Defining Academic Integrity – International Perspectives: Introduction

In the first section of the Handbook of Academic Integrity it is appropriate and necessary to begin by defining the term ‘academic integrity’. This is such a multifarious topic that authors around the globe report differing historical developments which have led to a variety of interpretations of academic integrity as a concept, and a broad range of approaches to promulgating it in their own environments. There can be no debate that academic integrity is fundamental to teaching, learning, research, and the advance of knowledge. In fact, it is critical to every aspect of the educational process. If there was ever any doubt, it is the hope of all the contributors to this book that those doubts will be quashed once and for all. In the first section of the Handbook of Academic Integrity, it is appropriate and necessary to begin by defining the term “academic integrity.” Any undergraduate student will know that a quick Wikipedia search or a flick through a modern dictionary will provide a sensible and useful working definition for just about any major concept. Who could imagine that in attempting to define and understand the meaning of academic integrity, it would be necessary to seek the input of 17 authors representing 39 different countries? Academic integrity is such a multifarious topic that authors around the globe report differing historical developments which have led to a variety of interpretations of it as a concept and a broad range of approaches to promulgating it in their own environments. The Handbook opens with a chapter by Teresa (Teddi) Fishman and provides a broad overview of the genesis of academic integrity as an educational concept in the USA. Fishman compares the history of higher education in the USA to other countries, demonstrating that a range of unique factors have contributed to the widespread focus in the USA today on the high incidence of student cheating. As Fishman explains, higher education in the USA is “a relatively young system of higher education modeled on much older medieval universities, predicated on the integration of higher learning and specifically Judeo-Christian ethics and morality, in a cultural setting in which access to higher education to members of varying social classes was valued more highly than uniformly thorough preparation, characterized by academic environments that put instructors in the dual roles of educator and disciplinarian, with virtually no mandated uniformity amongst or sometimes even within institutions.” Tracey Bretag shares the recent history of what is known as the “educational integrity” movement in Australia. Struggling under the weight of an underfunded and increasingly internationalized higher education sector, the educational integrity movement benefitted from a decade of research on student cheating in the USA, as well as teaching and learning practices developed in the UK. The resultant approach has been characterized by an understanding that academic integrity is a multifaceted and multistakeholder issue, premised on actions underpinned by values, and something which goes well beyond sensationalized scandals of student cheating, plagiarism, and essay mills. Jon Scott and Jane Thomas discuss academic integrity as an “increasing preoccupation” in the internationalized, diverse, and complex UK higher education sector. This preoccupation initially led to an almost universal acceptance across the sector of the text-matching software Turnitin to assist in the *Email: tracey.bretag@unisa.edu.au Handbook of Academic Integrity DOI 10.1007/978-981-287-079-7_76-1 # Springer Science+Business Media Singapore 2015