Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences: School of Education

Guide to Harvard Referencing

You need to use citations and references in your academic work. To do this, the School of

Education requires you to follow the Harvard referencing style. This is a brief guide to Harvard

referencing, based on Cite them right (2010 edition) by Pears and Shields, and gives examples

from the main types of literature that Education students use.

Cite them Right is available to view in full text online via the University’s e-resources.

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1. What are citations? How to cite

You include citations within the text of your assignment at points where you have used someone

else’s work. By including the citation, you are acknowledging that specific individual or

organisation as the source of the statement, evidence or argument you have presented. Your

citation always includes the author and year of the source.

If you have copied words directly from your source, this is a quote. The words you have copied

must be in quotation marks and your citation must include the page on which the words you have

copied appear. For example:

‘Within our thinking about parents of children with special needs, we perhaps need to focus more on the role of fathers as they can often be overlooked’ (Wall, 2011, p. 38).

Black and Wiliam (1998) argue that formative assessment is crucial to raising educational achievement and standards.

Wall (2011, p. 38) suggests that teachers and early years professionals need to include fathers more when supporting children with special needs.

2. Word count

Consult your Module Handbook, rather than Cite them Right, for information on citations and your

word count.

If you take specific information from your source and put it into your own words, this is a

paraphrase. You do not need quotation marks but you should still indicate which page you got the

information from:

If you have summarised the whole argument of your source then there is no need to include the

page number as the information you are using comes from across the whole source:

The author can be a person or an organisation. If it is an organisation, use their name as the

author. If you use a work that has two or three authors, include all of their surnames in your

citation. For a work with four or more authors, you can cite the first author listed in the work

followed by et al., which means ‘and others’. There are examples of this in section 4 of this guide.

Most educational research sources will have both an author and a date. However, if you need to

cite something where you cannot identify an author, use the title of the source as the author. If

you cannot identify the year, use (no date).

3. What are references? How to reference

References provide your reader with full details for each of the sources you have cited. References

are listed at the end of your assignment, in alphabetical order, by the author’s name. Do not

number or bullet-point your references. If you use more than one work by the same author, list

them by date, with the earliest first.

Full references are made up in different ways, depending on the type of material you have used.

The examples below show what you need to include, when to use italics and abbreviations, and

what punctuation to use.

4. Referencing different types of material

c. Electronic books (E-books)

To reference an e-book, you omit the place of publication and the publisher and instead include

the name of the E-book collection [Online]. Then include the first part of the

internet address and the date you accessed the e-book:

Allen, M. (2010) Misconceptions in primary science. Dawsonera [Online]. Available at: http://www.dawsonera.com (Accessed: 23 May 2011).

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a. Books

Book by a single author:

Savage, J. (2011) Cross-curricular teaching and learning in the secondary school. Abingdon: Routledge.

Book by two or three authors:

Muijs, D. and Reynolds, D. (2011) Effective teaching: evidence and practice. 3rd edn. London: Sage.

Book by four or more authors:

Citation: Cohen et al. (2011, p. 139) state that the National Curriculum ‘has been subject to intense debate’ since its introduction.

Reference: Cohen, L., Manion, L., Morrison, K. and Wyse, D. (2010) A guide to teaching practice. 5th rev. edn. Abingdon: Routledge.

When referencing a work by four or more authors, cite the first author listed in the work followed

by et al. (meaning ‘and others’). Then include all of the authors in the reference so that they all

receive credit for their published work.

In an edited book the different chapters are written by different authors. The editor is responsible

for bringing the chapters together into the book. When you use a chapter from an edited book, you

should cite the author(s) of the chapter and reference the specific chapter.

Citation: ‘Froebel pioneered the realization that we learn from the time we are born’ (Bruce, 2011, p. 59).

Reference: Bruce, T. (2011) ‘Froebel today’, in Miller, L. and Pound, L. (eds.) Theories and approaches to learning in the early years. London: Sage, pp. 55-70.

b. Chapter in an edited book

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Article in a printed journal:

d. Journals

To reference an article in a journal, you include the title of the article in inverted commas and

the title of the journal in italics. Then include details of the volume and issue and the page range

of the article.

Waite, S. (2011) ‘Teaching and learning outside the classroom: personal values, alternative pedagogies and standards’, Education 3-13, 39 (1), pp. 65-82.

Article in an electronic journal which is part of an e-journal collection:

Most journal articles available through the library web pages are part of e-journal collections, such

as Education Research Complete or InformaWorld. You should include the name of the journal

collection, the first part of the internet address and the date accessed.

