MODERN AMERICAN SCHOOL
International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme (IBDP)
American High School Diploma Program COGNIA for Schools (AdvancED)
Academic Honesty Policy
MAS Vision Statement
The Vision of the Modern American School in Amman is to nurture lifelong learners and global thinkers to become responsible citizens with leadership qualities and universal values while instilling pride in one’s cultural identity.
MAS Mission Statement
The Mission of the Modern American School is to provide learners with an engaging and challenging blended learning environment within a diverse community while focusing on international programs, catering for learners’ well-being, fostering international mindedness, and offering various opportunities and experiences that contribute to learners’ growth.
IB Mission Statement
The International Baccalaureate aims to develop inquiring, knowledgeable and caring young people, who help to create a better and more peaceful world through intercultural understanding and respect. To this end, the organization works with schools, governments and international organizations to develop challenging programmes of international education and rigorous assessment. These programmes encourage learners across the world to become active, compassionate and lifelong learners, who understand that other people, with their differences, can also be right.
Academic Honesty at MAS
The Modern American School strives to develop lifelong learners who exemplify the IB learner profile and attitudes. Approaches to learning skills are taught to underpin academic integrity in all programmes particularly the Research skills and sub-skills of Ethical use of Media/ Information, where learners are expected to understand and apply social and ethical technology. Learners are exposed to the concept of academic integrity from Early years through Grade 12. Learners are expected to work independently, and in an academically honest approach, showing confidence, independence, integrity and being principled. Academic honesty should be modelled and explicitly taught. Teachers are encouraged to design assessments that lead learners to produce original and authentic work.
This policy clarifies our expectations regarding academic honesty practices on the part of its learners, defines the responsibilities of our staff in endorsing academic honesty, and explains the consequences of plagiarism and/or other forms of academic dishonesty. This policy has been derived from the Modern American School Code of Conduct and Principles and Guidelines in Discipline as well as the Jordanian Ministry of Education Discipline Policy.
How Does Academic Honesty Relate the Learner Profile and Attitudes?
The IB learner profile and attitude provide the foundation for the development of academic integrity. Helping learners to develop these IB learner traits will assist them in making the right choices andconsequently fosteracademichonesty. Learners areabletoreflectthosethreeattributes in all aspects of their academic work, hence adhering to the Academic Honesty Policy.
Principled: We act with integrity and honesty, with a strong sense of fairness and justice and with respect for the dignity and rights of people everywhere. We take responsibility for our actions and their consequences.
Inquirers: We nurture our curiosity, developing skills where inquiry and research. We know how to learn independently and with others. We learn with enthusiasm and sustain our love of learning throughout life.
Thinkers: We use critical and creative thinking skills to analyze and take responsible action on complex problems. We exercise initiative in making reasoned, ethical decisions.
Aims
This policy aims to:
• Promote and foster learners’ academic and personal integrity.
• Ensure learners understand what academic honesty and academic dishonesty are.
• Guidelearners through theircoursework to seekhelp and support from their teachers when theycomplete their work to avoid intentional or unintentional malpractice.
• Ensure that all learners have equitable opportunities to demonstrate accurate acknowledgmentof their own studies and others’ work.
• Ensurethatlearners acknowledgethatplagiarism and anyothermalpractice is unacceptable andwill have serious consequences.
Definition of Authentic Work
An authentic piece of work is based on the learner’s original ideas with the use of ideas and work of others fully acknowledged. Consequently, learners must use their own language in all assignments/tasks they complete, with proper citation for any form of direct quotation or paraphrase.
What is Academic Honesty in the Primary Years?
• Learners take responsibility for their own work of the gathered and collected information reflecting that they are knowledgeable
• Learners recognize, acknowledge the work of others, and can identify the difference between individual work and group work, reflecting they are principled and honest.
• Learners collaboratively work amongst the group, dividing tasks equally, and listening attentively to each other reveals cooperation, and respect.
• Learners follow timeline, submissions, citing and acknowledging sources and resources, being authentic and original and owning responsibility towards learning and assessments, strive to be principled.
• Learners are encouraged to explore, innovate, create, and act in different learning context giving critical and insightful evaluation of resources.
Principles and Practices across the Continuum
Primary Years Programme
ATL Skills Research, Thinking, communication, social, and self-management skills.
