The Relation between Prospective Teachers ’ Goal Orientations and Academic E-dishonesty

The purpose of this study is to investigate the relation between prospective teachers’ goal orientations and academic e-dishonesty behaviors, and also the effects of their goal orientations on academic e-dishonesty behaviors. This research was conducted with correlational method. Participants of the study were 669 prospective teachers attending at Bulent Ecevit University, Ereğli Faculty of Education. The data were collected with goal orientation scale and academic e-dishonesty scale. Mean and standard deviation were used for data analysis, and Pearson product-moment correlation was used for revealing the relations between variables. Additionally, stepwise regression analysis was conducted to reveal the prospective teachers’ goal orientation scores’ predictive power on their academic e-dishonesty scores. Finally, negative, weak, and significant relation was found between learning goal orientation and plagiarism, falsification, delinquency and unauthorized help which are sub-dimensions of the academic e-dishonesty scale. In addition positive, weak and significant relation was found between performance avoidance and all of the sub-dimensions of the academic e-dishonesty scale. The prospective teachers’ performance-avoidance orientation became the most powerful and significant predictor of all of the sub-dimensions of the academic e-dishonesty scale.


Introduction 1.Goal (Achievement) Orientation
Individuals participate in activities in teaching-learning process on different purposes.The theory of goal orientation is a motivation theory which explain on which purposes individuals participate in teaching activities [1].This theory is related to the meanings that the individuals attribute to the activities they attend and on which purpose these activities are performed [2; 3; 4; 5).Individuals' purposes of participating in these activities influence the level and persistence of participation [1], and include belief, affect and attributions that reveal these purposes [6].When individual's goal orientation is considered as his/her perception of the reason why he/she wants to learn and his/her focusing on being successful [2], it becomes the determiner of individuals' affectional, cognitive and behavioral reactions [7].The desire of being successful and the desire of avoiding failure motivate people [8].In this respect, goal orientation could be seen as an effective factor that influences individuals' being motivated throughout the way of gaining success.Students are motivationally oriented toward learning goals and performance goals [7].
Learning goal oriented students consider the goal of school as acquiring new knowledge and skill, while performance goal oriented students consider it as receiving positive judgements about themselves and avoiding negative judgements [9].Learning goal orientation is related to the purposes which reflect individual's desire for the learning material or subject.For this reason, they study hard to develop their skills.Learning goal oriented students assess their ability levels and focus on self-development.When they counter with challenging activities, they persist in their performance, consider their failure as a natural constituent of the learning process and as an opportunity for self-development.These students don't compare their performance with others [2; 7].When literature was examined it was found that learning goal oriented students use deep cognitive strategies, participate in the tasks they can manage, attribute success to effort (their belief of the fact that learning depends on effort), prefer challenging tasks, are internal-locused and have high self-efficacy and persistence [10; 7; 11; 12; 13; 14; 15; 5; 16; 17].
Performance goal oriented students give importance to social comparison.They try to seem more successful than others in academic tasks, or they avoid being unsuccessful more than others.Performance goal orientation has two dimensions as performance-approach and performance-avoidance.
Performance-approach goal oriented individuals strive to exhibit their own abilities and act out higher performance than peers.Performance-avoidance goal oriented students make effort for avoiding failure.Since they avoid negative judgements about themselves, they do not participate in challenging activities.Moreover, when their performance results in failure, they avoid exhibiting new performance [1; 7; 9;18].It was found that performance goal oriented students do not make the necessary effort for learning, use surface strategies, do not seek help in the learning process, and attribute failure to inability [11].

