Tuesday, October 14, 2014

Chapter 7 | Avoiding Plagiarism

Avoiding plagiarism seems more difficult than one might suspect!  It can be easy to unintentionally plagiarize.  Bedford gives the following list as key tools for avoiding unintentional plagiarism:
  •  “conduct a knowledge inventory
  •  take notes carefully
  •  distinguish between your ideas and those drawn from your sources
  • cite sources in the text and in a works cited or reference list
  •  recognize misconceptions about intentional plagiarism” (126)
I think it would be very useful to conduct a knowledge inventory at the beginning of the research process.  I have found as I read passages in articles or books that I often become disappointed or concerned because I find myself seeing my own ideas on the page, as someone else has had the same or very similar thought.  Clearly, I have not published these ideas, but I have come up with them on my own accord through my own personal experience, discussed with friends and family members, and now I’m concerned that I have to cite someone else for an idea that was in fact truly my own.  It's like some sort of weird reverse plagiarism, and I find myself almost wishing I hadn't read a certain passage because now I feel I have to quote an author expressing the same idea as my own out of fear I might unintentionally plagiarize.  Perhaps as I study more, I will find that these general ideas about play – being a state of mind, access to our best self, learned from physical experience and not the intellect… are part of what Bedford discusses as “common knowledge”.  I just don’t know it’s common knowledge yet, as I am new to the Play community.

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