A epidemia do plágio: explorando o papel da motivação e auto-regulação nas atitudes em relação ao plágio

The data on the prevalence of plagiarism in secondary education and higher education in anglosaxonic countries have been so high, considered by some authors as epidemics, that sparked an intense discussion and research. However, in most European countries, the debate seems limited to schools and teachers contexts. From a European project involving six countries, this paper aims to understand students’ perceptions of plagiarism, exploring the role of motivation and selfregulation in adolescents’ attitudes. For this, an investigation was performed with a socio-demographic questionnaire, a scale of attitudes toward plagiarism (adapted from Mavrinac, Brumini, Bilic-zulle & Petrovečki, 2010), an inventory to evaluate adolescent self- regulation (Dias, Garcia del Castillo & Moilanen, 2011) and motivation for learning (Midgley et al., 2001). Based on the data, descriptive statistics allow us to understand students’ proximity with plagiarism, and inferential data that relate adolescents’ attitudes to plagiarism with motivation, self-regulation and internet use. From these results implications for teachers’ practices are discussed and suggestions for prevention of plagiarism presented.