Assisting students to avoid plagiarism. Part 1: The instructional practice approach

This article reports a study called Smart Information Use, which explored ways of teaching secondary students to avoid plagiarism. It involved four Australian secondary schools, with collaboration between teachers and teacher-librarians (TLs) taking place in each of them. The project took place in three phases: a bench-marking phase, an action research phase for teachers and TLs to trial strategies to assist students to avoid plagiarism (evaluated by the research team), and the development of a resources kit to assist other schools (Phase 3). The article reports the findings of the first phase of the project for the four schools involved, as well as the findings and further discussion for one of the two major approaches adopted (instructional practice).