Academic Honesty Policy

As an IB Middle Year Programme (MYP) school, we value honesty and academic integrity. We encourage all students to conduct themselves in a responsible way and expect all students to avoid any academic malpractice. The school believes that honesty and integrity are basic, desirable character traits.Academic dishonesty is generally defined as cheating or creating a false impression of a student’s performance. The Homestead Middle School and the International Baccalaureate Organization define dishonesty as a behavior that may results in students gaining an unfair advantage in assessment.

It is expected that Homestead Middle School students will in all instance demonstrate academic honesty at all times.

Dishonesty includes, but is not limited to:

COLLUSION:

• This involves deliberately allowing your own work to be copied or submitted for assessment by another student.

DUPLICATION of WORK:

• This is defined as the presentation of the same work by the same student for different assessment components when it is contrary to the regulations of either the school or the external body assessing the work.

PLAGIARISM:

• Presenting another person’s intellectual property or work as your own work (i.e. written words, ideas, visual images, auditory expressions or any material that comes from another source, including the Internet), without crediting the source of that material. Even material that has been paraphrased in the student’s own words is considered plagiarized material unless proper credit or explicit reference is given.

DISHONEST PRACTICE:

• Any other behavior which gains an unfair advantage for a candidate or which affects the assessment results of another candidate (for example, taking unauthorized material into an examination room, misconduct during an examination, disclosure or receipt of confidential information about examinations, obtaining unauthorized access to examination material, the use of a calculator or other means of arriving at an answer when this is precluded. In addition, disruptive behavior in the examination room, failure to abide by the instructions of an invigilator, impersonation of another person or forgery of signatures, failure to abide by the conditions of supervision designed to maintain the security of the examinations, the inclusion of offensive or obscene material in scripts or coursework) also constitutes malpractice.

All assignments completed for Internal Assessment for Homestead Middle School MYP must be independent work. Even though data or other research may be shared, any written report, essay, project or portfolio work based on the data must be carried out by an individual student, independently of anyone else.

All Classworks, Homeworks, Quizzes, Tests, and Examinations in Homestead Middle School should be held under Homestead Middle School Academic Honesty Policy conditions. Breaches of Homestead Middle School Academic Honesty regulations will incur a mark of zero for any form of judgment or evaluation.

How can you avoid academic dishonesty?

Teachers will assist students by demonstrating good practice in order to help students avoid academic dishonesty. Teachers will reinforce concepts of intellectual property and the need to credit outside sources of information and ideas within the written work, as well as on the Bibliography page. You are always free to consult your teacher for assistance whenever needed. However, if a teacher recognizes or suspects cheating or plagiarism they will take immediate steps to deal with it. Based on the severity of the dishonesty, the teacher will be warned or reported to the Homestead Middle School MYP Coordinator and to the Students’ Services at Homestead Middle School.