Academic E-Dishonesty
Academic dishonesty is defined as acting against academic ethics [19].There are available researches revealing that academic dishonesty is widely seen in higher education and in other stages of education [20; 21; 22; 23; 24; 25; 26; 27).Some academic dishonesty behaviors are use of unauthorized material during an exam, sharing of information during an exam, doing an individual assignment with receiving unauthorized help, plagiarism [28]; changing assignments, buying assignment, taking an exam for someone else or asking someone to take an exam for them [29;27] giving excessive references in assignments, fabricating references, misleading the teacher of the course [30], gathering information about the exam from other groups, not performing their duties in group assignments, fostering term project completed by another student [31], using the same assignment for different courses, using former exam for studying for the current exam [32], tearing page from exam paper for a friend or tearing a paper from a source in the library with the intention of using it in the future [23].
At the present time through widespreading use of Internet, assignments obtained from websites, assignment sharing sites and electronic social networking platforms offer unlimited opportunities to make dishonesty, and this case is one of the important issues being cared about [33].Dishonest behaviors take place among the acts of academic e-dishonesty such as manipulating the ideas in a scientific study through personal comments, translating internet resources and claiming personal authorship, sabotaging other people's academic work through Internet, adding the names of non-contributing people as authors [33].
A lot of factors which drive students to make academic dishonesty could be mentioned.Teachers' giving unoriginal assignments, giving the same assignment every year without changing it, not checking the assignments given and ignoring academic dishonest behaviors cause students to display academic dishonesty behavior [34; 33].On the other hand, students' fear for getting low marks and failing in a course, their belief for the fact that courses are not functional, not considering the products they made valuable, perceiving examinations hard, finding the assignments too difficult…etc.are student related factors.Besides, peer-efffected students practicing academic dishonesty, exams with wide scope, existence of many upper grade students who failed in that subject cause academic dishonesty in students [34; 35; 36;37; 38].It could be considered that learning goal oriented students show less academic dishonest behavior since they participate in the activities with the purpose of benefiting from courses; and performance-approach goal oriented students show academic dishonest behavior in order to be seemed more successful than their friends and get higher marks.Performance-avoidance goal oriented students exhibit a tendency to academic dishonesty.So, it is considered that there is a positive relation with performance-avoidance goal orientation and academic dishonesty.The aim of the research is to investigate the relation between prospective teachers' goal orientations and their tendency to perform academic dishonesty.

Research Design
This research, the relation between the prospective teachers' scores of goal orientation and academic e-dishonesty scores, was conducted with correlational model.Correlation studies aims to examine relation between two or more variables [39].

Participants
The students of Bulent Ecevit University, Ereğli Faculty of Education constituted the participants of this study.Criterion sampling was used as sampling method.As a criterion it was used condition of having the courses of "scientific research methods", "literature review and report writing".669 students studying at different departments constituted the participants of the research.464 students (69,4%) are females and 205 students (30,6 %) are males.Of the participants 87, students are (13%) sophisticated, 350 students (52,3%) are juniors and 232 students are (34,7%) seniors.When the distribution of the students based on departments was examined, it was seen that the highest participation belongs to Turkish Teaching Department (N=136; 20,3%) and Preschool Teaching Department (f=128; 19,1%) whilst the lowest participation belongs to Science and Technology Teaching Department (N=47; 7%) and Psychological Counseling and Guidance Department students (N=56; 8,4%).

Instruments
In this study goal achievement orientation scale and academic e-dishonesty scale were used.

Achievement Orientation Scale
The original form of the scale developed by Midgley et al [40] consists of 18 items and 3 sub-dimensions as learning goal orientation (6 items), performance-approach goal orientation (6 items) and performance-avoidance goal orientation (6 items).Adaptation of the scale into Turkish The Relation between Prospective Teachers' Goal Orientations and Academic E-dishonesty language was carried out by Akın ve Çetin [4].Of the factors constituting the scale Cronbach's alpha internal consistency coefficient was found 0,77 for learning goal orientation factor; 0,79 for performance-approach goal orientation factor and 0,78 for performance-avoidance goal orientation factor.Test re-test reliability of the factors constituting the scale was found 0,95 for learning goal orientation factor; 0,91 for performance-approach goal orientation factor and 0,94 for performance-avoidance goal orientation factor.Cronbach's alpha internal consistency coefficient of the scale was found 0,85 for learning goal orientation; 0,86 for performance-approach goal orientation factor and 0,86 for performance-avoidance goal orientation factor in this research.

