Unbalancing Acts: Plagiarism as Catalyst for Instructor Emotion in the Composition Classroom.
In this essay, the author reflects on her experiences while researching composition instructors' emotional responses to plagiarism. The research found that instructors faced a variety of complex and competing feelings when students plagiarized, and those responses threatened to upset relationships, power structures, and professional identities in the classroom. The author considers how and why her own emotional labor was altered in light of these findings and what this might suggest about the need for increased professional conversation in our discipline regarding the impact of emotions in the writing classroom. "Who doesn't get upset about plagiarism?" remarked the highest ranking member of my dissertation committee (a full professor in the School of Education) as he off handedly dismissed my research proposal. "What makes you think you guys in English are so special?" His immediate resistance to the fundamental assumption of my painstakingly developed research plan came as a shock: Of course plagiarism more deeply affects those of us in composition. It strikes at the very heart of what we do. As a composition instructor for more than a decade, I'd been profoundly affected by student plagiarism, and, as a WPA, I'd repeatedly witnessed the emotional consequences of plagiarism on my department colleagues. I'd chosen a dissertation topic I thought linked my two disciplines of English and Educational Leadership well: I wanted to unpack how plagiarism threatens to emotionally unbalance us in the classroom and how this impacts our relationships and professional identity as writing teachers. Unquestionably, academic integrity is a shared value in all areas of higher education, and plagiarism can be troubling for instructors in all disciplines, especially those teaching in WAC/WID programs. However, I did not expect I'd need to defend the notion that plagiarism is exceptionally hazardous terrain for composition instructors. Yet over the years that followed, I was asked this same question by colleagues across campus. Everyone it seemed, regardless of discipline, was "emotional" about plagiarism. Why did composition instructors warrant so special a focus? Although my proposal was eventually approved, the question nagged at me. I needed to understand the ways in which plagiarism is a particular catalyst for emotion in the composition classroom, one that exposes and upsets the relationships and identities that are cultivated there and significantly alters how writing teachers feel about their work. My qualitative study involved pre interview written reflections and one on one interviews with twelve composition instructors at a Midwest public institution. Participants, who had between four and thirty six years of experience, were asked to recall a time when a student plagiarized in their course and to tell me how they felt and how they responded. I expected to hear that plagiarism evoked anger, an emotion sometimes mentioned in plagiarism literature (e.g. Howard; Robillard; Zwagerman) Indeed, instructors I spoke with talked a lot about feeling angry at students, at administrators, at themselves, and at the academic integrity system. However, they spoke of experiencing more than a dozen emotions, including failure that their lessons about source use had been woefully unsuccessful, sadness that students felt cheating was their only option, and betrayal that students had violated their trust. Some described feeling cynical about what seems to be a growing culture of dishonesty in which students don't feel bad about cheating only about "getting caught." For a few instructors, negative emotions, such as stress and anxiety, were so intense they would become physically sick. I was surprised, though, by how often and how deeply participants spoke of feeling empathy for their students when they plagiarized. This was the most frequently discussed emotion in the study, experienced by ten out of twelve participants (the next closest was anger, described by eight of the twelve participants) Empathy emerged when instructors recalled their own undergrad experiences and related to the stresses facing college students, or when they spoke of how complicated writing with sources can be. Instructors who worked with international students spoke with extraordinary compassion for their students' struggles to adapt to a culturally bound system of ownership whose conventions were completely foreign to their own. Listening to their stories, I realized that instructors' emotional responses had very much to do with what they viewed as their role in the classroom. For example, those who saw themselves as nurturers of student growth often viewed plagiarism as a failure on their part rather than the student's. For some nurturing instructors, plagiarism was devastating, and it dramatically upset the supportive, collaborative classroom dynamic. In contrast, many viewed their positionality in opposition to their students. For these "adversaries," plagiarism confirmed suspicions that, at the end of the day, most students were dishonest and needed to be policed. A few participants didn't fall as neatly into the "nurturer" or "adversary" categories. These individuals, whom I labeled "diplomats," saw themselves not as rule makers but as representatives of the academic discourse system. Although plagiarism was unpleasant, it was just something that sometimes happened and needed to be dealt with by following established protocol. When a student plagiarized, diplomats responded in a balanced, even handed manner with little to no emotional waffling or difficult decision making "Should I let her rewrite or should I give her a zero?" "Should I report it or keep this just between us?" For most, however, an act of plagiarism was emotionally destabilizing: Instructors experienced what one referred to as "the usual Rolodex of emotions you go through" when a student plagiarized. Likewise, instructors consciously worked to manage those emotions to keep them in line with what was considered appropriate for their workplace. This "impression management," to right the imbalance between what they felt and were expected to feel, was stressful and emotionally taxing for most (Ashforth and Humphrey 90) As participants poured out their feelings to me, I kept wondering why we don't talk about this more. Why has how we feel during this most challenging of episodes in the composition classroom not been given a louder voice? Are we still fighting against the age old notion that emotions are somehow inappropriate in serious academic discourse? Do we continue to sense a concern, as some have noted, that talking about how we feel threatens to feminize or diminish the profession of teaching writing (e.g. Enos; McLeod; Micciche; Yoon) Ironically my dissertation committee member was challenging me to prove that composition instructors were more emotionally impacted by plagiarism than others, yet there seemed to be a reluctance, at least in the literature, to really explore this conversation beyond noting how angry plagiarism sometimes makes us feel. When I reflect on what happened to me during the three years I worked on this study, I sense that talking about the variety of emotional responses that occur when a student plagiarizes, how these emotions impact a writing instructor's identity, and the consequences (real and imagined) of different emotional responses is what's really missing in the discourse. Over the years, many of my students have committed some form of plagiarism, but before beginning this research, I had never followed through on any official incident reporting. Perhaps as a non tenuretrack, contingent faculty member, I was worried that a disgruntled student might turn in a harshly negative evaluation, or I didn't want to make a name for myself as a teacher whose students plagiarize. And, as someone who avoids confrontation, I deeply wanted to downplay the stress involved in "the dreaded meeting" with the student. So, after much emotional mayhem, I spoke to the student about what went wrong and then allowed him or her to revise and resubmit. In some way I'm sure I rationalized my action as "what was best for the student." As I worked on the dissertation, however, I was teaching two writing courses and had a student intentionally plagiarize in each. Perhaps because I was so deeply entrenched in my participants' emotional responses, I was hyper focused on my own, and I responded entirely differently this time: I briefly met with the two students, told them what I suspected and why it was inappropriate, described the academic integrity rules I was required to follow, gave each an F, and filed the appropriate paperwork. Through it all I was emotionally unruffled, and although I still hated having to confront the students, I spent far less time being anxious prior to and during those meetings. Did I experience fewer negative emotions because I was able to divert the students' attention, making the academic integrity system the police rather than me? Perhaps. Would I have reacted differently had the plagiarism been unintentional? The nurturer in me would have likely struggled with this. But in retrospect, I have no doubt that having such extended conversations with my composition peers about how plagiarism makes us feel helped me respond in a healthier manner this time around that is, with far less emotional labor. At my final dissertation defense, my committee member remained unconvinced, asking me again (amazingly! what made plagiarism such a big deal in composition. Clearly, I was not to win the battle over whose discipline has it harder. Yet composition instructors arguably face a number of paradoxes regarding plagiarism that can lead to higher levels of emotional stress. In particular, they are tasked with supporting student writers while at the same time they are encouraged (often required) to pursue and punish plagiarism, a highly political, cultural, and conte