The Importance of Citing Properly

 

When writing academically, it is of utmost importance to follow a style for documenting sources. Research papers in Social Sciences, like Psychology, Anthropology, Sociology, as well as Education and other fields, follow the American Psychological Association’s (APA, 2002) style.  The purpose of this paper is to analyse the in-text citations and reference page of the article Beyond Reflection: Teacher Learning as Praxis (Hoffman-Kipp, Artiles & Lopez-Torres, 2003), on the basis of what APA states.

While the norms establish that citing all authors the first time the reference occurs is essential, in the article this is not followed. For instance, in the  following in-text citation, which refers to a source of multiple authors who have not been mentioned before, only the first surname is included and the subsequent surnames are omitted when they should have been mentioned "(Crawford et al., 1994, p. 174)" (Hoffman-Kipp et al., 2003, p.248).

Proper direct quotes should be done copying exactly what has been written in the original version, including the author’s last name, year of publication and page number; however, in the article this is not always fulfilled. There is an inconsistency in the use of direct quotations since they are either used without including a page number as in '… in the mind of the individual but is “distribut-ed” through sign systems' (Hoffman-Kipp et al., 2003, p.250); or providing the page number and forgetting the quotation marks like in the following example “…issues of social and political curriculum transforma-tion are generally avoided, misinterpreted, or resisted (Vavrus & Ozcan, 1996, p. 3)” (Hoffman-Kipp et al., 2003, p.250), impeding the readers to see what the actual words of the author are.

 According to the American Psychological Association (2002), reference list entries have to follow an alphabetical order, be double spaced and each reference cited in the text must appear in the reference list. At the same time, each entry in the reference list must be cited in the body of the paper.   By doing this, readers can easily identify the sources of information at the end of the article. This article partially meets the aforementioned requirements. Whereas alphabetical order is respected, some authors cited in the body are omitted in the reference list. Such is the case of “Houghton Miffling Company (2000) and Engestrom, et al., (1999).” (Hoffman-Kipp et al., 2003, p.253).

It can be concluded that writing academic papers requires writers to follow certain conventions as regards style, register and genre. By scrutinizing the article under the light of the theory, it reveals that its authors have not fully taken into account the academic writing requirements. The paper written by  Hoffman-Kipp et al., (2003) would have been more convincing in an academic discourse community if they had followed the conventions required for it, presenting their information in an accurate way as regards APA style.

References:

American Psychological Association. (2002). Publication manual of the American Psychological Association.  6th Edition. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

Hoffman-Kipp, P., Artiles, A. J., & López-Torres, L. (2003). Beyond reflection: teacher learning as praxis. Theory into Practice, 42 (3), 248-254. Retrieved from https://www.academia.edu/1493661/Hoffman_Kipp_P_Artiles_A_J_and_L%C3%B3pez_Torres_L_2003_Beyond_reflection_Teacher_learning_as_praxis_Theory_into_Practice_42_3_248_254