The educational integrity enforcement pyramid: a new framework for challenging and responding to student cheating

Abstract

Current approaches used by educational institutions to address the problem of student cheating are not working. This is because the discourse of academic integrity that currently dominates is, on its own, inadequate for addressing the problem. We propose that in order for higher education institutions to challenge cheating effectively, they need to learn from history and to look outside their own sector to find a new way of responding to student cheating behaviours. We propose a new framework for this. We take the theory of responsive regulation, developed by Ayres and Braithwaite, and combine it with the discourse of assessment security introduced by Dawson to form the Educational Integrity Enforcement Pyramid. We use this pyramid to show how institutions can operationalize this new approach and use it to identify gaps in their strategic response to the challenging problem of student cheating.