Writing The Literature Review

THE CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK

 Introduction
• Gavin Kendall
– X 84613
– g.kendall@qut.edu.au
• Disciplinary background and interests
 The classical thesis structure

INTRODUCTION What I want to do

LITERATURE What others say about it

DESIGN My plan for doing it

RESULTS What happened when I did it

DISCUSSION What this means

CONCLUSIONS What I found out

 Literature Review

• Describes the past and current state of the field, organises it, documents
the need for new research

• Follows on from and is determined by the objectives and relates to

significance

• Prepares for later chapters (e.g., Design, Discussion)

• One way to think about it: the thesis that sets up the antithesis and
prepares for the new synthesis
 Focus of literature review

• Learning what is known and unknown

• Learning how field of knowledge was developed (history)

• Showing you understand your field

• Confirming your own research is worthwhile

• Identifying how you will make a contribution

 Writing the review

• Five steps of Creswell’s (2008) approach:

- identify key areas/terms
- locate literature
- critically evaluate and select
- organise literature
- write literature review
• Creswell, John W. (2008). Educational research: planning, conducting, and evaluating quantitative and qualitative research.
Pearson. Esp. Ch#4.
 Structure of review: two types
• Study-by-Study Review
– Detailed review of each study
– Studies grouped by themes
– Summaries linked by transitional sentences
and organized under subheadings
 Second type
• Thematic Review
– Literature documents themes identified by
researcher
– No study discussed in detail, or possibly one or
two canonical studies take most of the space for
each theme
 Identifying key areas or terms

• Constructing the literature review from generic to specific

Generic Components Specific Implications

 Identifying key areas or terms

• Example: Relationship between neo-liberalism and modern

psychologised forms of self

Literature on
liberalism
Literature on Summary:
neo-liberalism Literature on neo- Initial theory;
liberalism and Significance;
modern forms of Questions-
Literature on the self Hypotheses;
self in human Implications for
Literature on research
sciences like
forms of self design
psychology
 Locating the literature

• Search engines
– find key words
• Use highly-cited, key journal articles
- use their key words
- search for other articles by author
- follow up references
 Critically evaluating and selecting

• Levels/Sources
- First: Refereed material describing studies
- Second: Material referring to studies

• Classification (Creswell, 2008)

- Web, drafts, newsletters
- Indexed (conference papers, dissertations)
- Refereed (journals)
- Research books
- Summaries (Encyclopedias, Handbooks)
Quality Recency
 Critically evaluating and selecting

• Breadth of coverage
- covering all important areas

• Depth in terms of central ideas

- covering all perspectives
- not missing important authors
 Critically evaluating and selecting

• Correctness
• Accuracy
• Quality
• Extent
• In terms of research design of paper:
- objectives
- methods
- subjects
- instruments
- procedure
- analysis
 Organising the literature
• Read and immerse
• Take notes and write abstracts
• Construct a line of argument with the literature
- construct the line of argument first (list, flow chart,
conceptual map)
- bring in the references second
- make it obvious what is from literature and what is a
consequence of this literature
• Develop a macro-structure
- list of headings, sub-headings and points
- a diagram/map laying out the flow of the review
- based on the method for identifying key areas
CHARACTERISTICS OF WEAK AND STRONG
REVIEWS
 Strong reviews

• Are well selected

• Relate well to the other components of the thesis
• Go past paraphrasing to
- critiquing (making judgements about quality and
applicability of the literature)
- integrating into a line of argument
- developing frameworks
• Involve the researcher indirectly
- few comments giving point of view of researcher
directly
 A critical voice

• Examines assumptions

• Questions and challenge ideas

• Judges validity and worth of evidence

• Provides evidence for your claims

• Forms opinions/make arguments

• Makes connections (to central concerns of your thesis)

• Is balanced – do not only point out negatives

 Researcher involvement

• Selection of literature (be careful – cannot leave out crucial

authors)
• Sequencing of literature and using one reference to critique
another
• Drawing attention to weaknesses and strengths (e.g.,
method, subjects, instruments, procedure, analysis)
• Making choices in what will go into frameworks and
implications (be careful – cannot leave out seminal ideas)
DEVELOPING SCHOLARLY WRITING
 Macro-structure

• Quality and clarity of purpose

• Consistency and coherence across components
- build general to specific or deduce a generality from
many specifics
- connect sections by cross referencing
• Relationship between components
- make sure all precedents are in place for all
sections/points
- make sure all parts in a section relate to the heading
 Macro-structure

• Discrimination between components

- make sure new sections are really different from
preceding ones
• Base review around pre and post-organisers
- maintain a consistent approach to introductions and
summaries
 Micro-structure

• Flow of argument within and across paragraphs

- connectives
- placement of phrases, clauses and sentences
- avoid convoluted sentences
- sequencing across paragraphs
- relationships between sections
- switches in arguments
- logical development
 Micro-structure

• Build a structure with headings, subheadings and points

before filling in with final writing
or
analyse writing in terms of points and argument flow as one
step in redrafting
• One paragraph for each point
- point
- evidence
- consequence
 Characteristics of Bad Reviews
• No sense of structure (lists rather than
themes; repetitive)
• No sense of direction (should be heading to
the research questions)
• Unconnected (or poorly connected) to what
comes after
• Unconnected (or poorly connected) to
research questions/objectives
 Mechanical errors

• General writing
- spelling
- use of apostrophe
- hyphenation
- punctuation
- subject-verb agreement
- tense
- referencing
- wrong and missing prepositions
- inappropriate words
- sexist and ethnically biased language
 Scholarly errors

- unsubstantiated claims
- restricted synthesis of literature
- circumlocution
- tautology
- value-laden words
- omission of articles
- incomplete sentences