Activity Culminating project Group work Presentation Creative work Independent work
Principles and Practices
-Discuss the importance of academichonesty.
-showing how perspective may change when we address academic honesty across various cultures
- Teacher discusses and clarifies what is dishonesty by sharing examples of work that may be copied and or completed by others
-Teacher emphasizes the importance of collaboration and sharing ideas amongst a group reflecting creativity and collaboration.
-Everyone is entitled to voice their opinion and ideas; this can be achieved by creating an essential agreement with learners at the beginning of the school year.
-Working with learners on practicing their thinking, social and communication skills in various setups.
-Emphasis is done from the start of the year on how to obtain the information gathered, how to paraphrase and or summarize when doing their own research.
-Learners are exposed to ongoing sessions on how to do both citation and referencing of the information collected under the guidance and support of their teacher, librarian specialist and peers.
-Teachers review the inquiry cycle with learners, focusing on developing their research skills.
- Learners will be given examples on how to do referencing.
- Learners will understand that creativity often builds on the work of others, and new ideas often come from existing products and solutions.
- Learners understand and appreciate the importance of respecting intellectual property.
The library/media specialist leads discussions across grade/year levels about how authors create work, and the importance of respecting intellectual property.
Learners acknowledge that they have the responsibility to cite sources. Learners are taught how to create a bibliography or a page of works cited.
What is Academic Honesty in the Middle Years?
• Learners should act with integrity when completing assigned tasks.
• Learners practice the use of note cards under teacher guidance
• Learners are able to identify the work of others and provide citations based on the agreed school-adopted citing and referencing style (MLA)
• Learners are able to acknowledge the information used by creating a bibliography.
• Academic honesty is being developed through the explicit teaching and learning of Research ATL Skills; information and media literacy.
Key terms to help understand the role of Academic honesty
Citing
Identifying the sources which have been used in the text of an assignment or assessment. This may be done either by direct quotation, paraphrasing or summarizing
Referencing
Identifying full details of the sources used, and which are added within the reference list at the end of the assignment or assessment. Referencing follows a consistent way of formatting.
Collusion
This occurs when allowing one’s work to be copied or submitted for assessment by another or when someone does the work for someone else. Even if you have ‘collaborated’ with another learner, the work you present must be your own.
Duplication
of Work
This occurs when someone uses the same piece of work to fulfill different aspects of the Diploma program. For example: Using a previously submitted literature essay for your Extended Essay.
Definition of Malpractice
The International Baccalaureate defines malpractice as, “behavior that results in, or may result in, the candidate or any other candidate gaining an unfair advantage in one or more assessment components.” (IBO)
Definition of Misconduct
The International Baccalaureate defines misconduct as, “…behavior that results in, or may result in, the candidate or any other candidate gaining an unfair advantage in one or more components of assessment.” (IBO)
Types of academic misconduct:
Plagiarism: According to the Merriam-Webster online dictionary, to "plagiarize" means:
• To steal and pass off (the ideas or words of another) as one's own
• To use (another's production) without crediting the source.
• To commit literary theft
• To present as new and original an idea or product derived from an existing source. This may be intentional or unintentional.
Any work that:
• Has been written by someone else and is turned in by a learner as original work.
• Has not been included with use of quotation marks.
• Has not been given credit (appropriate citation)
• Work has been copied from different sources and presented without citation (will be considered as plagiarism).
Cheating: is a deliberate act of deception to give unfair advantage in an assignment, assessment,or exam.
The following will be considered as cheating:
• Stealing assessments or any testing materials
• Communicating with others during a test or examination
• Using unauthorized items (electronic or otherwise) during a test or examination
• Passing off someone else’s assignment as his/her own
• Copying someone else’s work
• Falsifying records
Principles and Practices across the Continuum
Middle Years Programme
ATL Skills Research, Thinking, communication, social, and self-management skills.
Activity Culminating Project Group work Presentation Creative work Independent work
Principles and Practices
-Teachers are expected to provide learners with clear
- Teachers needs to ensure that learners have deep understanding of the content and ability to summarize/paraph rase the information with proper citation.
- Learners need to understand that copyrights need to be acknowledge when using or referring to a video/ film/image
-Teacher discusses the importance of expectations and reporting data ongoing guidance on accurately. how to build up their Achievement in projects following the task depends the design cycle; on thoughtful starting from the analysis, not investigation consistent results reaching up to the across trials or reflection part of experiments. their projects.
