Page 149 - Smart Thinking: Skills for Critical Understanding and Writing, 2nd Ed

136 SMART THINKING: SKILLS FOR CRITICAL UNDERSTANDING & WRITING

is possible to say first that the scholarly community within which an author
writes enforces payment of the debt (their readers will check their work, either
consciously or not, for evidence that proper referencing has taken place). Second,
it is enforced, or at least made possible, by the ethical behaviour of individual
authors who, privately, must recognise they need to acknowledge those other
writers who have helped them. Without referencing, the system of mutual
obligation on authors to use each others' work, to link new pieces of work to
those already published, and to rely on one another's specific expertise would
collapse. Thus referencing is important, even if the references were never actually
followed up (though, of course, they regularly are).
The third reason why referencing is so important is, perhaps, the most difficult
to grasp. References allow an author to obviate the need to detail and support every
single premise in their arguments and explanations by relying instead on the
authority of the source from which they obtained the information they are
presenting (see Allen, Smart Thinking, chapter 6 for more explanation). Put simply,
references are part of the way one writes a convincing argument or explanation.
Since good writing always seeks to be convincing, even if to only a small degree,
then it is easy to see why the quest to teach students to be good writers must also
involve teaching them to reference effectively.
These three reasons can be summed up as follows. Each newly produced
essay, article, presentation, or whatever, is always based substantially in existing
published or presented material and becomes a part of the 'ongoing, knowl-
edgeable conversation' expressed through that material. Written work needs
good referencing so as to refer its readers elsewhere, to repay the debt to other
writers, and to reinforce its own arguments.
But what makes it hard for some students to grasp the essential elements of
this relatively simple argument as to why they must reference, even as they
dutifully follow out the instructions to 'reference correctly' laid out for them
by teachers? Without going into detail, it seems likely that many students do
not yet believe themselves to be authors, with an audience, and a comradeship
with other authors. They see themselves primarily as students, governed by a
debilitating and unequal regime of inequality in relation to their teachers.
Thus, the reasons I have just outlined are not rejected by some students
because they are not understood, or are unreasonably or wilfully ignored.
Rather the reasons are rejected because they are, quite rationally, not relevant
to a 'student', even if they are explained to students. A 'student' (by which I
mean the abstract identity rather than any particular individual) is governed by
the imperatives of 'doing as one is told' by teachers; a student's audience is
their assessor; a student's sense of comradeship is with other students as
students; the goal of writing is not, usually, 'contributing to human
knowledge' but getting a good mark.
Students in general then fail to understand the need to reference because they
do not see how the very sensible arguments in favour of referencing apply to
them. Thus, in terms of the cultural understanding of student identity—of 'who