"But Don't They Cheat A Lot?"

I was taken aback by the question at first.  In a recent conversation with a colleague at a professional development session, I was describing the students in my Mennonite outreach high school and how we use a lot of distance learning materials with them.  I mentioned how we have used those resources to provide flexible educational programs for students with irregular attendance.  "But don't they cheat a lot?" she asked.  She explained that this had been her experience with ELL students doing independent module work.  She probably said more than that (I think she mentioned something about "copying"), but I stopped listening because we were still in the middle of a session and I was reeling from on onslaught of conflicting emotions.  I felt anger and a need to defend my students; I also felt confusion and a desire for her to clarify what she meant; part of me even empathized with her because I had experienced that same frustration as a teacher.

But I didn't express any of that aloud.  Instead, I leaned over and said that I choose to frame the issue differently.  I said that many of my students are very pragmatic learners and that the completion of the modules seems to them to be the obvious concrete goal.  They tend to use whatever means they have to meet that goal.  I said that I felt that it was my job as the teacher to help them to appreciate that mastery of the learning outcomes is the more important goal.  I didn't get to say much more than that because our presenter was carrying on with the session, and I don't know if I got my point across, but I did see her nod her head as she leaned back into her chair.

I don't know my colleague's ELL students personally, and I don't want to presume too much about their actions or intentions.  What I do know is that it is pretty easy to misinterpret the intentions of those who differ from us culturally.  A crucial insight for teachers of SLIFE, for example, is that our own education paradigms are often very different from theirs.  According to SLIFE researchers Andrea DeCapua and Helaine Marshall, we tend to assume that the goals of K-12 instruction are to produce an independent learner and to prepare that learner for life after schooling, and that the learner brings along an urge to compete and excel as an individual.  We also tend to assume that students come with age-appropriate preparation for literacy development academic tasks.  SLIFE, on the other hand, often come from cultural backgrounds where the preference is for oral communication and information sharing, pragmatic learning with immediate relevance, and working together and sharing responsibility.  They may not come with the literacy skills or with academic thinking skills needed to read and answer text-based distance learning modules independently.  They can easily get focused on the concrete, pragmatic task of completing the modules rather than the more abstract goal of learning concepts.  What we interpret as cheating (i.e. an immoral act of deception) might be motivated more by a pragmatic orientation combined with a reliance on oral information-sharing and presumption of collective responsibility.

It is not hard to see how such differences in assumptions could lead to misunderstandings.  Let us not forget that SLIFE are also constantly facing these misunderstandings and are likely misinterpreting us and our intentions as well.  The cultural dissonance that they experience as they struggle to navigate these differences can seriously interfere with learning and discourage them from attending school.  They need teachers who are willing to question assumptions and meet them halfway.