In this assignment which we have to examine handbooks from three schools, and eventually analyze the similarities and differences between them, I’ve focused on the academic honesty policy and the mission statement of each school. Below is the summarization and my thoughts after reading the handbooks from Kaohsiung American School, Morrison Academy Kaohsiung, and Morrison Academy Taichung.

1. Handbook from Kaohsiung American School (KAS)^[1]

• Academic Honesty Policy

• Kaohsiung American School firmly believes in creating an environment with integrity within both individuals and school through the promotion of the Academic Honesty Policy. The Academic Honesty Policy focused on the emphasis of transparency, appropriateness and a formal submission of work. For example, to keep a work transparent, a student should always cite where did he/she get the information from, as well as who have they collaborated with in the process. On the other hand, to have a piece of work with full appropriateness, a student should understand whether if it's appropriate or not to work with others. Lastly, before a formal submission of a piece of work is made, a student should double check the presence of citations and their collaboration partner’s name. Forms of Academic Dishonesty include plagiarism, cheating, fabrication, duplication, and collusion. Kaohsiung American School prohibits any form of Academic Dishonesty, and stated that teachers are responsible for working with the students who perform minor mistakes. However, students who strongly violate the policy will result in zero credit on the assignment and for the course, formal probation, conference with parents, report to the university, and a withdrawal from school.

• Mission/Philosophy Statement

• The mission of Kaohsiung American School is to train students to think B.I.G, which B stands for balanced individuals, I stands for independent learners, and G stands for global citizens. First, KAS wanted students to balance between academics, arts, and athletics. Secondly, KAS strived to make students independent learners by being passionate, curious, and critical thinkers. Lastly, by being a global citizen, KAS wanted students to be aware, ethical, and cooperative.

2. Handbook from Morrison Academy Kaohsiung (MAK)^[2]

• Academic Integrity

• Morrison Academy Kaohsiung recognizes the Academic Honesty Policy as Academic Integrity. Forms of Academic Dishonesty includes cheating and plagiarism. Examples such as copying homework, sharing information about tests, cheat sheets, having relatives to do homework, and more, all counts as cheating. They believe students have the responsibility upon themselves to define the boundary between academic honesty and dishonesty. Consequences for first timers include redos, notification to the administration, and a letter sent home. For second timers, the consequences would be aggravated, with an entry on the student’s record, and a 1 day in-school suspension. Furthermore, for third timers, there will be a 1 day of out-of-school suspension, conference with parents, and the student would be unable to receive academic award that year. Finally, for students who have violated Academic Integrity for more than four times, there will also be a parent conference, as well as a multi-day suspension from school, and will be ineligible to get academic awards throughout the rest of highschool.

• Mission/Philosophy Statement

• The philosophy statement of Morrison Academy Kaohsiung is to combine the words from Bible with education and train students to be able to apply the morals and knowledge in life situations. They teach faculties to manifest high moral standards based on Biblical values.

3. Handbook from Morrison Academy Taichung (MAC)^[3]

• Academic Integrity

• Morrison Academy Taichung also recognizes Academic Honesty Policy as Academic Integrity. Forms of Academic Dishonesty includes cheating and plagiarism with examples such as copying homework, sharing information about tests, sharing study guides/former notebooks/tests, having relatives to do homework, and such. They believe being honest and sincere about yourself is also an expression of a deep respect to God and the Morrison community. Therefore, disciplines for violating the code include appropriate penalty given after discussion, conference with parents, stricter limitations on current enrollment, a regular (1~4 days) or severe (5~10 days) suspension, and expulsion.

• Mission/Philosophy Statement

• The philosophy statement of Morrison Academy Taichung is to combine the words from Bible with education and train students to be able to apply the morals and knowledge in life situations. They teach faculties to manifest high moral standards based on Biblical values.

4. Similarities and Differences

• Between KAS and MAK/MAC

• Similarities

• The Academic Honesty Policy of Kaohsiung American School and Morrisons all shared the two following forms of academic dishonesty: cheating and plagiarism.
• The consequences for violating the code are pretty much the same.
• The mission statement of three schools in common all wanted students to be successful in the future no matter what kind of methods they apply.

• Differences

• Kaohsiung American School talked about the three requirements of academic honesty while both morrison schools didn’t. For example, they talked about transparency, appropriateness, and formal submission, with explanation attached to each points.
• Kaohsiung American School includes more forms of academic dishonesty (5 to be exact), besides cheating and plagiarism, there are also fabrication, duplication, and collusion.
• Both Morrison schools listed out specific examples of cheating while Kaohsiung American School didn’t.
• According to the handbook, Kaohsiung American School judge the penalty by the seriousness of the issue; while Morrison Academy Kaohsiung consider the seriousness of the issue by the number of times the student has violated the policy; however, Morrison Academy Taichung did neither of them and simply showed the consequences for violation.
• Kaohsiung American School and Morrison Academy Taichung
• The difference between the mission statement of Kaohsiung American School and the Morrison schools is the biblical values Morrison schools strive to blend in with education.

• Between MAK and MAC

• Similarities

• Overall, Morrison Academy Kaohsiung and Morrison Academy Taichung shared a lot of similarities since they’re all morrison schools that tried to promote religion. As a result, their definition for the forms of academic dishonesty and the explanation about their mission statement are the same.

• Differences

• The consequences for violating academic integrity aren’t the same, such as that MAK has the ineligibility to get academic awards for cheating/plagiarism while MAC doesn’t; and that MAC has probation while MAK does not, etc.
• As mentioned previously, MAK considered the seriousness of the issue by how many times of violation from a student; however, MAC did not exactly outline what makes the levels of penalty different.

5. Overall Thoughts

• Overall, I think all three handbooks did really well in outlining information in a clear and precise way. Evaluating the three handbooks from the design level, I think the handbook from MAK seems the best to me. Not only does their handbook’s cover is really unique, the content in the book is also clearly separated by pages with a big, eye-catchy title on the top of each page. Evaluating the three handbooks from the amount of information included level, I think the handbook from KAS included the most information. For example, for the Academic Honesty Policy section, MAK and MAC tend to focus more on the consequences, while KAS described Academic Honesty as a whole, such as the forms of academic honesty and dishonesty with full explanation. One suggestion I would make to MAC’s handbook is their design. Compared to the two other handbooks, their design looks very poor. Written in google documents, the handbook looks very simple and boring. They could include a cover with larger title sizes. Also, they could leave more space between sections, or else it looks very crowdy and disorganized. Finally, I feel like a handbook represents a high school very well. It stated their expectations for students, and after comparison, you can tell the difference between different international schools in Taiwan, including how their teaching strategy and punishments differ.