- Teachers support peer-coaching strategies to empower learners to work collaboratively when documenting sources.
- The teacher uses examples to discuss piracy, responsible use and alternative royalty free print and multimedia resources (including creative commons licensing.
The teacher reviews the MYP design cycle, explaining that inquiring and analysing involves research into a range of existing products that can inspire solutions to the design problem.
- The learner realizes that by documenting his investigation with references, and developing an accurate bibliography, he is acting with academic honesty.
Teacher explains
-Learners are that copying, provided with clear creating or criteria for their manipulating data projects including won’t help the use of their learners attain a process journal to higher record the ongoing achievement learning journey level. including: the deadline for
- Learners will understand that creativity often builds on the work of others, and new ideas often come from existing products and solutions.
-Scientific completion; record thinking relies on selected, annotated the honesty of and/ or edited researchers who research notes; and design and carry to maintain a current out experiments, bibliography. and the data they
-Theteacherexplains generate. the relevance of the academic honesty form as a form of communication
What is academic honesty in High School?
Academic honesty in the high school is a set of values and behaviors informed by the attributes of the learner profile. We inspire our learners to plan each assignment by providing them with tools and support. We encourage them to schedule their work and learn to be self-motivated to manage their time and resources. We make sure that a high level of is communication with our learners is establishedthat shouldtransfer the expectations in the DP program. Ourteachers are readyto guide and support the learners at all stakes, and our learners have trust in their teachers.
Principles and Practices across the Continuum
High School Years Program
ATL Skills Research, Thinking, communication, social, and self-management skills.
Activity Culminati ngProject Group work Presentation Creative work Independen t work
Assessment Task Researc hpapers Extend edessay Projects Presentations Individual oral commentary: IOCs CAS/ ACT Art Studio Internal Assessment
Principles -Twice a -Teacher -Librarian and -It is a -Teachers and month makes sure the teachers are common are well Practices scheduled members of expected to practice for trained on meeting with the group have guide the individuals to grading the student equitable students on how be inspired system and supervisor access to tools to cite, reference, by, or to the use of where is set on and resources. and use adapt, other’s grading the calendar to -The teacher bibliography for ideas. criteria. discuss the EE instructs the their oral and -The teacher -Students draft. students written work. emphasizes are familiar -Supervisor clearly on the -Teachers that students with the sets requirements provide must grading expectations and the individual explicitly criteria for for every expectations support for acknowledge every meeting. of the group students when the original component. -Supervisor task. they do their work. -Exemplars may suggest -Students journal and/ or -CAS/ ACT of previous secondary understand create their supervisors work is resources for how the reflections. shares shared with the student. grading expectations
-Student should take the feedback from the supervisor and work on them.
-The supervisor reminds the DP student of the importance of formulating his/ her own ideas on the topic and a plan for the essay before consulting other sources.
-Student are expected to be familiar with honesty and integrity expectations and malpractice procedures.
-Teachers follow up on students work and authenticity through reflection reports
criteria and grading system works for the component being assessed.
-Teacher establishes an environment where the project is not being dominated by one member andhas a quiet talk with the student if a case occurs.
-Students are expected to understand andworkupon that although the data collection was done as a group, each member must write up an individual report.
-Students have the skills to plan his/ her presentation or IOC.
-Students researching for their presentation are encouraged to use a variety of sources, including books, websites, and newspaper articles.
-The teacher suggests several ways in which the student may use citation in oral assessments, including verbal or written acknowledgment s throughout the presentation, or with a bibliography on the last slide of the PowerPoint for examples.
and criteria for students where they live an authentic experience.
-Students are constantly updating their profile and reflect with deep awareness on their experience and expectations.
students for feedback.
-Students are familiar with the plagiarism checking engine turnitin and how it works.
-Students keep a track with their pending task that should indirectly affect their internal assessment performance
. -Students are familiar with the assessment policy, integrity policy, and all consequence s and deadlines.
-Calendar is effectively usedbyboth the teacher and the student.
Plagiarism Software
Theschool has purchased Turnitin to beused byour grades 6-12 teachers for tracking the integrity of the assignments and tasks submitted by our learners.
Procedures for any act of dishonesty (malpractice/misconduct)
Primary Learners
• In case of 1st time misconduct, teacher/s and PYPC discusses with learner the incident and reasons behind this misconduct.
