Miscommunicating plagiarism in swedish schools

Although plagiarism has a much longer history, many teachers of English have noticed that the amount of copying has increased alongside the use of the Internet. The paper begins with a review of the literature demonstrates that although much attention has been paid to undergraduates in academic environments, little attention has been paid to plagiarism in schools. Other studies indicate that plagiarism is more common when people are writing in their L2, and when working with online sources. Combined, the review suggests that studies of L2 plagiarism in schools are needed, particularly studies where pupils are working with English language online sources.The paper reports on a study in which pupils aged 14-17 in Swedish secondary schools were interviewed about the use of source texts in an English lesson. Their teachers and High School teachers were also interviewed. A phenomenological analysis of the interviews revealed a mismatch between the teachers' instructions, the pupils' understanding of the instructions and the teachers' interpretation of copying behaviour. The pupils' opinions were mostly based on the pedagogical reasons given by their teachers to explain why they should not copy other people's work, rather than on ideas related to the ownership of ideas. The teachers primarily understood the activities in terms of cheating and laziness.