Consistency in APA Referencing and Citing.

 

Consistency in APA Referencing and Citing.

This paper aims to thoroughly analyse the use of in- text citations and reference list written by the author,   Hoffman-Kipp, Artiles, & Lopez-Torres (2003) in their article  Beyond Reflection: Teachers Learning as Praxis  in light of the Publication Manual of The American Psychological Association (APA,  2010 which has been developed to agree on criteria for successful and uniform scientific communication in the area of Behavioral and Social Sciences.  APA encompasses pieces of advice for the organization and structure of manuscripts together with sound rules for writing as regards, style, tone and register. In addition, it provides prospective writers with guidance on citing sources to acknowledge the authors, hence avoiding plagiarism.

In order to quote directly following APA style, the manual indicates that quotation marks should be used and information about the author, year and page number should be provided between parentheses. The authors of the article under analysis adhere to these rules but fail to follow APA instructions for the addition of new material not previously mentioned by the author being cited.  Even though APA suggests the use of “brackets, not parentheses, to enclose material such as an addition or an explanation inserted in a quotation…”(APA, 2010 p. 173), the authors choose to fragment the quotation shown below to add explanations, therefore hindering comprehension.

“integrat[ing] curriculum around concepts and issues” that would be of current interest to both student and teacher, or “focus[ing] on inquiry and us[ing] literature to support that inquiry,” thus helping their students “not only to be problem solvers, but to become problem-posers” (Crawford et al., 1994, p. 174).” (Hoffman-Kipp et al., 2003, p.248)

Another mistake within the same citation is the omission of surnames in the parenthetical citation. Whenever citing multiple authors for the first time in APA, all of their surnames must be written. However, in subsequent citations the name of the first author is used together with the phrase et al. to avoid writing all the surnames multiple times. In this particular case the authors were omitted, not being acknowledged even once.  The same mistake is made on page 250 “(Engestrom et al.,1999)” (Hoffman-Kipp, Artiles, & López-Torres, 2003, p.250).

On the first paragraph of page 249, the authors name and comment on Freire`s ideas failing to provide the year between parentheses. According to the Publication Manual of American Psychological Association (2010), “If the name of the author appears as part of the narrative [...]cite only the year of publication in parentheses” (p.174).

The  in-text citation found on the third paragraph of page 250 “(Vavrus & Ozcan, 1996, p.3)” (Hoffman-Kipp et al., 2003, p.250)  may be considered wrong as it provides a page number which APA  does not require for paraphrased citations, unless they are direct quotations. In this case, after reading the source, it is made clear that the authors are paraphrasing and reporting what the cited authors stated instead of copying the exact same words.

In relation to the notes at the end of the article, two errors have been detected. In note number 1 (Hoffman-Kipp et al., 2003), a direct quotation is made complying with the rules for acknowledging the author but disregarding the fact that a block quotation is suggested when it surpasses 40 words (APA). The format of these blocks should be indented half an inch from the left margin. The second mistake is on note number 3 where the authors cite “(Engestrom, 1993, p.67)” (Hoffman-Kipp et al., 2003, p. 254) but fail to provide the information needed to find the text in the reference list. APA requires for each in-text citation to also appear in the reference list and vice versa. The rest of the citations could be found in the reference list, being this the only exception.

As a conclusion it can easily be stated that this article followed most of the APA guidelines for citing and referencing.  By comparing the theory to the actual citations and references made by the authors and through a deep analysis of the paper, some flaws were spotted and exposed. If the authors had thoroughly and consistently applied APA rules and procedures, the end result would have been easier to read and would have also avoided plagiarism.

References

·         American Psychological Association. (2010). Publication manual of the American Psychological Association  (6th ed.). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

·        Hoffman-Kipp, P., Artiles, A. J., & Lopez-Torres, L. (2003). Beyond reflection: Teacher learning as praxis. Theory into practice, 42 (3), 248-254. Retrieved from https://campus.caece.edu.ar/pluginfile.php/151300/mod_page/content/2/Hoffman-Kipp_P._Artiles_A._J._and_Lopez-.pdf