MAS Academic Honesty Policy

MODERN AMERICAN SCHOOL ‫المدرسة االمريكية الحديثة‬ International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme (IBDP) American High School Diploma Program COGNIA for Schools (AdvancED)

Academic Honesty Policy

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Table of Contents Vision and Mission of the Modern American School

3

IB Mission Statement

3

Academic Honesty at MAS

4

How Does Academic Honesty Relate the Learner Profile and Attitudes?

4

Aims

5

Definition of Authentic Work

5

What is Academic Honesty in the Primary Years?

5

Principles and Practices across the Continuum

6

What is Academic Honesty in the Middle Years?

7

Key terms to help understand the role of Academic honesty

7

Types of Academic misconduct

8

Principles and Practices across the Continuum

9

What is Academic Honesty in the High School?

10

Principles and Practices across the Continuum

10

Plagiarism Software

12

Procedures for any act of dishonesty (malpractice/misconduct)

12

Roles and Responsibilities

14

Academic Honesty Committee

17

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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.

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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 and consequently foster academic honesty. Learners are able to reflect those threeattributes 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.

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Aims This policy aims to: •

Promote and foster learners’ academic and personal integrity.

•

Ensure learners understand what academic honesty and academic dishonesty are.

•

Guide learners through their coursework to seek help 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.

•

Ensure that learners acknowledge that plagiarism and any other malpractice 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.

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Principles and Practices across the Continuum Primary Years Programme ATL Research, Thinking, communication, social, and self-management skills.

Skills Activity Group work Presentation Culminating Creative Independent project work work Principles -Discuss the and Practices importance of

academic honesty.

-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.

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-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)

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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

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Principles and Practices across the Continuum

Middle Years Programme ATL Research, Thinking, communication, social, and self-management skills.

Skills Activity Culminating Group work Presentation Creative work Project - Learners need The teacher are - Teachers needs Principles -Teachers to ensure that to understand reviews the MYP expected to provide and learners have deep that copyrights design cycle, Practices learners with clear expectations and ongoing guidance on how to build up their projects following the design cycle; starting from the investigation reaching up to the reflection part of their projects.

understanding of the content and ability to summarize/paraph rase the information with proper citation.

- Teachers support peer-coaching strategies to empower learners to work -Learners are collaboratively when provided with clear criteria for their documenting sources. projects including the use of their process journal to record the ongoing learning journey including: the deadline for completion; record selected, annotated and/ or edited research notes; and to maintain a current bibliography.

need to be acknowledge when using or referring to a video/ film/image

explaining that inquiring and analysing involves research into a range of existing products that can inspire solutions - The teacher to the design uses examples to problem. discuss piracy, responsible use and alternative - The learner royalty free print realizes that by and multimedia documenting his resources investigation with (including references, and creative developing an commons accurate licensing. bibliography, he is acting with academic honesty.

- Learners will understand that creativity often builds on the work of others, and new ideas often come from existing products and solutions.

-The teacher explains the relevance of the academic honesty form as a form of communication

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Independent work -Teacher discusses the importance of reporting data accurately.

Achievement in the task depends on thoughtful analysis, not consistent results across trials or experiments.

Teacher explains that copying, creating or manipulating data won’t help learners attain a higher achievement level.

-Scientific thinking relies on the honesty of researchers who design and carry out experiments, and the data they generate.

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 established that should transfer the expectations in the DP program. Our teachers are ready to 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 Research, Thinking, communication, social, and self-management skills.

Skills Activity Culminati Group work Presentation Creative Independen ngProject work t work Assessment Task

Researc hpapers Extend edessay

Projects

Presentations Individual oral commentary: IOCs

CAS/ ACT Art Studio

Internal Assessment

Principles and Practices

-Twice a month scheduled meeting with the student supervisor where is set on the calendar to discuss the EE draft.

-Supervisor sets expectations for every meeting.

-Supervisor may suggest secondary resources for the student.

-Teacher makes sure the members of the group have equitable access to tools and resources.

-Librarian and teachers are expected to guide the students on how to cite, reference, and use

-It is a common practice for individuals to be inspired by, or to adapt, other’s

-Teachers are well trained on grading system and the use of grading

-The teacher

bibliography for

ideas.

criteria.

instructs the

their oral and

-The teacher

-Students

students clearly on the requirements and the expectations of the group task.

-Students understand how the grading

written work.

-Teachers provide individual support for students when they do their journal and/ or create their reflections.

emphasizes that students must explicitly acknowledge the original work.

-CAS/ ACT supervisors shares expectations

are familiar with the grading criteria for every component.

-Exemplars of previous work is shared with

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-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 and has a quiet talk with the student if a case occurs.

-Students are expected to understand and work upon 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.

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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 used by both the teacher and the student.

Plagiarism Software The school has purchased Turnitin to be used by our 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 any dishonesty acts for the 3rd time, a written 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.

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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.

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An automatic 0 mark will be awarded for that assessment.

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The resource or source of cheating, if any, will be confiscated as per exam procedures policy of MAS.

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Counseling session will be conducted with a reflection paper to be filled at the counselor's office.

•

II.

Parents will be contacted through the learners' affairs.

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.

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•

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.

• •

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

•

Communicate the academic honesty policy with the school community including; learners, teachers, and parents.

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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 Oversee selection of applications or resources related to monitoring plagiarism and provide 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 Be a role model - make sure all shared materials (handouts, presentations etc.) are correctly 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.

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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 and organize actual sources of information used in their work and show 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.

•

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.

•

Monitor a child’s work at home to ensure that s/he is not being over-supported when 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.

•

Support the academic honesty policy communicated by the school in applying the approved procedures.

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•

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 The Academic Honesty policy is reviewed annually. The following committee members reviewed this year’s policy: Ms. Dareen Hattar Director Deputy /MYP Coordinator

Ms. Manal Abu Saadeh Head of Librarians

Ms. Raida Daoud ES Principal

Ms. Suha Abdel Baqi Director Deputy/DP Coordinator

Ms. Aya Abdel Hadi PYP Coordinator Ms. Shireen Dahleh HS Principal

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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

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