• Learner will be offered the opportunity to correct the error and redo the task.
• A reflective session will be done with the learner.
• If the learner repeats the action for the 2nd time, then he/she will be notified verbally and will be required to re-do the task/ work.
• The learner will not be granted the attained achievement level, alternatively, the learner will drop one level.
• If the learner continues to repeat anydishonesty acts forthe3rd time, awritten warning will be given to the learner, parents will be notified, and the warning will be documented in their file, they are required to repeat the work and they will drop one level.
Middle School Learners
• The teacher and Head of Middle School discuss with learners the incident and the reasons behind their action.
• Learners are referred to the stage counselor for guidance and coaching.
• Parents are informed of the incident and the action that will be decided on by the academic honesty committee.
• In case of an examination, and when the intention of cheating is evident, learners receive a zero or the lowest level available from the first time this incident occurs.
• In case of an assignments/projects, learners are allowed to resubmit their assignment for the first time this misconduct happens. In case this action is not the first time, learners are allowed to resubmit their assignment with a maximum level of 4 out of 8. In case this incident occurs for the third time, we repeat the procedure of the second time in addition to granting the learners a written warning.
School administration may assign additional consequences based on the severity of the incident.
High School learners
I. Cheating:
In case a learner cheated in any type of assessments; including but not limited to, quizzes, unit tests, term exams...etc., the following procedures will be taken.
• An automatic 0 mark will be awarded for that assessment.
• The resource or source of cheating, if any, will be confiscated as per exam procedures policy of MAS.
• Counseling session will be conducted with a reflection paper to be filled at the counselor's office.
• Parents will be contacted through the learners' affairs.
II. Plagiarism:
In case a learner plagiarized a work/ assignment/ internal assessment the following procedures will be taken.
A. Internal Assessment:
The Aim of maintaining academic honesty is to instill the attributes of responsibility, reliability, and authenticity in our learners. The implementation of adequate measures for academic dishonesty is an educational approach rather than a punishment system. It is a tool that should guide the learners become independent and responsible individuals. If academic misconduct is suspected, a learner is held accountable and should provide evidence to support the legitimacy of that work.
Once a thorough analysis of the learner’s work has been done and the needed evidence is provided, the teacher has the right to refuse accepting the learner’s work and give the learner a grade of F.
Teachers may allow the resubmission of the learner’s work at their discretion. In case academic dishonesty in international exams has been suspected, the international examination board has the right to investigate the academic misconduct, which might result in the student failing the exam or forbidding the student from sitting for that exam.
Procedures in Case of Internal Assessment Plagiarism:
• The work will be rejected.
• A written warning will be given to the learner and will be communicated with the learner’s affairs. A copy of the signed warning will be kept at the counselor’s office, and a contact with parent will be done.
• A counseling session will be given to the learner with a reflection form to be completed at her office.
• The learner will be given 48 hours to resubmit an original work to the teacher. Failing to submit within 48 hours will result in a 0 mark with no further opportunity to resubmit.
B. Assignments (Essays, research paper, lab investigation, project...etc):
• The work will be rejected.
• A counseling session will be given to the learner with a reflection form to be completed at her office.
• The learner will be given 48 hours to resubmit an original work to the teacher. A deduction of 10% of the total mark will be applied. Failing to submit within 48hours will result in a 0 mark with no further opportunity to resubmit.
Roles and Responsibilities
School’s Responsibility
• Develop an academic honesty policy and revise it annually.
• Communicate the academic honesty policy with the school community including; learners, teachers, and parents.
• Train teachers on the school-adopted citing and referencing style (MLA)
• Monitor learners’ academic honesty by reviewing samples of learners’ work and ensuring teachers follow proper procedures
• Provide proper supervision for research projects and presentations
Librarian’s role
The librarian is the mains staff member responsible for the implementation of the Academic Honesty Policy and ensuring its effectiveness.
• She is responsible for conducting training session for both staff and learners throughout the scholastic year
• Ensure availability of up-to-date and reliable resources
• Overseeselectionofapplications orresources related to monitoringplagiarism andprovide teachers with training.
• Explicitly teach, in coordination with teachers, the correct manner of conducting research and creating original work with correct acknowledgment of original author
• Communicate with teachers regarding research skills taught during library lessons.
