Call for Papers Symposium 1 : Academic Writing and Integrity

The expression “university literacy” defines a discipline interested in the teaching and learning of university-level discourse genres to understand the identities, practices, and power dynamics of this education milieu (Crahay, 2012; Guay et al., 2015; Hilsdon et al., 2019). It is gaining popularity with a focus placed on the contextual, social, and cultural dimensions of reading and writing (Delcambre, 2012). When addressing academic writing, Badger and White (2000) consider that it primarily pertains to the act of composing a text adhering to rules of vocabulary usage, syntax, and appropriate discourse markers. However, the production of a university-level text is not linear; it is an iterative process of expression and creation that does not only include the action of adding words on a blank page (Dobiecki, 2006). According to Tremblay-Wragg et al. (2021), academic writing involves back-and-forth movements between the planning of one’s work, the reflexive analysis of information, and the composition of the actual written product. In the digital era, this dynamic process implies the mobilization of digital scrapbooking strategies (DSS), represented by 23 cognitive actions categorized into three competencies: information searching, writing, and referencing (Peters, 2015). Any deficiencies observed, in these three categories of competencies, may result in university students plagiarizing, be it intentionally (Bergadaa, 2015) or unintentionally (Eaton, 2021), which impedes on the academic integrity of their work. The implicit linkage between academic writing and academic integrity, in a practical sense, triggers a reflection on the explicit intersections between these two fields of research.

The link between academic integrity and academic writing

According to Macfarlane, Zhang, and Pun (2014), academic integrity “encompasses the values, behavior, and conduct of academics in all aspects of their practice” (p. 339). In this regard, the International Center for Academic Integrity (2021) identified the following values that scholars and students should promote: honesty, trust, fairness, respect, responsibility and courage. These values can be assessed through tangible behaviors and conduct that are easily “detectable” in someone’s written work, for example, by adhering to proper referencing practices. Therefore, we contend that academic integrity and academic writing are closely linked, especially in the extensive body of literature that addresses plagiarism detection. As such, several studies examined the rates of plagiarism cases (Béland, 2020; Walker, 2010), the motivations behind plagiarism (Doss et al., 2016; Skaar et Hammer, 2013), and the means to detect plagiarism (Foltýnek et al., 2019; Mphahlele et McKenna, 2019). The cross-references between writing and integrity discourses are further evidenced by Jamieson and Howard (2019) who advocate for the distinction between intentional cheating conduct (i.e., academic ghostwriting) that represents a breach in academic integrity and unintentional behaviors (i.e., faulty citations) that should be treated as poor writing practices. In the same vein, there is a growing body of research that is moving away from detecting and punishing misconduct, and towards a greater focus on prevention or restorative practices (Eaton, 2021).

Diversity as a critical lens

The current volume aims to explore the intersections between academic writing and academic integrity practices, policies and theory in increasingly pluralistic and heterogeneous higher education (HE) contexts. Arguably, the HE sectors in most developed countries are experiencing an unprecedented period of diversification of students and staff triggered by late 20th and early 21st century economic, demographic and political trends, such as internationalization (Adams, 2013; Wit 2014); massification (Tavares et al., 2022); equity, diversity and inclusion (Smith, 2014) and decolonization (Santos, 2017, Bhambra et al.,2018). These developments have raised important questions about social justice, access to education, representation, kinds and hierarchies of knowledge(s) which, in turn, challenge established practices of regulating and validating knowledge production, including in terms of academic writing and academic integrity. This volume responds to a gap in the broad field of academic integrity research which is currently dominated by the monocultural pedagogic and research concerns of mostly Caucasian and mostly anglophone scholars and practitioners (Eaton, 2022). It aims to open up space where established discourses on writing and integrity at all levels of HE are interrogated and reinterpreted through the lens of cultural difference.

One analytic concept that can assist in this regard is that of ‘superdiversity’, introduced by Vertovec (2007). Although originally related to the processes of exponential migration of nationally, ethnically and culturally diverse populations into the UK since the 1990s (Vertovec, 2007), superdiversity has more recently been understood as a global phenomenon and has been applied variously to the integration of international students, migrant populations, underrepresented social groups or indigenous populations into higher education (Donahue, 2018; Donahue, 2023; Madiba, 2018).

Contributors to this volume are invited to use superdiversity, or related concepts that capture the cultural multiplicity of 21st century global HE, to critique academic writing and integrity in relation to any of the following sets of problems:

• student writing, assessment and literacy and their pedagogical implications;
• student support and development work, including as carried out by writing centers or skills units;
• HE sector and institutional policies regulating teaching and learning in and across disciplinary contexts;
• research practices in local and/or global contexts, including research ethics and collaborations;
• research development and supervision practices and pedagogies;
• writers’ identities, languages and voices in the context of disciplinary or inter- /transdisciplinary academic discourses.”

References:

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• Badger, R. & White, G. (2000). A process genre approach to teaching writing. ELT Journal, 54(2), 153-160. https://doi.org/10.1093/elt/54.2.153
• Béland, S. (2020). La pandémie de COVID-19, terreau fertile pour le plagiat. In A. Desrochers (Ed.), Le 15-18 : Société Radio-Canada.
• Bergadaa, M. (2015). Une brève histoire de la lutte contre le plagiat dans le monde académique. Questions de communication, 1(27), 171-188. https://doi.org/10.4000/questionsdecommunication.9787
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• International Center for Academic Integrity (2021). The Fundamental Values of Academic Integrity (3rd éd.). https://academicintegrity.org/images/pdfs/20019_ICAI-Fundamental- Values_R12.pdf
• Jamieson, S. & Howard, R. M. (2019). Rethinking the relationship between plagiarism and academic integrity. International Journal of Technologies in Higher Education, 16(2), 69– 85. https://id.erudit.org/iderudit/1067061ar
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• Mphahlele, A., et McKenna, S. (2019). The use of turnitin in the higher education sector: Decoding the myth. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 44(7), 1079-1089.
• Peters, M. (2015). Enseigner les stratégies de créacollage numérique pour éviter le plagiat au secondaire. Revue canadienne de l’éducation, 38(3), 1-28. https://journals.sfu.ca/cje/index.php/cje-rce/article/view/1878
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• Skaar, H., et Hammer, H. (2013). Why students plagiarise from the internet: The views and practices in three Norwegian secondary classrooms. International Journal for Educational Integrity, 9(2), 15-34.
• Smith, D.G. (Ed.) (2014). Diversity and Inclusion in higher education: Emerging perspectives on institutional transformation (1st ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315797885
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