El discurso de la investigación educacional: Los resúmenes de las ponencias de la UCV en la ASOVAC

research is one of the key functions of the university, and conveying research advances and results is paramount in scientific activities. in this paper, the internal structure of conference abstracts is analyzed. the data consists of 219 abstracts submitted to the annual meetings of asovac, in the area of education, between 1983 and 2002. discourse moves analysis shows that the most common structure of the abstracts contains an introduction and the least common is the structure containing conclusions. about half of the abstracts studied tend to conform to international norms, while 62 of such abstracts do not refer to methodology. approximately one out of four abstracts displays an introduction only. diachronic analysis suggests that abstracts do not approximate the canonical structures. it is concluded that it might be necessary to apply discourse analysis principles, so that academics improve the quality of their abstracts.