An Action Research on High School Students' Plagiarism Patterns and Perceptions in English Theme-Based Learning

Objectives The purposes of this study were to analyze the patterns of plagiarism of original texts in high school students' English theme-based learning using online resources and their perceptions of plagiarism and to identify educational approaches for improvement. Methods An action research was conducted on the patterns of high school students' plagiarism of online sources and their perceptions of plagiarism for two years. The first cycle of the research began in 2021 to find out the reasons for the differences in writing quality between the texts produced for performance tests and for theme-based research. The participants were three volunteers and their laptop screen was recorded during their online research. Then they were also interviewed to enhance the reliability of findings from screen recordings. Based on the findings and problems of the first cycle, the second cycle began in 2022. 79 participants recorded their laptop screens and for triangulation of data 33 students were interviewed and 8 students participated in a focus group interview. Results The research results show that many students copied and used online sources without proper citations. Although the degree and types of plagiarism varied from students to students, their use of online sources was classified into three core categories: copying all from online sources, copying partly from online sources and writing on their own, and writing all by themselves based on the online sources. The perceptions of plagiarism were also categorized into three: 1) The texts they produced belonged to them regardless of copying from online sources, 2) It was okay to copy some of online sources on the condition that they wrote other parts of their task by themselves, 3) Their written products belonged to them only if they wrote them on their own based on online materials. Conclusions The results shows that many high school students were making full use of Internet sources by copying all or in parts, or writing on their own and that the level of awareness of plagiarism was low. As a solution, it is necessary to establish educational school programs on plagiarism and citation, establish policies to prevent and punish plagiarism, and strictly supervise committing plagiarism in academic writing.