Abstract:
The main purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of school culture on students’ academic
cheating behaviour. To this end, the Survey design and mixed methods were used to collect data
from the sources. Six public secondary schools were included in this study. 210 school professional
(including 186 teachers, 6 school principals, 12 vice school principals, 6 discipline committee
members) and 240 students were involved. Totally 450 people were engaged in this survey. The
data collection tools like; questionnaires (including likert-scale, some yes/no & unstructured items)
and observation were employed. The descriptive and inferential statistics including; mean,
standard deviation, correlation, regression, ANOVA and t-test were used for data analysis. This
study found that the school culture has a highly significant effect on students’ academic cheating
behavior by values of f = 13.884 & p < .001. Similarly, the school culture has a significant negative
relationship with students’ academic cheating behavior in r = -.332 by significance value of t (209)
= -9.708 & p < .05. The school culture and academic cheating have the collected mean value of
3.10 and 3.72 respectively. The study found student related, teacher related, leader related, school
related and technology related factor as a major causes for academic cheating. Furthermore The
specific factors such as; the rampant usage of social media, the expansion of new cheating system,
the students’ adaption with academic cheating as a culture, the lack of stakeholders’ collaboration,
the need for false report, competition among schools, the need for future work opportunity, the lack
of leaders’ and teachers’ commitment and the lack of compatible evaluation system are identified
as reason for expansion of academic cheating behaviour. The qualitative result indicates that the
unfavorable social climate become emerged in many secondary schools. However, rules,
regulations & behavior policies are neglected in almost all secondary schools of Jimma zone. The
researcher suggested that the mandate for controlling the expansion of academic cheating problem
should not be the only responsibility of school community, but also it should be considered as the
public & Government responsibility. Consequently, the giving attention as one the cross-cutting
issues, inclusion in curriculum, the need for farther study, revision of exam regulation, discussion
& training for prevention were recommended.
