping psychology into a rigorous science.
(Husserl, 1962, pp. 35-36)
Within this line of research, the phenomena which were the foci of investigation were ones without which lived
experience would be unimaginable. Perception, certain emotions, various modes of cognition, intersubjectivity,
judgement, imagination-all these are events in the human world which can be expected to yield up universal
essences to sustained phenomenological investigation. But plagiarism is not a foundational matter of this sort.
We have already seen its cultural and historical specificity. How, then, can we put the phenomenological
question, What is plagiarism in its appearing?
How Can the Phenomenological Question be Put?
To approach plagiarism as a phenomenon, to describe it just as it appears, setting aside questions about any
supposed hidden source of its meaningthat is the phenomenological task. The question is how to describe
plagiarism superficially, if you will (Arendt, 1978), in that there is no seeking for an underlying reality beyond

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what appears. But the phenomenon must be described in detail-remembering both what appears to awareness
as plagiarism, and the manner in which this is grasped by consciousness (the noema and the noesis, Husserl,
1983). However, this has to be done while recognising that what we are dealing with is a limited social and
cultural phenomenon rather than either a human existential.2
Plagiarism as a Feature of the Student Lifeworld
We contend that the correct approach to a contingent entity like plagiarism is to regard it as a possibility of the
lifeworld. In this case specifically the lifeworld of the student. The lifeworld does have essential features and is a
human universal. We have good pointers to the essential features of the lifeworld in the work of Heidegger
(1962, and the interpretation by Boss, 1979), and of Merleau-Ponty (1962), Sartre (1958), and van den Berg
(1972).
For practical purposes, the following list of seven fragments of the lifeworld enables the detailed description of
plagiarism to be undertaken in a thorough and phenomenological manner (for further elucidation, see Ashworth,
2003):
* Selfhood What does the situation mean for social identity; the person's sense of agency, and their feeling of
her own presence and voice in the situation?
* Sociality How does the situation affect relations with others?
* Embodiment How does the situation relate to feelings about their own body, including gender and emotions?
* Temporality How is the sense of time, duration, biography affected?
* Spatiality How is their picture of the geography of the places they need to go to and act within affected by the
situation?
* Project How does the situation relate to their ability to carry out the activ- ities they are committed to and which
they regard as central to their life?
* Discourse What sort of terms-educational, social, commercial, ethical etc.-are employed to describe the
situation?
Clearly each of these demands a phenomenological study of its own, and many have received this attention.
For instance, selfhood needs careful discussion. The self as having personal characteristics (including social
identity) has been well distinguished by Sartre (1958) from consciousness as such. It is axiomatic that self and
consciousness are non-identical. Other related notions within the ambit of selfhood are agency, presence and
voice. Each of these will vary within a certain lifeworld, and it is proper always to investigate the extent to which
a person feels that they have agency, a presence, and a voice, in a given setting.
Of course the fragments are by no means mutually exclusive, rather the lifeworld is a coherent whole with
interpenetrating meanings.
Interviewing and analysing "within the epochë"
The resolution of this issue of the way the phenomenological question is to be put leads to an approach which
relates student's perceptions and opinions to their lifeworld, and requires an idiographic set of descriptions. The
assumption that all individuals share an understanding of plagiarism is set aside, bracketed. This is not to say
that it is either accepted or rejected, but that it is put out of play unless it becomes plain from the evidence itself
that there are shared understandings, or maybe shared dilemmas (to which each student's response may be
idiosyncratic).
The epochë of presuppositions which would cloud the researcher's grasp of the phenomenon (Ashworth,
1996,1999) makes room for the meaning of plagiarism to reveal itself. Important presuppositions which are set
aside must include (a) the question of the accuracy of the student's view of plagiarism and, as we have
stressed, (b) the assumption of a common view among students.
The interviews were undertaken as part of research into student's perceptions of plagiarism commissioned by
Sheffield Hallam University's Plagiarism and Collusion Steering Group. The Group, with a broad membership
from university departments with a concern for plagiarism as a practical and disciplinary issue, had been