Myhill, D. and Jones, S. (2009) ‘How talk becomes text: investigating the concept of oral rehearsal in early years classrooms’, British Journal of Educational Studies, 57 (3), pp. 265-284. Education Research Complete [Online]. Available at: http://web.ebscohost.com (Accessed: 23 May 2011).

You will normally be able to reference a web page that is an image, sound or video in the same

way as a web page that is written text – just like in the example above. Otherwise, there are more

detailed suggestions for specific formats in Cite them Right (Pears and Shields, 2010).

Citation: The Association of Teachers and Lecturers (2011) offer practical suggestions on dealing with behaviour issues in the classroom.

Reference: Association of Teachers and Lecturers (2011) Pupil behaviour—building positive relation-ships with pupils. Available at: http://www.new2teaching.org.uk/tzone/Students/placement/behaviour.asp (Accessed: 19 May 2011).

e. Websites

Your citation includes the author of the website. If the author is an organisation, use the

organisation’s name. The internet address of the website goes in the reference, not in the citation.

Before the name of the government department, you should indicate the government of which it

is a department. Mostly, you will access government publications online, as in the example below.

Citation: Securing Level 1 in mathematics (Great Britain. Department for Children, Schools and Families, 2010) sets out to...

Reference: Great Britain. Department for Children, Schools and Families (2010) Securing Level 1 in mathematics [Online]. Available at: https://www.education.gov.uk/publications/eOrderingDownload/pri_maths_0004110_bkten.pdf (Accessed: 24 May 2011).

f. Government publications

Many documents published by the DfE are research projects written by individual named authors.

Although they look like standard Government publications, these documents will often have a

declaration on the title page, stating that they are the views of the authors, and do not necessarily

match the views of the DfE. In this case, you should cite and reference the individual author(s):

Citation: The study (Howard et al., 2011) investigates the strategies schools use to deal with bullying.

Reference: Howard, S., Grigg, D., Pozzoli, T., Tippett, N. and Sadeghi, S. (2011) The use and effectiveness of anti-bullying strategies in schools [Online]. Available at: https://www.education.gov.uk/publications/eOrderingDownload/DFE-RR098.pdf (Accessed: 24 May 2011).

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Broad, E. (2010) ‘Being a Teacher’. The reflective professional [Online]. Available at: http://lms.kingston.ac.uk (Accessed: 23 May 2011).

If you use a document from a module, then you should reference it, showing the author, year, the

title of the document in inverted commas and the name of the module in italics.

h. StudySpace

In 1997, Burnett and Wichman found evidence that ‘primary teachers’...own anxieties about mathematics can often be passed on to the children they teach’ (Haylock, 2010, p. 5).

Haylock (2010, p. 5) underlines the importance of Burnett and Wichman’s 1997 research findings…

Mathematics anxiety can be passed from teacher to pupil (Burnett and Wichman, 1997, cited in Haylock, 2010, p. 5).

In the examples above, the writer used research findings by Burnett and Wichman from 1997.

Because they found this information on page 5 of a book by Haylock (2010), their citation is

(Haylock, 2010, p. 5). They would include only the Haylock (2010) source in their reference list, not

the work by Burnett and Wichman, as they have not read that work.

5. Secondary referencing

If you use information that has been referred to in something that you have read, it is called

‘secondary referencing’ as you have not read the original work. Your text must make it clear that

you have not read the original but are referring to it from another source. The citations below

show different ways you can do this.

Kingston University Information Services, v1 September 2011

Pears and Shields (2010) provide a complete guide and further examples of citations and

references.

If you would like help with any aspect of referencing, please contact:

Nightingale Centre Helpdesk: 020 8417 5384/0

PGCE courses, BA(Hons) Primary, Early Years and CSNIE,

FdA Early Years, MaL and CSEN:

Faye Sisson: f.sisson@kingston.ac.uk 020 8417 5385

MA, EdD, Professional Studies and ICCIP courses:

Monica Elengorn: m.elengorn@kingston.ac.uk 020 8417 5385

6. Further support with referencing

Reference

Pears, R. and Shields, G. (2010) Cite them right: the essential referencing guide. 8th edn.

Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

For all Acts of Parliament since 1963 use the citation and reference format below. For earlier Acts

of Parliament, see Cite them Right (Pears and Shields, 2010, p. 37).

g. Acts of Parliament (UK Statutes)

Citation: The requirement for a Local Safeguarding Children Board in each children’s services authority was established in s13 of the Act (Great Britain. Children Act 2004).

Reference: Great Britain. Children Act 2004: Elizabeth II. Chapter 31 (2004). London: The Stationery Office.