Abstract

As instructors, we frequently encounter students’ seeming inability or unwillingness to cite sources. Yet as academics, citing our sources is part of being members of a broader social and epistemic community; the scholarly work we produce indicates who among our epistemic community has contributed to our thinking about the discussion in which we are engaging. Part of the challenge in motivating students to engage in proper citation practices is that many of the ways we teach about citation practices focus on how to cite rather than why. Insofar as we do tell students why they need to cite sources, it’s often framed negatively–citing is a way to avoid academic dishonesty, for example. In other cases, we announce some (seemingly arbitrary) number of sources a student must reference in order to begin engaging like a scholar. In the first case, we only encourage students to avoid punishment and in the second students have little reason to see citing as anything other than busy-work. In this chapter we suggest that introducing philosophy as the practice of engaging an epistemic community in virtuous dialogue offers concrete ways to help students recognize why it’s important to become proficient and thoughtful about their own citations practices. We outline four ways to help motivate students to recognize the value and importance of citing sources, by framing citations as: (1) bread-crumbs for the inquisitive reader, (2) justification for an incredulous reader, (3) an acknowledgement of the labor involved in knowledge production, and (4) recognition of membership in an epistemic community.