Literature Review
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Write a 2000-2500 word review of the literature on your selected topic. This topic should be of relevance to your professional context. The topic can be disciplinary based (e.g., a focus on one of the KLA’s, Aboriginal Education, Gifted and Talented Education, Inclusive education, Social Issues – class, gender, rurality, etc., Child Development), practice based (e.g., any aspect of teaching and learning in classrooms), or policy focused. Whilst broad, the literature review needs to show a clear development of ideas, with description/ commentary on the methods/ paradigms used. A strong literature review is able to simultaneously: outline findings, describe methods, convince the reader of the broader research value and signal gaps, tensions and limitations to be addressed within the literature. The assignment should conclude with the presentation of a research question (and potentially a hypothesis) that relates to the literature provided in the review.
Your review needs to examine the literature on your topic. It should examine the main ideas and research related to your chosen topic and identify any gaps, tensions and/or problems evident in the existing literature. It should develop an argument for your research. It will frame the rationale for your study, inform the development of your research questions and assist you in selecting an appropriate research methodology for your proposed research. In other words, it’s an ‘evaluation’ of what exists, to provide a justification for ‘what’ you intend to do and ‘how’ you intend to do it in your research proposal (to be presented in assignment 2).
You will need to:
- Identify your proposed topic
- Articulate why this topic is significant to your professional context/ practice
- Outline the scope of the research and how you approached your literature search
- Conduct a search of journals, databases and so on
- Analyse and critique the literature
- Reflect on what, why, and how previous research about this topic relates to your proposed study by identifying gaps and possible research questions/hypothesis(es) to inform the development of your research proposal.
While the review can be presented in a variety of ways, you will need to address the following:
- What type of research was conducted (including the paradigm of quantitative or qualitative)?
- What data gathering tools have been used (e.g., surveys, interviews, case studies, quasi-experimental, longitudinal, document analysis), on whom (e.g., sample details), and where?
- What is the research conducted for and by whom (for instance, who were the researchers associated with, can the source of funding be identified, was the research for a particular purpose, group, agenda, organisation, etc.) as all these may influence the what, where, when, how of the study, as well as results, interpretations, and recommendations?
- What are the strengths and weakness of the prior research? Are there particular gaps, tensions, problems? Are there particular themes? What are the particular strengths? Are there particular methodologies, samples, populations, foci, agendas, which have dominated, or been left out from the prior research? This is the crucial component, and the aspect which differs totally from all prior essay writing you may have done.
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