Academic Integrity in the Twenty-First Century: A Teaching and Learning Imperative

Tricia Bertram Gallant. Academic Integrity in the Twenty-First Century: A Teaching and Learning Imperative. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2008. 144 pp. Paper: $28.00. ISBN-13: 978-0470373668.

Tricia Bertram Gallant's Academic Integrity in the Twenty-First Century is a well-developed monograph focusing on the issues of academic dishonesty and calls for a new approach to address how academia responds to violations of academic misconduct. Bertram Gallant provides a historical context for academic misconduct in the United States and very useful background information for understanding how our responses to academic dishonesty have evolved over time.

Beginning with the colonial period and progressing through to our modern university, she outlines the rise of honor codes and the development and implementation of rules to confront the issues of academic dishonesty. Bertram Gallant examines the two basic strategies and their hybrids that institutions currently employ for dealing with academic dishonesty: the rule-compliance strategy and the integrity strategy.

The rule-compliance strategy uses academic conduct policies and places them in the general listing of proscribed behaviors for students. It also outlines the process for which alleged violations of academic misconduct are handled (p. 35). The integrity strategy, through the use of honor codes, emphasizes the importance of committing to the principles of academic integrity as essential to the educational mission of the institution. While the rule-compliance strategy makes academic misconduct a disciplinary issue, the integrity strategy stresses both disciplinary and developmental methods for responding to academic dishonesty.

Using a review of the literature, Bertram Gallant explores four dimensions-internal, organizational, institutional and societal-to provide a more detailed explanation of the academic misconduct problem. The internal dimension suggests that when a student cheats or plagiarizes, he or she chooses to do so even though he or she knows the behavior is wrong. The internal dimension states that a student's decision to cheat stems from a moral failing.

The organizational dimension suggests that it is peer norms and lack of faculty involvement in the classroom which create an environment that encourages academic misconduct. Bertram Gallant cited a study suggesting that, when there is a conflict between institutional and peer group norms,...