Teachers’ role
• Guide learners to ensure they fully understand the concept of academic integrity along with the risks and consequences of plagiarism
• Explicitly teach learners proper research skills; how to cite sources properly according to MLA format
• Bearole model -makesureall shared materials (handouts, presentations etc.)arecorrectly referenced in accordance to the MLA referencing booklet.
• Provide guidelines and communicate expectations to learners on what constitutes misconduct, including requirements for citing sources.
• Report cases of misconduct to school administration
• Make use of Turnitin as monitoring tools to evaluate level of plagiarism in learners’ work
• Devote time to teach and practice these skills-making them “second nature”.
• Communicate consequences of breaching of the policy and the IB regulations.
• Teachers encourage honest, creative, critical work by:
➢ Designing assessment criteria that value and reward the work required, rather thanonly the result.
➢ Teaching ways to acknowledge others: learners can learn to use quotation marks tomark others’ words or describe what help was useful and why
➢ Teaching reflection on the learning process, rather than stressing formal citation ordemonizing copying.
Counselor’s role
• Council learners on the importance of always showing integrity and honesty.
• Provide support to teachers, parents, and staff on behavior of learners in cases of misconduct.
Learners’ Responsibility:
Across all programmes, learners’ work needs to embody the values of honesty and integrity.It is important that learners.
• Make their work personal and write using their “own” voice.
• Read and comprehend the Academic Honesty Policy
• Collect andorganizeactual sources ofinformation usedintheirwork andshow responsible use of them by applying their developing approaches to learning skills.
• Use MLA format for effective citation and referencing in all required assignments and tasks.
• Act with integrity by maintaining principled behavior by giving credit to used sources in all work submitted.
• Abstain from receiving non-permitted assistance in the completion or editing of work, such as from friends, relatives, other learners, private tutors, essay writing or copy-editing services, pre-written essay banks or file sharing websites.
• Abstain from giving undue assistance to peers in the completion of their work.
Middle and High School Learners- Grades 6-12
- Sign the Academic Honesty Form each year and whenever attached to any performance task and check their own work for plagiarism.
- Submit authentic work (i.e., personal/community projects, extended essay among other performing tasks).
Parents’ Roles
Parents play a vital role in raising awareness about Academic Honesty
• Parents are expected to read the documents provided by the school.
• Support the academic honesty policy communicated by the school in applying the approved procedures.
• Provide support ensuring that the learners are the ones responsible for theauthenticity of the work presented.
• Discuss causes and consequences of academic dishonesty with their children.
• Encourage academic honesty by modelling integrity.
• Monitorachild’s workat hometo ensurethats/heisnot beingover-supportedwhen working on his assignments and tasks, and sufficient time is dedicated to producing authentic work.
• Sign the forms of academic honesty provided by the school.
• Establish a good level of communication with the school to enable them to understand the requirements and what is expected from both the learners and parents.
Academic Honesty Committee
Head of Division, Learners Affairs Manager, and Subject Coordinator. In case of any academic misconduct:
1- Subject teacher or proctor would mark the part, which is plagiarized/cheated. In case of an assessment, learners continue the assessment with taking away the cheating tool (paper, note, etc…)
2- A report will be presented to the committee from the subject teacher or proctor.
3- An investigation will be made by the committee to agree on the consequences decided on.
4- Inform the learner and his/ her parents of the decision made
5- Refer the learner to the counselor for guidance and support
Policy Committee Members
TheAcademic Honesty policy is reviewed annually. The following committee members reviewed this year’s policy:
Ms. Dareen Hattar
Ms. Raida Daoud Director Deputy /MYP Coordinator ES Principal
Ms. Manal Abu Saadeh
Ms. Suha Abdel Baqi Head of Librarians Director Deputy/DP Coordinator
Ms. Aya Abdel Hadi PYP Coordinator
Ms. Shireen Dahleh HS Principal
References:
General Regulations: Diploma Programme. IB Publishing Ltd., September 2016.
Diploma Programme: From principles into practice . Geneva , April 2015.
Programme standards and practices. International Baccalaureate Organization (UK) Ltd. , March 2016.
Simplifying the diploma requirements and failing conditions. International Baccalaureate Organization, n.d.
“IB Learner Profile.” IB Organization, https://www.ibo.org/benefits/learner-profile
Country recognition for IBDP
Academic Honesty in the IB educational context, International Baccalaureate Organization, 2014