Academic Writing: A means to a voice

When writing for academic purposes, acknowledging sources of inspiration for ideas or citing other authors’ words is of overriding concern. Failing to do so, can be considered plagiarism, which is a serious academic offence. In the following paragraphs, an analysis of in-text citations in an academic article will be conducted. The theory used in this analysis is the one in the American Psychological Association Manual, 6 th edition. The article by Dolk and den Hertog (2008) uses in-text or parenthetical citations to refer to the sources they have consulted and read in order to conduct their research and produce their paper. The type of citations they use the most are paraphrased ideas in which they do not copy word for word material from another author’s work but they change the terms keeping the meaning the author wanted to express. For instance: “Similarly, we can characterize design research as the learning process of the research team, and we would argue that this learning proc...

        Teacher education involves many processes. The transformation from student to teacher is not automatic, does not occur instantaneously and implies learning about theoretical aspects and training in practical ones. Student teachers often experience a mismatch between the theories they study and real practice in the classroom. As Dolk and den Hertog (2008) state, “For many student-teachers theory is what is taught at teacher Education College and what they need to know for their examinations; practice is what classroom teachers do and talk about” (p. 215). Bridging the gap between theory and practice is considered to be paramount in order to better teacher education. One approach towards doing so is the practice of developing narratives of classroom situations that student teachers can observe in a multimedia classroom. “In the MILE (multimedia interactive learning environment) environments student teachers are asked to observe a small fragment of a lesson,...