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charged with re-drafting the University regulations relating to plagiarism and collusion. To put this re-drafting,
and the subsequent procedure of dissemination of the rules, on a sound basis, the Group felt it was necessary
to explore students' views of plagiarism. Ranald Macdonald (RM) was invited to organise a research project;
Madeleine Freewood (MF) carried out the interviews, and the current analysis is the work of Peter Ashworth
(PA).
Given the remit, the interviews were set up with some constraints not ideal for phenomenologically-informed
research. There was more interviewer-led structuring in the interviews than one would wish, perhaps.
Nevertheless, the transcripts showed sufficiently conversational and wide-ranging accounts for it to be possible
to elucidate the participant's orientations to plagiarism within the personal meanings of their lifeworld. This was
partly due to the fact that the interviews took account of previous work at the same university (Ashworth,
Bannister and Thorne, 1997).
Twelve semi-structured interviews were undertaken with undergraduate students from five of the eleven
Schools of the university. Modally, the participants were male, first-year, full-time, under 21 years old (half had
this set of characteristics). Of course confidentiality and anonymity were promised.
The analysis was undertaken in the manner described by Giorgi (1985) and Wertz (1983). The interview
transcripts were analysed individually and the initial results were idiographic (Smith, Harré and van
Langenhove, 1995). The analysis entailed a reading of the transcript in terms of its discriminable units of
meaning. This having been rigorously done, the meanings are treated in terms of the fragments of the lifeworld
listed above.
Findings
Of the twelve interview analyses, summaries of three are presented. These relate to:
1) A student who takes an especially anxious line, his morality having to do especially with the fear of being
shamed by the discovery of plagiarism in his work. His view of plagiarism is predominantly that it entails lack of
skill in referencing.
2) A student who sees academic development in a student as the movement from dependence on respected
authors such that the student's work is near plagiaristic, to autonomy and self-assured originality.
3) A student whose degree involves both painting (in which personal originality may well entail the use of other
people's work and plagiarism is not an issue) and art history (in which essay-writing requires the explicit
acknowledgement of sources).
A male, final year student on a full-time Education Studies degree
Self
In the interview he showed anxious conformity to rules. He was horrified when imagining himself being accused
of passing off material as his own. Any lack of referencing would be unintentional. He assiduously follows the
rules of referencing. He certainly would not copy significant passages from a book. Plagiarism is a frightening
prospect. To be caught would immensely outweigh any value of copying. He was fearful of inadvertent
plagiarism.
He was aware-with great puzzlement-that others do not have this fear and seem unconcerned even when guilty
of plagiarism ( even when this is detected).
Students that had plagiarised didn't seem worried about it, I just remember thinking if that were me I'd be
shitting myself! You know just throw everything away like that, because you know it's going to catch up on you
somewhere something like that, you know at University level and you're copying pieces of work.
Discourses relevant to plagiarism
In discussing plagiarism he employed a discourse of morality as we have just seen (there is a vertigo at the very
idea of accusation). He also uses a discourse of skill pervasively, regarding referencing as a "hard-won
competence." Referencing conventions are not something all who come to university can be supposed to know.
It involves learned, and developing, skill.

