The Effects of School Culture on Students’ Academic Cheating in Selected Secondary Schools of Jimma Zone

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.