A Magnifying Glass on In-text Citations and References
Authors generally pursue excellence in their writings. Thus, the American Psychological Association (APA) has developed and published a manual that details a specific writing style and format for academic documents to aid better reading comprehension and to ensure transparency in communication: the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, Seventh Edition (2020). The following essay will analyse the article Beyond Reflection: Teacher Learning as Praxis by Peter Hoffman-Kipp, Alfredo J. Artiles, and Laura López-Torres, published in 2003 in the journal Theory into Practice according to the rules that APA has established for in-text citations and reference pages on its 7th Edition.
Regarding in-text citation, APA (2020) established that writers must provide credit to the sources that influenced, provided information, or supported their works. Two formats can be used to paraphrase other authors’ ideas: Narrative and Parenthetical. In narrative citations, the author and the year of the publication being cited must be present, the author’s surname appears in the text and next to it, the year of publication is specified between parentheses. In parenthetical citations, both the author and the year appear in parentheses at the end of the sentence. However, if writers want to quote another author directly, not only do they have to provide the author, year, and page number of the quotation but also, they have to consider the number of words they wish to quote: if the quote contains 40 words or less, it is a short quotation, which has to be written between inverted commas. A quotation of 40 words or more is a block quotation, which has to start on a new line and with an indentation of 1.27 cm from the left margin.
The reference list, which must be ordered alphabetically by author’s surname, have their own page, with its heading is centred and in bold. To begin with, a hanging indent is used at the beginning of each reference and authors’ surnames are written first, followed by a comma, and their initials. If there is no author, the title of the work takes its position. Secondly, dates might take different forms but the most common is year only. In case that the publication has no date, n.d. (no date) must be written between parentheses. Thirdly, the title can follow two formats: if it is part of “a greater whole” (APA, 2020, p.291), the title does not have to be italicized or written between quotation marks and only the first word is capitalized. However, if it can stand alone, the writer does have to italicize it. Finally, as with titles, sources can fall into two categories: if it is a journal article or a chapter from a book, the source is the journal or the book along with any functional DOI or URL. However, if it stands alone, the source is the publisher of the work or wherever the source comes from, in addition to any functional DOI or URL. In the case of periodical sources, “provide the periodical title, volume number, issue number, and page range or article number” (APA, 2020, p.294). Unlike the 6th edition (2002) of the manual, locations are included only if the work cited is associated with a specific location, and it must include the city; province, state if necessary; and the country.
Concerning the analysis of the in-text citations and the reference list of the article it can be stated that some rules of APA (2020) guidelines are followed. As regards in-text citations, the authors of this article follow the indications established by APA (2020) . An example of a narrative citation is one about Vygotsky’s theory: “Vygotsky’s (1978) concept of the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) suggests…” (Hoffman-Kipp et al., 2003, p.251). In relation to parenthetical citation, an example of this is found in the first paragraph: “Reflection is generally treated as an isolated skill (Giroux, 1985; Lindsay & Mason, 2000)” (Hoffman-Kipp et al., 2003, p.248). The authors of this article apply the format of direct quotes of less than 40 words when referring to the meaning of prolepsis “‘...the representation or assumption of a future act…’ (Cole, 1999, p.89)” (Hoffman-Kipp et al., 2003, p.252).
However, errors in citation have been found. Firstly, a wrong citation is noticed when citing Freire’s theory as the comma after the author’s surname is omitted: “(Freire 1972, p. 96)” (Hoffman-Kipp et al., 2003, p.249a). Secondly, a confusing citation is observed in the following example: “Since Dewey (1933), teacher reflection has been seen as an important avenue for enhancing teacher labor (Schön, 1983; Sparks-Langer & Colton, 1991)” (Hoffman-Kipp et al., 2003, p.249b). For readers, it is not clear enough who the idea belongs to. The next example demonstrates the authors did not maintain the style chosen as they interchanged narrative citation but omitted the year and parenthetical citations at the end of the paragraph: “Engestrom explains…”; “(Engestrom et al., 1999)” (Hoffman-Kipp et al., 2003, p.250).
The reference list, despite its label being centred and in bold and its entries being alphabetically ordered, is neither displayed on a separate page or double-spaced. While following APA (2020), examples of incomplete reference entries can be found such as “Giroux, H. (1985). Teachers as transformative intellectuals. Social Education, 49 (5), 376-379.” (Hoffman-Kipp, 2003, p.254a) where the DOI or URL is missing. In addition to this, the following citation exemplifies how the author interchanges APA 6th (2002) and 7th editions (2020): “Cole, M. (1996). Cultural psychology. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.” (Hoffman-Kipp et al.,2003, p.254b).
To conclude, this text analysis reveals that the authors do not comply with the APA (2020) guidelines. Despite having applied some formats, many differences were found after comparing and contrasting this article and the theory summarized. An error has been noticed when citing in narrative and, in parenthetical citation, some guidelines are not applied as regards works with more than one author. It is utmost important to remember that according to APA rules references must be written on a separate page. This contrasting feature may correspond to a mixture of the APA 6th ed. (2002) and 7th ed. (2020) when citing.
References
American Psychological Association. (2002). Publication manual of the American Psychological Association (6th ed.). American Psychological Association.
American Psychological Association. (2020). Publication manual of the American Psychological Association (7th ed.). American Psychological Association. http://doi.org/10.1037/0000165-000
Hoffman-Kipp, P., Artiles, A. J., & López-Torres, L. (2003). Beyond reflection: Teacher learning as praxis. Theory Into Practice, 42(3), 248–254.
