Academic Integrity Policy

IB defines academic honesty as “a set of values and skills that promote personal integrity and good practice in teaching, learning, and assessment.”

Our Philosophy

We believe that academic integrity is fundamental in our students’ development to becoming responsible, principled, and caring world citizens of the future.

We believe that it is the role of the school, administrators, teachers, staff, and parents to communicate, support, teach, and model age appropriate academic practices so that all students understand the importance of acting in a responsible way.

By supporting our learners, we will nurture and develop a culture of respect for ourselves and others. In order to achieve this, it is important that we focus on educating our students to be principled, to recognize and celebrate differences, and to take pride in promoting authentic learning through inquiry, which includes responsible use of information and communication of original work.

In the PYP, we see students' understanding of academic honesty as a learning process and we incorporate a variety of instructional practices that reflect honesty, trust, fairness, respect, and responsibility. Teachers and students work together to develop and maintain a clear sense of age-appropriate practices that support academic honesty.

Expectations

Teachers will encourage honest, creative, critical PYP work and promote good practice by teaching students the skills necessary to be academically honest. This will be accomplished through direct teaching and coaching, specifically in the communication, research, and thinking sub-skills found in the Approaches to Learning Skills.

Role of the Teachers

  • Set clear expectations for assignments and provide guidance on how to correctly cite the sources students have used.
  • Devote time to teach and practice these skills.
  • Be a role model — make sure all shared materials (handouts, presentations etc.) are correctly referenced.
  • Ensure that teaching strategies put emphasis on authentic tasks.
  • Ensure that policies and procedures are easily available to all interested parties (teachers, students, and their legal guardians).

During Instruction

  • Students will be taught their responsibility for producing authentic and genuine individual and group work.
  • Students will be taught not to copy another student’s work or lend their work to someone else either in hard copy or digitally.
  • Students will be taught not to plagiarize and how to correctly credit sources, acknowledging the work and ideas of others.
  • Students will be taught how to use quotation marks around phrases and sentences that are copied word for word from another source.
  • Students will be taught how to credit sources when using someone else’s ideas or original source material.
  • Students will be taught how to observe and adhere to ethical and honest practices during assessments.
  • Students will be taught the responsible use of information, technology, and social media.
  • Students will be taught how to access appropriate sites and stay on task.

Role of the Students

  • Students will apply the knowledge and skills they have learned during instruction.
  • Students will use technology for educational purposes.
  • Students will tell an adult if they encounter a problem and report misuse.

Role of Administration

  • Support academic honesty policy and investigate all teacher reports of academic misconduct.
  • Ensure that all staff, students, and parents/guardians understand definitions, responsibilities, and repercussions.
  • Ensure that the academic honesty policy is applied consistently throughout the school.
  • Investigate academic misconduct when necessary.
  • Ensure academic misconduct incidents are addressed with students and parents/guardians.

Parents and Guardians

  • Encourage their children to practice academic honesty at home and school.
  • Address concerns of academic misconduct with their child and school personnel if necessary.

Repercussions

When academic misconduct occurs, incidents will be addressed by the teacher and parents/ guardians will be contacted. When appropriate, the administration will become involved and the incident will be reported to parents. Age-​appropriate consequences will be administered based on frequency and recurrence of the violation.

Digital Citizenship

We teach Digital Citizenship through Common Sense Media lessons, which teach students how to behave responsibly in a digital world. A basic part of teaching and learning how to be a Good Digital Citizen is to understand issues such as copyright, rights of authorship, and learning proper citation of sources of information obtained from searching the internet. We feel it is important to introduce these at an elementary level to help students as they proceed through school.

Definitions

  • Plagiarism: the representation, intentionally or unwittingly, of the ideas, words, or work of another person without proper clear and explicit acknowledgment.
  • Cheating: includes, but is not limited to, turning in an assignment, project, test, or other academic product which is the result of copying someone else’s work or sharing work so a person can copy from you.

References

  • International Baccalaureate Organization. (2016). Academic honesty in the IB educational context.
  • International Baccalaureate Organization. (2019).  Academic integrity.
  • Daystar Academy an IB World School. (2019).  IB PYP Academic Honesty Policy.
  • Aligns with Weld RE-4 Classroom Attributes and Indicators

First Draft 3/1/2021

Revised 3/14/2021

Adopted  5/1/2021

Review and Revision 9/14/2021