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General orientation to the notion of plagiarism within those discourses
He defines plagiarism as copying significant amounts from a published source; not referencing it, and passing it
off as one's own. But having said that, he finds the notion unclear. Does plagiarism simply mean inadequate
referencing or is there more to it? He is anxious about abiding by the rules, but is not sure of them. Thus there is
a real possibility of accidental plagiarism due to lack of skill in referencing. He is convinced that plagiarism can
happen by accident. People can reference inadequately through lack of skill.
The idea that plagiarism encompasses one student copying the work of another is very secondary to this
participant. It is plagiarism, he knows. But far more salient is the unacknowledged reproduction of published
sources.
Sociality
The rules about referencing and plagiarism (which for him is simply inadequate referencing) are alien. They are
imposed by others. He has to learn the rides effortfully. He gets information about plagiarism and referencing
through published guidelines. The rules are alien-but unquestioned.
Well any time I'm doing a piece of work I make sure that I'm trying to follow those guidelines, I've always got my
unit handbook with me with all the types of referencing in, so that I'm covering myself all the time and its purely
because I feel I'm not sure what the definition of plagiarism is. So it's just to make sure I'm on the safe side I
think.
The nature of the appropriate punishment for deliberate plagiarism is hard to determine. Expulsion? Re-doing
the work? The actual procedures are not known and it is hard to think what would be right. There has to be a
punishment for deliberate plagiarism, but there is a major problem in judging whether the case is actually one of
accidental plagiarism, of which he is frightened.
In groupwork or in student environments where the work is naturally discussed, it is wrong to think that
interchange of ideas should be thought of as copying. Other's useful input sparks off associations in oneself
which are original with you.
When asked whether the Internet makes plagiarism more likely, he replies that it does, but this is not because of
the ease of cutting from a source and pasting into one's own work. Rather it is simply because the convention
for referencing is difficult. Such plagiarism would be unintended: a lack of skill.
When asked about his opinion concerning plagiarism-detection software, the student initially took this software
to be an aid to student referencing. If work were to be scanned by anti-plagiarism software, that would make
apparent the rules of referencing and would be beneficial to the student. But, on being told by the interviewer
that the software was intended as a detection device rather than a pre-submission check for the student to
ensure referencing was right, this led to change in attitude. He was shocked by the idea. It would distort the
process of marking so that it would become policing of plagiarism rather than assessing the student's grasp.
Project
Filled with fear about the danger of being accused of plagiarism, he devotes great attention to the skills of
referencing, but is insecure about his grasp of them. This is so pervasive a concern that he misunderstood "anti
plagiarism software" to be a helpful aid to the correct application of the rules-until he gathered that it was a
horrible policing device. Similarly, his concern with the use of the Internet as increasing the likelihood of
plagiarism was due to the possibility that students would be unskilled in referencing this novel resource.
He pays far more attention to the question of developing referencing skill than to the possibility of deliberate and
unacknowledged copying of text, whether from published sources or other students. Plagiarism, then, relates to
what seems to be a project of careful, and anxious, studentship.
A female student, first year, full-time Environmental Conservation degree
Self
Because a student will internalise the perspective of the authors to whom they are introduced, there is an
inevitable level of plagiarism. She implicates herself in this:

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We all plagiarise in some way don't we, because we all in our everyday life use phrases that are used by other
people. I hold my hands up to that and say yeah I do that.
She is an experienced and travelled, mature person, in contrast to many students on her course. Non-
plagiaristic work is something that students mature into rather than being explicitly taught. A young student
without experience of the wider world may adopt the approach of drawing on leading authors as a way of
learning.
She is committed to authentic work, and holds honesty as a value. She would rather fail through authentic
inability than succeed or fail illegitimately. Inner values matter-responsibility and personal pride. And post-
university life will demand self-reliance.
Discourses relevant to plagiarism
Discourse of development. A young student may adopt the approach of drawing on leading authors as a way of
learning. A good teacher provides the student with ways of thinking and behaving for the rest of their life. Is the
"reproduction" of that teacher's guidance plagiarism?
The discourse of honesty or authenticity. As we have seen, this student would rather fail through authentic
inability than succeed illegitimately. There is a deep value attached to the ability to claim one's work as one's
own.
The discourse of "the canon": Authorities in the field. There is a historical flow of scholarly work. Plainly the
student must use material from previous writers-material recommended by the tutors. This is the foundation of
their learning.
General orientation to the notion of plagiarism within those discourses
Avoiding plagiarism means acknowledging the source. In academic work, it means referencing.
Yet there is a sense in which copying others' insights is part of learning, addressing the student's own
inadequacy. Plagiarism of this sort could be considered good learning. Everyone uses others' phrases or
insights to develop their understanding and perception. One learns through other people's wordsfor instance,
reading literature teaches the reader how to more adequately read literature. The motive of the student may
simply be to learn from the superior ideas of the authors they are reading, and thereby improve their own work.
Drawing from others' writing is a way of improving one's grasp of a topic from zero to something.
Here she begins to regard as "plagiaristic" any undue dependence on an established author, irrespective of the
extent to which they are referenced. "Non-plagiaristic" writing entails thoroughgoing originality and confident
independence.
Project
Gradual maturation into the discipline begins with a reliance-maybe plagiaristic over-reliance-on the admirable
work of key authors (by which students attempt to remedy the lack in their own work), and moves towards the
production of authentic, personal work which is honestly one's own and indicates education has occurred. She
aims to follow this trajectory.
A male student on the first year of a full-time Fine Art, Painting and Print Making degree
Self
He sees the artistic and the discursive aspects of his course as very distinct and expresses himself on the one
hand as an originator of ideas in painting and on the other hand as an essay-writer with concern for good work.
He may draw on a published structure in framing an essay. This relies on work that is not one's own. The
source is referenced, so maybe technical plagiarism is not involved. But the overall work is not really authored
by the student. The purpose is to produce a better essay.
Discourses relevant to plagiarism
Discourse of moralism. He acknowledges that plagiarism may be viewed with the eyes of the moralist, but this is
a mistaken approach. It is a necessary part of learning to reach a viewpoint of one's own through others, so
moral indignation is misplaced. One just has to draw on other to reach a viewpoint of one's own. The only issue

