Double-Entry Journal

Citation

Jordan, Augustus E., Peschiera, Fransisco, & Rettinger, David A. (2004). Evaluating the motivation of other students to cheat: a vignette experiment. Research in Higher Education, 45 (8), 873-890.


Double-Entry Journal (I'm sorry, I was unable to figure out how to attach a Word document to the blog. This was formatted correctly when I originally did it in Word)


Idea from Text

1. Cheating has become more and more rampant on university-level campuses and is a major concern. The purpose of the study was to examine the connection between perceived academic ability and likelihood to cheat.

2. Studies have shown that students who learn for the sake of learning are less likely to cheat than those who learn for the sake of the grade or academic standing.

3. The study confirmed findings from other studies that men are more likely to cheat than women.

4. Results confirmed that the intrinsically motivated student was less-likely to cheat in the university setting.

5. The study confirmed that students who have low confidence in their abilities are also more likely to cheat.

Reaction/Connection

1. Cheating is a major concern in the classrooms I teach, and I hope to find out some more about what motivates this dishonesty.

2. I would like to place more emphasis on the intrinsic value of learning next year in an effort to inform students on the true value of an education.

3. I think these findings correlate to cultural standards for manhood and womanhood. Though these definitions are eve-changing, the male breadwinner paradigm is still dominant in our culture. Therefore, the more pragmatic, grade-oriented, extrinsically motivated male emerges.

4+5. The question emerges: what can teachers do to promote intrinsically motivated study? Perhaps de-emphasizing the importance of grades is a start. Also, teachers should be careful to give more attention to those students who are low achieving. A proactive approach on the part of the teacher might decrease the likelihood of that student to cheat.

Use in Class

Seeing as how this method forced me to slow down and consider some of the implications of the article on cheating, I think this would be a great method to use when having students do some critical reading. One of the units I spend some time in at the beginning of the school year concerns worldview. We do lots of reading about formulating a worldview and examine some of the dominant worldviews that exist in America today. Using the double-entry journal would be a great way to not only organize information about worldviews, but it would also allow for critical thinking and evaluation as students react to and connect information from the reading to discussions from class.