In-Text Citations: A brief Analysis

In-Text Citations: A brief Analysis

      The purpose of this piece is to analyse the use of in-text citations employed by Dolk and den Herzog (2008) in their article ‘Narratives in Teacher Education’. In order to accomplish this task, the examples provided will be reviewed according to the standards of the American Psychological Association (APA) Publication Manual (2010), 6^th edition. 

      The authors resort mostly to paraphrasing, as observed on page 215, they correctly include the year of publication next to the surnames of the authors they make reference to:

Goffree and Dolk (1995) identified reflection, narration, and construction as being particularly important for teacher education.

      Block citation is also applied, although only once, as seen on page 216 of the same article by first making in-text reference of the authors and the year of publication:

Doyle and Carter (2003) saw narrative knowing as an important part of teacher education.

The key phrase here is that we, as human beings, live storied lives, that we story the experiences we have. Although several stories of any particular experience are possible, it is very difficult to story what we have not yet experienced. Moreover, although experience does not uniquely determine a story, all stories are constrained by the experiences upon which they are forged.However, experience is a troublesome, if not unruly, term in teacher education curriculum. Of course, calls for infusing field experience into teacher preparation are pervasive, and student teaching is often seen as the capstone of programmes, especially by students. Yet, teacher educators are often ambivalent about experience in the preparatory curriculum and even distrust it. There are, for example, prominent members of the teacher education community who have written of the miseducative consequences of field experience . . . . This distrust exists for several legitimate reasons, but for present purposes it can be said that this scepticism has led to an underestimation of the potency of direct experience in the stories our students create.

      Everything considered, the use of in-text quotations is brought into practice properly applied according to APA guidelines. 

References

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

Dolk, M. & den Hertog, J. (2008). Narratives in teacher education. Interactive Learning 

        Environments, 16(3),215-229. doi:10.1080/10494820802113970