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seems to be lack of recognition of authors.
Discourse of education. The development of an individual standpoint through absorption of the approaches of
others.
Discourse of the disciplines. The disciplines differ fundamentally in their orientation to copying. Plagiarism has
different meanings depending on the assessed work being considered. In the creative arts, studio work is
essentially collaborative, and deliberate reproduction of others' styles, etc., is encouraged in painting. The
question of plagiarism is odd in such a context-people are supposed to feed off each other's work. It is part of
learning. Plagiarism is only worthy of the name in art and design where there is blatant, unreciprocated theft of
work or idea. Moreover, the element of intertextuality in postmodernism is basically copying. In discursive
disciplines etc., the referencing of sources is mandatory.
General orientation to the notion of plagiarism within those discourses
Plagiarism as unreferenced copying; inadequate referencing of sources (roughly speaking: he believes this to
be the case). Plagiarism is copying-though "if you put the name of the author in the bibliography it seems to be
OK." In the end, plagiarism is inadequate referencing of sources. He regards this as trivial in the context of
one's overall dependence on other's work.
Project
The main care in academic work of this student is not easily elucidated. The development of skill and the
production of good work and a liberal attitude to student efforts bearing in mind their "developmental stage" and
the demands of their discipline-all this seems central.
Conclusion
The possibility of a coherent, idiographic description of each student's grasp of plagiarism is the immediate
finding of the research. There are definite features of the specific meaning of plagiarism for each student. This
needs emphasis. Even in phenomenologically-based research, the personal, lived standpoint is often missed in
the search for universals of one kind or another.
However, there were notable comparabilities in the way in which students lived the possibility of plagiarism, best
seen, perhaps, by reviewing the "placing" of plagiarism with respect to the fragments of the lifeworld we have
introduced.
The lifeworld
The descriptions of the meanings of plagiarism within the three student lifeworlds sketched above indicate the
correctness of an initially idiographic approach. The fragments of the lifeworld prove valuable in organising the
descriptions, and we can now say a little more about their specific unfolding in the situation of students and the
possibility of plagiarism.
Selfhood. As far as plagiarism is concerned, identity is thoroughly involvede.g., subject specialist identity in
talking about plagiarism "in English" having certain characteristics, and so on. The individual's experience of
themselves as having-in a certain situation-presence, agency and voice should be regarded as aspects of
selfhood. The first student experienced his situation, it seems, as lacking with respect to these in comparison to
the (at least apparent) assurance of the other two.
Sociality. Though we have only described this aspect of the plagiaristic situation for the first of the three
participants discussed above, sociality is importantly involved in plagiarism. Consider the interpersonal aspects
of plagiarism such as fairness, fellow-feeling as a motive for allowing another student to plagiarise one's work,
shame and embarrassment as intersubjective emotions deterring students from cheating, etc. Power comes in
here too-and student anger at the lack of detection and punishment of plagiarism by faculty (not prominent in
the three outlined above, but very clear in others). Also referencing as paying reverence to the person rightfully
regarded as the originator of an idea or way of formulating a method of thinking (and plagiarism as theft or
disrespect).
Temporality. Temporality is involved in plagiarism-e.g., plagiarism is important later in one's academic

