Further to other posts on this topic,
School and sixth form librarians have a key role to play in developing
students and staff awareness and remediation of plagiarism. My experience
of student's non-attribution mirrors many of the comments from teachers in
the BBC report e.g. blatant cutting and pasting. The problem in our
institution is two fold; students genuinely do not realise the importance
of citation and teaching staff are themselves confused about how to equip
students with citation skills and what systems to use.
We have developed a series of information literacy teaching materials
including a simplified Harvard guide and are now moving to developing a
whole school policy on information literacy inclusive of
citation/plagiarism issues. However, given that unlike ICT it is not
incumbent on schools to embed information literacy into the curriculum a
whole school information literacy approach must have the support of the
head and management team if it is to succeed.
CILIP CSG Information Literacy group could help school librarians in a
number of ways,perhaps in association with the SLA? Many school
librarians are lone workers lacking the time to develop a coherent whole
school strategy, teaching materials or advocacy documents. A generic tool
kit that school librarians can customise (developed for each key stage and
post-16) would, I think, be very welcome.
Mark Gallagher
LRC Manager
William Morris Sixth Form
St Dunstan's Road
London
W6 8RB
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