Academic e-Dishonesty Scale
It was developed by Akbulut, Şendağ, Birinci, Kılıçer, Şahin and Odabaşı [41].The scale consists of 5 sub-dimensions and 26 items.Academic fraudulence factor consists of 11 items and Cronbach's alpha internal consistency coefficient was found 0,90 in the original scale while it was found 0,91 in this study.Plagiarism factor consists of 5 items and Cronbach's alpha internal consistency coefficient was found 0,87 both in the original scale and in this study.Falsification factor consists of 3 items and Cronbach's alpha internal consistency coefficient was found 0,75 in the original scale; Cronbach's alpha internal consistency coefficient was found 0,60 in this study.Delinquency factor consists of 4 items and Cronbach's alpha internal consistency coefficient in the original scale was found 0,70;Cronbach's alpha internal consistency coefficient in this study was found 0,71.Unauthorized help factor consists of 3 items and Cronbach's alpha internal consistency coefficient was found 0,69 in the original scale; in this study Cronbach's alpha internal consistency coefficient was found 0,70.Total reliability of the scale was found as 0,92.

Data Collection and Analysis
Data of the research were collected in the spring term of 2014-2015 academic year.Data was collected in about 20-25 min.from 682 prospective teachers.13 forms were omitted due to inattentive or incomplete filling and totally 669 sclaes were examined in the research.
The following scale was used for goal orientation and e-dishonesty scale in data analysis and interpretation of descriptive statistics.The normality of distribution was examined in order to determine the statistics to be used for data analysis.As a result of analysis, it was determined that the data didn't exhibit a normal distribution.In order to transform the data into normal distribution logarithmic transformation was conducted.Since skewness and kurtosis coefficients of the distribution varied from -1,5 to 1,5 [49] parametric tests were decided to be performed.In order to determine the relation between variables, Pearson product-moment correlation method was conducted.Moreover, stepwise regression analysis was carried out in order to determine the predictive power of the prospective teachers' scores of goal orientation on their scores of academic e-dishonesty.

Findings
In this section, firstly descriptive statistics, correlation coefficients between variables and stepwise regression analysis consequences were presented subsequently.
The descriptive statistics related to the prospective teachers' goal (achievement) orientation are exhibited in table 2. When table 2 is examined, the highest mean related to the prospective teachers' goal (achievement) orientation is seen in learning goal orientation ( =3,44; sd=0,78).This coincides with the rank of "usually".The mean of performance-approach goal orientation is ( =3,14; sd=1,03).This coincides with the rank of "often".The mean of performance-avoidance goal orientation is ( =2,12; sd=0,94) and coincides with the rank of "rarely".
Since the relation between prospective teachers' goal orientation and academic e-dishonesty levels constitutes the main point of the study, the relation between the sub-dimensions of goal orientation and the sub-dimensions of academic e-dishonesty were examined as well.
Additionally, the predictive power of prospective teachers' goal orientation towards their academic e-dishonesty levels was examined in this study.The findings obtained are shown in Table 3. Performance-avoidance goal orientation was become the single and significant predictor of plagiarism (R 2 =0,009) and falsification (R 2 =0,027) sub-dimensions of academic e-dishonesty.In this respect, it is stated that a decrease occurs in the acts of plagiarism and falsification as long as prospective teachers' performance-avoidance goal orientation reduces.
The prospective teachers' performance-approach goal orientation is not in significant relation with the sub-dimensions of academic e-dishonesty.Therefore it has not been a significant predictor of the sub-dimensions of academic e-dishonesty.

