Miriam says it just about right, I think: "I'm not convinced those job applicants that Rob referred to thought of it as plagiarizing. I'm inclined they were trying to fit in in the same way that we ask our students to. Hence, the same results." There's a good deal to be reflected on here; it's a way to illuminate, I think, just what our _students_ are trying to do. Interestingly, in trying to find the case I remembered from a couple of years ago, I stumbled on a nice review of a book which, among other things, clearly makes the case for the parallel between composing a teaching statement (for a portfolio or dossier) and producing that term paper. The review is Jane Mathison Fife, "Changing the Contexts for Documenting our Teaching," _Pedagogy_ 5:1 (Winter 2005), 157-161, and the book is _Composition, Pedagogy, and the Scholarship of Teaching_, ed. Deborah Minter and Amy M. Goodburn (Boynton/Cook, 2002). I've now read the "information about Plagiarism" that the Waterloo letter said you should read "before starting your teaching dossier." ( http://www.trace.uwaterloo.ca/tacerteach.html ). It's a fascinating document. It's directed to participants in the Waterloo Certificate in University Teaching, and it's a fairly sophisticated version of the sort of advice about ethics and plagiarism that universities regularly offer undergraduates. Its central focus is integrity and values, and it makes the usual move: yes, we all believe in integrity . . . but just in case, here are the draconian punishments for violating our rules. It also offers references for "how to avoid plagiarism," as pretty much all the anti-plagiarism documents I've read do. I was reminded that there's something extremely odd going on here. A document explaining "how to avoid" something would normally outline strategies for avoiding something that might _happen to you_. How to avoid being electrocuted, how to avoid being mugged, how to avoid eating contaminated food. No one writes documents giving strategies for avoiding stealing, or infanticide, or lying. If it's a matter of integrity it's not something that happens to you, is it? Seems to me there are mixed messages here -- just the kind we often hear in parent-to-kid discourse. Being bad is something you somehow "fall into." You're not "bad," you get corrupted. But you'll be punished for falling, anyway. I've said this before, so sorry if I'm boring people . . . but if I really cared about communicating with you, plagiarism would never occur to me. However, if I were in a situation where I had to produce discourse you'd approve of, and I had no investment in the relationship being mediated by the discourse, I'd do what was easiest. And if you said to me, as that letter does, "For almost all written submissions to the CUT Program (the exception being your research paper), no references are necessary, or even desirable. We are primarily interested in your personal reflections on the subject matter of the workshop, panel, observation report, etc.," I would know that you are not, in fact, actually interested in my personal reflections at all: you're interested in whether my personal reflections are the kind you approve of. I would certainly, on the basis of that rubric, never think of explicitly bringing anybody else's ideas in (after all, you're interested only in what you can imagine comes out of my soul: "no references are . . . even desirable"). So I'd find something that I think you'd be impressed with, and I'd try to make sure - - if I thought you were checking -- that you couldn't find the source. Nothing about this would be about communication: it would be about producing an impressive text. To fit in. In that case, plagiarism would be a pretty effective tool. Just make sure no one saw you using it. Seems to me the problem, in both cases, is, as Miriam points out, the strange rhetorical situation the writer's in. Fife's review (and, it appears, even more the book, which I'm about to go find) talk about some ways to make the teacher's rhetorical situation more reasonable. They apply to what we ask students to write, as well. (Interesting as well that the Waterloo document is signed by Cathy Schryer -- though it says composed by a previous director of the service. I wonder if Cathy can help us understand the genre we're working in here?) -- Russ St. Thomas University http://www.stu.ca/~hunt/ -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- To leave the list, send a SIGNOFF CASLL command to [log in to unmask] or, if you experience difficulties, write to Russ Hunt at [log in to unmask] For the list archives and information about the organization, its newsletter, and the annual conference, go to http://www.stu.ca/inkshed/ -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-