Plagiarism and quotation: perceptions of Brazilian graduate students in pedagogy

Abstract

[eng] This study analyses the understanding of master’s and doctoral students in Education about plagiarism, the issue of self-plagiarism and training to master citation rules in order to avoid academic misconduct. As well as dealing with some of the converging aspects in international literature on the concept of plagiarism, the article stresses that the discussion does not end with the definition of its typologies, but also includes issues related to other illicit behaviours, such as fraud, deception (Carrol, 2016) and self-plagiarism (Diniz; Terra, 2014; Phyo et al., 2022). The content analysis method (Bardin, 2011) was used to examine the 17 interviews conducted with postgraduates and the results of 123 questionnaires were explored. In this way, the research integrates the quantitative and qualitative survey dimensions in the analysis process, from a descriptive and exploratory perspective. In conclusion: all postgraduates understand what plagiarism is, but self-plagiarism is a “strange figure” when associated with plagiarism. There is a moral and ethical rule for writing academic texts, which is used on the basis of the belief in standardization, through citation, to avoid plagiarism. However, this rule comes up against limits and deviations.