Appealing for a 'Culture of Integrity" in Our Nursing Schools
Academic dishonesty, such as plagiarism and cheating on tests, seems to be on the rise in our institutions of higher education including nursing schools! A number of factors seem to be contributing to this sad state of affairs; such as the proliferation of online exams, copying from the Internet, as well as a general deterioration of ethics among this generation of students. Such are the findings of a new research study of nursing students published in the latest issue of the Journal of Nursing Education."When I began this project, I expected to demonstrate the greater integrity of nursing students versus students in other disciplines, but that has not turned out to be the case ..The finding that more than half of the nursing students, as well as approximately half of the graduate nursing students...self-reported one or more classroom cheating behaviors is discouraging. The fact that these proportions seem to be higher than those for non-nursing students is even more disturbing."So what can be done? The article concludes that in fact "Faculty have a major role in controlling cheating and promoting academic integrity." The reasons given are that students rise to faculty expectations so they need to role model academic integrity.
"I believe that we should develop a 'culture of integrity'. We need to instill in our students the importance of honesty and integrity and how that translates to ethical behavior in our nursing practice."Click on title to login to EBSCO CINAHL database to read the full text.
Citation: McCabe, D. (2009). Academic dishonesty in nursing schools: an empirical investigation. Journal of Nursing Education, 48(11), 614-623. Retrieved from CINAHL with Full Text database.
Labels: academic integrity, cheating on exams, culture of integrity, ethical behaviour, faculty role models, nursing education, plagarism
posted by Ann Celestine @ 9:07 AM
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