The College of Education at CDU uses the APA style of referencing. This is the style set out by the American Psychological Association (APA) and is the style most often used to format written academic work in the social sciences. APA Style covers many aspects of formatting a manuscript, such as headings, punctuation, tables and statistics, but most often you will use the style to cite references, both in-text and in your reference list.
For more information see the CDU Referencing Guide: APA
The American Psychological Association's APA website has comprehensive styles guidelines by topic and an informative blog: https://apastyle.apa.org/
You can also consult the print edition of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association available via Library Search .
This sample essay shows how citations appear in an essay and what a reference list looks like.
The Australian Curriculum is developed and published online by the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority.
To cite the Curriculum in your assignments, reference it as a webpage:
Person or Organisation as author. (year published or last update; if not known, put n.d.). Title of web page. Retrieved from URL of web page
*see the CDU APA Referencing Guide.
In-text citation
The first time the organisation is cited:
The Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA, n.d.) states that ...
OR
(Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority [ACARA], n.d.)
Then each subsequent citation:
(ACARA, n.d.)
When referring to or directly quoting a content descriptor, use the code in place of a page number:
(ACARA, n.d., ACMNA001)
Reference list
Use 'Australian curriculum' plus the subject area (or the title as it appears on the page) as the title of the webpage.
For example:
The Early Years Learning Framework (EYLF) was developed by the Australian and state and territory governments with input from the early childhood sector and early childhood academics.
To cite the EYLF in your assignments, reference it as a web document:
Person or Organisation as author. (year published or last update; if not known, put n.d.). Title of document from webpage. URL of web page
*see the CDU APA Referencing Guide.
The first time that the organisation is cited:
(Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations [DEEWR], 2009)
Then each subsequent citation:
(DEEWR, 2009)
Creating hanging indents is easy if the reference list is:
In alphabetical order
Left aligned
Regularly spaced
Without any extra ‘tabs’ or spaces
Without any extra ‘enters’
Select the complete reference list
On your keyboard, press ctrl + T
You can also use the paragraph formatting tab in Word:
see the instructions here.