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biography; time is the context for plagiarism (rushed work cuts the corners of absorbing material and developing
it as one's own). It was a feature of all students' accounts in these senses, and interestingly sometimes in the
sense of education as development.
Spatiality. Spatiality is involved in plagiarism at least insofar as it is a notion confined to certain locales.
Students saw the rules about plagiarism as specific to the university, or to this and certain creative or scientific
professions. It was not viewed as a general feature of all situations.
Project. The relationship of plagiarism to one's personal "project" (Sartre) or "care" (Heidegger) regarding
education is clear. Why is a student engaged in the educational process? In the three cases outlined we were
able to give some account of the meaning of plagiarism to their understanding of their own studentship.
Discourse. As far as plagiarism is concerned, the student's use of the available discourses is important. The
lack of student immersion in certain discourses from which plagiarism comes is likely to matter; e.g., students
may not concern themselves with the integrity of the assessment system, nor may they be aware of the thinking
lying behind accurate citation (science builds on previous science). So discourses of intellectual honesty and
plagiarism may be inadequately appropriated by students.
The vexed question of plagiarism is often tackled in terms of policing measures or of the institution of moral
codes. The variety of understandings of plagiarism-sometimes seeing it as an unskilled lack of referencing of
material, sometimes as a necessary stage in the process of learning, and sometimes noting its varying
meanings in different disciplines-means that the focus in dealing with the problem must be on enculturation. If
we view the norm of plagiarism-avoidance as a special feature of academic culture, then it becomes plain that
students must be introduced to it as part of their membership of that culture. And the burthen of the interviews
we have conducted is that this needs to be done in the classroom, by the teachers who are identified with the
disciplines and their particular characteristics of communal or individual work.
Acknowledgements
Our gratitude is due to Philip Bannister (Learning and Teaching Institute, Sheffield Hallam University) for his
participation in the research programme on cheating and plagiarism over period of six years, and to Alastair
Alien (University of Sheffield Library) for generously sharing information on Web plagiarism. It is also a pleasure
to record our thanks to Helen Longmate, for drawing our attention to the work of P. Haidu.
Footnote
Notes
1 We are grateful to an anonymous referee for indicating that this diversity had gone unremarked in a previous
version of the paper.
2 An essence of plagiarism could be described, recognising historical, cultural and personal contingency. It
would be a very detailed unpacking of the notion of a specific form of dishonesty, where a product was
presented by a student [variants go beyond this situation] for assessment as the original work of the author
when in fact it contained material (phrases or ideas) which were known by the presenter to be the work of
another. It falls into the realm of judgement, and would obtain within certain social circumstances. Our view,
however, is that this essence is of less interest or importance than the variations in understanding of plagiarism-
which relate the dishonest act to the individual lifeworld.
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AuthorAffiliation
Peter Ashworth, Madeleine Freewood, and Ranald Macdonald
Sheffield Hallam University

Publication title: Journal of Phenomenological Psychology

Volume: 34

Issue: 2

Pages: 257-278

Number of pages: 22

Publication year: 2003

Publication date: 2003

Year: 2003

Publisher: Brill Academic Publishers, Inc.

Place of publication: Atlantic Highlands

Country of publication: Netherlands Antilles

Publication subject: Psychology

ISSN: 00472662

CODEN: JPHPAE

Source type: Scholarly Journals

Language of publication: English

Document type: General Information

ProQuest document ID: 211494168

Document URL: http://proxying.lib.ncsu.edu/index.php?url=/docview/211494168?accountid=12725

Copyright: Copyright Brill Academic Publishers, Inc. 2003

Last updated: 2014-05-20

Database: ProQuest Central,Arts & Humanities Full Text

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Citation style: APA 6th - American Psychological Association, 6th Edition

Ashworth, P., Freewood, M., & Macdonald, R. (2003). The student lifeworld and the meanings of plagiarism.
Journal of Phenomenological Psychology, 34(2), 257-278. Retrieved from
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