The manual of the American Psychological Association (APA), whose seventh edition was published in 2020, was designed to provide authors with a standard way to improve their texts in terms of clarity for readers, as well as to acknowledge the sources that influenced their works. Regarding in-text citations, the APA manual recommends using them judiciously, providing sufficient references to support ideas while avoiding excessive or unnecessary citation. Some examples related to formats, sources, resources, and personal communications are provided, as well as directives for paraphrasing and quoting. Additionally, the reference list encompasses detailed information associated with every work cited previously in the text. It is imperative to acknowledge that in order to comply with the APA format, the sources that should be acknowledged in the reference list are those which are cited in the paper, either as direct quotations or paraphrased. Accordingly, the purpose of this paper is to analyse specifically the article Beyond Reflection: Teacher Learning as Praxis (Hoffman-Kipp et al., 2003) in relation to APA’s standards for in-text citations and reference pages.
Concerning in-text citations, there are several occasions in the article that need to be improved considering the APA (2020) Manual. These items include parenthetical citations, punctuation, and the number of authors to be cited. The manual stipulates parenthetical citations can appear within or at the end of a sentence (APA, 2020). Other mistakes present in the text are related to direct quotations. As stated in the manual, in the case of direct quotations the page number should be included after the author and the year of publication. Nevertheless, this was not always the case in the analysed paper. Such is the case of a citation in which the author quotes the term “activity systems” (Engestrom et al., 1999, as cited by Hoffman-Kipp et al., 2003, p. 250) and the quotation of the term “double-move” (Hedegaard, 1998, as cited by Hoffman-Kipp et al., 2003, p. 252). Another mistake regarding in-text citations appears in a quotation in the notes section on the notion of “artifacts” (Hoffman-Kipp et al., 2003, p. 253). Notwithstanding the fact that this quotation has over forty words, it is treated as a direct quotation. According to the APA manual, nonetheless, it should be managed as a block quotation, that is to say, it should be half an inch indented, double-spaced, without quotation marks and it should have final punctuation before the source (APA, 2020).
As mentioned above, the paper also exhibits some inaccuracies related to punctuation. In this respect, at the end of the citation that deals with the definition of praxis, the author quotes Freire’s (1972) words. At the end of such citation, even though the information is complete, as it includes the name of the author as well as the year and the page number, it fails to comply with the punctuation requirements between the author and the year. Another punctuation mistake is present in the notes section, in the citation that explains the meaning of “phenomenology” (Hoffman-Kipp et al., 2003, p. 253).
Respecting the number of authors to include in In-text citations, on pages 249 and 252 the writer mentions the three authors of the work being cited. This is incorrect since APA’s directions state that for a work with three or more authors, include the name of only the first author plus "et al." in every citation, including the first citation, unless doing so would create ambiguity.
The reference list at the end of a paper provides the information necessary to identify and retrieve each work cited in the text (APA, 2020). In consonance with the manual, mistakes including order within the elements, correct use of italics, and punctuation are found in this article reference list. Disregarding the source of the work being cited, APA establishes the same order which involves: author, date, title, and source (p. 283). This is not always respected in the reference list.
In conclusion, while some aspects of it are accurate, the analysed paper can be criticized on several counts in relation to the APA (2020) style. The aspects raised in this analysis should be improved in order to assent to this style, with a view to making make the text more appealing to readers.
References
American Psychological Association.
(2020). Publication manual of the American Psychological Association (7th ed.).
Hoffman-Kipp, P., Artiles A. J.,
& López-Torres, L. (2003) Beyond Reflection: Teacher Learning as Praxis. Theory
into Practice, 42, 3.
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