Discussion and Conclusions
When the findings obtained as a result of descriptive statistics were examined, it was determined that the prospective teachers stated they had participated mostly in the performance-approach goal oriented activities and they had shown the least tendency to performance-avoidance goal orientation.In the studies conducted by Arslan [42]; Aydın [43]; Aydın, Gürbüzoğlu, Yalmancı and Yel [44], Küçükoğlu, Kaya and Turan [45] similar results were found.In this respect, it could be stated that the prospective teachers participate in teaching activities mostly to develop themselves, acquire new knowledge and skills in the process of university education.Additionally, it is stated that the prospective teachers do not participate in these activities to exhibit higher achievement than peers or not to receive negative judgements from the people in the social environment.
When the findings related to the prospective teachers' views on academic e-dishonesty were examined, the score averages related to all the sub-dimensions were low.The prospective teachers stated that they rarely conducted the acts of delinquency and plagiarism in academic studies whilst they stated that they conducted the acts of falsification and unauthorized use at the lowest level.
Since the situation that constitutes the basic problem of this study is the relation between the prospective teachers' goal orientation and inclination towards acting academic e-dishonesty, the relation between these variables was revealed with correlation and regression analyses.When the findings were examined, a poor negative and significant relation was found between the prospective teachers' The Relation between Prospective Teachers' Goal Orientations and Academic E-dishonesty learning goal orientation and fraudulence, delinquency and unauthorized use constituting the acts of academic e-dishonesty.Moreover, learning goal orientation became the significant predictor of these sub-dimensions of academic e-dishonesty.Also, it was stated that as long as the prospective teachers' acts of learning goal oriented participation in the teaching activities increase, a decrease occurs in their acts of fraudulence, delinquency and unauthorized use.
Poor, positive and significant relation was found between the prospective teachers' performance-avoidance goal orientation and all the acts of academic e-dishonesty.Additionally, performance -avoidance goal orientation became the significant predictor of all the sub-dimensions of academic e-dishonesty.In this respect, the prospective teachers' participation in teaching activities by exhibiting performance-avoidance goal orientation increases their acts of academic e-dishonesty.Some of the prospective teachers put forward not to disgrace themselves in their family and social environment by extending school as the reason for conducting academic e-dishonesty [46; 27; 47].
With the aim of reducing prospective teachers' acts of academic dishonesty, their learning goal orientation need to be promoted, but not their performance approach or avoidance goal orientation.In order to actualize this, teaching activities were organized in the way that would arouse wonder in prospective teachers.Additionally, prospective teachers should be informed about the future use of the knowledge and skills they acquired in these courses.Also in the studies conducted by Çetin [35] and Eraslan [26] the prospective teachers stated that the courses were not functional as the reason for conducting the acts of academic e-dishonesty.Moreover, the prospective teachers stated that they did not perform academic e-dishonesty in the lessons in which they participated to learn and develop themselves.If prospective teachers believe that these courses are functional, they will learn these subjects not only to pass the exams but also to be a good teacher and they will participate in the activities to benefit more from the lessons.In this case prospective teachers will not show tendency to conducting academic e-dishonesty.Similarly, Anderman and Midgley [48] stated that the belief for the fact that learning depends on effort and learning goal orientation need to be promoted in order to reduce the acts of academic e-dishonesty in students.Since the aim of learning goal orientation is to develop one's own ability, learning goal oriented students could be trained in the class environments in which students' active engagement can be maintained, their interest is high, they can act free as much as they can collaborate and their expectation towards learning is high [3].

Table 1 .
Point Interval

Table 2 .
Descriptive Statistics Related to Goal Orientation and Academic

Table 4 .
Regression TableWhen Table4is examined, it is seen that performance-avoidance goal orientation and learning orientation are the significant predictors of fraudulence, delinquency and unauthorized use sub-dimensions of academic e-dishonesty.The most powerful predictor of all the three dimensions are performance-avoidance goal * p<0.01LG:Learning goal orientation; PA: Performance approach goal orientation; PAv: Performance avoidance goal orientation; Fr: Fraudulence; Pl: Plagiarism; Fa: Falsification; De: Delinquency; UH: Unauthorized help