HISTORY DEPARTMENT POLICY ON ACADEMIC HONESTY

Consistent with the School's understanding about the importance of honesty within academic endeavors, the History Department has agreed on this policy.

1. Each student does his or her own work, unless instructed by the teacher to collaborate with classmates.

2. For all written work that is handed in for grading, the student acknowledges the source of any help by naming all persons from whom the student received assistance.

3. During quizzes, tests, in-class essays, and examinations the student may use only those sources specified and announced.

4. Plagiarism results when a student passes off as one's own the ideas, words, thoughts, etc., of another; it is the use without credit of the ideas, experiences, productions, or work of someone else; it is an act of intellectual dishonesty.

To avoid plagiarism, a student should

a) use another person's work word for word only when putting the passage in quotation marks;
b) avoid copying key words or phrases from the original when gathering notes; otherwise, one is likely to transfer the same into the paper;
c) identify the author and source of words, ideas, etc. when paraphrasing;
d) acknowledge to the teacher the help received from others who have contributed to one's understanding of or completion of an assignment.

5. A student should use a bibliographic note to acknowledge the source of information, wording, ideas, and/or pattern of organization used in preparing an assignment. The note may be a "parenthetical note", and "end note", or a "footnote". The note should include this information: name of the author, the title of the work, the publisher, the date of publication, and the page where the original was found. Formats and purposes for these notes can be found in the department's Manual for Student Research Projects or in the ALA Handbook available in each history classroom.

6. When the teacher finds evidence of academic dishonesty he or she will talk with the student to assess the situation; the teacher will inform the department head, principal, and advisor If the teacher judges that dishonesty and/or plagiarism occurred, the grade on the work involved is recorded as zero and no make-up work is accepted for it. In serious cases the matter may be referred to the headmaster who may impose further sanctions, according to the Student-Parent Handbook.

August 29, 2002

Students getting help with assignments and research

Consistent with the "History Department Policy on Academic Honesty" and the Student-Parent Handbook statement under "Homework: Parental Aid and Unfair Advantage," the department affirms that, unless explicitly instructed otherwise, the student should work alone on history assignments. This expectation includes, by way of example, text reading and note making during routine homework, library research, test preparation, and essay writing. Students might ask for clarification of assignments, seek a librarian's advice about using the library, or quiz another student after each has studied for a test. The research paper presents a different set of conditions due to the length of time spent on the assignment, its intellectual complexity, and the extent of the writing. So, the teacher in class may use methods to involve the students with each other in the research and writing process; for example, in the eighth grade the whole class follows an identical schedule and works during the period, sometimes in pairs; in the ninth grade, during the term paper month, the teacher may have students engage in a controlled process of "peer editing". In later grades, we believe the student should work on the paper by one's self in consultation with the teacher. Sometimes the teacher may suggest the student consult a "second reader" whose efforts are limited to reading through the paper and to commenting generally about the flow of writing, the author's assumptions which need to be made explicit, or the theme and its balanced development. The second reader should not locate mistakes nor correct them, should not evaluate the paper, should not suggest better expression or organization, and should not verify the documentation. In all cases, we expect that the student grapple with the intellectual tasks of the assignments and bring the results to class where education occurs with the teacher's instruction and evaluation.

August 29, 2002