Ethical or Dishonest Practice? Plagiarism in Academic Degrees

The recent syllabuses of Spanish academic degrees in education have elicited some major changes, such as the emergence of new courses like TFG (Degree Dissertation) and TFM (Master's Dissertation), as well as a significant increase in Practicum hours (external work-related development). There is extensive literature on the impact of technology on this type of education, but there are also many references to potential added problems, such as: data protection, children protection, copyright and plagiarism. The present study is part of a larger project on the use of technologies for assessing these courses. The study focuses on the ethical dimension of assessment and prevention of plagiarism in order to answer the following research questions: To what extent is this topic contemplated in academic degrees in education? Are practices considered unethical in teaching guides the same as those considered unethical by academic staff? What mechanisms are put in place once dishonest practices are detected? What indicators are associated with good practice? A simultaneous exploratory mixed design is performed, along with a DITRIAC concurrent triangulation. The study analyses 391 teaching guides and conducts 54 interviews with academic staff from 37 Faculties of Education from Spanish public universities (74% of the population). Results show little presence of these issues and a lack of mechanisms to prevent dishonest practices in 90% of teaching guides and 54.5% of interviews with academic staff. Data allows confirming the poor attention paid to this issue in the teaching guides and building a profile of indicators that draws a map related to good practice.