Introduction

The following ideas have been picked from a number of different articles on the Internet about how to write a literature view and have been supplemented by some ideas of my own.  Examples of Internet sites are:

1) www.languages.ait.acc.th/EL21LIT.HTM

2) www.d.umn.edu/-hrallis/guides/researching/litreview.html

3) www.languages.ait.ac.th/wur/content/htm

4)    www.deakin.edu.au/library/findout/research/litrev/php )

The ideas are offered for discussion and selection as appropriate to your situation.

What is the literature?

The “literature” means the resources you consulted in order to understand and investigate your research problem.  This could be: books, research articles and papers from any country in the world, previous educational research projects in Mongolia,  research information from the Internet – indeed material from any source that helps people to understand your research issue and your research question better.  You might like to think of the authors of these works as “distant colleagues” who are interested in the same issues as you.

Why write a review of the literature?

Generally, the purpose of a review is to analyze critically a segment of a published body of knowledge through summary, classification and comparison of prior research studies, reviews of the literature that have been done before and theoretical articles.  The literature review is a critical look at the existing research or thinking that is significant to the work that you are carrying out.  Some people believe that all you need to do is simply summarize the main points of each resource.  This is not true.  Although you do need to summarize researchers’ or other people’s thinking/work, it is also vital that you evaluate this work, show the relationships between different works and show how it relates to your work.   In other words, it is not enough to give a concise description of, for example, an article: you need to select parts of the article (e.g. research methodology; questions raised in a meeting about certain issues) and show how it/they relate to other work.  (E.g. what other methodologies do you know about that have been used elsewhere?  Are they similar or different from the one described in the article?  How does the work described in the article relate to your methodology?) In this way, you are looking at other people’s work and your own work with a “critical” eye – that is, from a comparative and evaluative stance.  Keep in mind that the literature review should provide the context for your research by looking at what other people have been thinking about in your research area.  (The dates in brackets shown below (e.g. Cassey 2001) refer to the year in which the book or article was published. )

Beginning the literature review

Define or identify the research issue or area of concern, thus providing an appropriate context for reviewing the literature.  Why is the research issue important?   The introduction should provide an outline of overall trends in the prior research as well as some of the major conflicts and gaps in research that you would like to highlight.  This section of the review should delineate the area and be fairly brief.   (If appropriate, state why certain literature is or is not included.)

Writing the body of the literature review

Having written a general outline in the introduction, you are now ready to review individual pieces of research, to compare and evaluate them, to set out the explanations and justifications for why they are important and how they shed light on your research.

Here are some questions that this section of the review could try to answer?

1. What do we know as a result of a given piece of research? Broadly speaking, what are the conflicts and what are some of the major new perspectives offered?
2. What are the characteristics of the key concepts or the main factors or variables in the resource you are looking at?
3. What are the relationships between these key concepts, factors or variables and the work of other people?  How are they the same or different?  If certain things are the same, what does this suggest?  If certain things are different, what might explain these differences?
4. What might explain historical and current trends? Can these trends be justified in terms of generally held values for education or your own personal values?
5. Where are the inconsistencies or other shortcomings in our knowledge and understanding?
6. What views need to be (further) tested?
7. What evidence is lacking, inconclusive, contradictory or too limited?
8. Why study (further) this research problem?  What is it important?  What are the implications of various lines of thinking?
9. What contribution can the present study be expected to make?  (Every contribution, no matter how small, is a valuable contribution if it is valid and reliable.)  Can you point the way forward for further research?
10. If there has been enough research done in the area you are researching, you might like to comment on:  what research designs or methods seem the most or least satisfactory and how would you explain and justify this?

Overall, you are trying to show the existing theories?  What have people said in the past?  What new theories are emerging now?   Which researchers, groups or individuals support which theories or positions?  What are their arguments and how do they justify these? Which (teacher) researchers’ ideas seem the most persuasive and why?   Can certain theories or ideas be interpreted differently now, given the passage of time, hind-sight, political and social developments, etc?

Writing the conclusion to the literature review

Summarize the major contributions of the prior research, maintaining the focus that was established in the introduction.  It should evaluate the current “state of knowledge” in relation to this research issue.  It should also provide some insight into what the writer thinks would be fruitful for future avenues of research in the area.

Bibliography

Write down references for the bibliography as you go along: otherwise, when you come to write a list of references at the end of your dissertation, it will be a very difficult job!

How can I write a good literature review?

Remember the purpose: Your aim should be to show why your research needs to be carried out, how you came to choose your methodology/methodologies or theories to work with, how your work adds to the research already carried out.

Read with a purpose: emphasise other people’s ideas or information that is important to your research.  Refer briefly to less important ideas and leave irrelevant information out of your review.  You should also look for the major concepts, conclusions, theories, arguments, etc., that underlie the work and look for similarities and differences between pieces of related work.

Write with a purpose|: Your aim should be to evaluate and show relationships between the work already done. (For example: Is Mrs Y’s theory more convincing than Mr X’s?  Did Mr X build on the work of Mrs Y?) You also need to show the relationships between these works and your own.

Try to:

Group information:   For example, “Steudell (1992), Grasso (1992) and Tanchoco (1993) have studied various aspects of this issue.”

Show the relationship between the work of different researchers, showing similarities and differences: For example, “The general thinking in X document is similar to that reported by Rosenblatt (1994) and Roll (1995).  However, the findings of Rosenblatt (1994) show higher levels of school drop out.  This might be explained by the fact that Rosenblatt was only studying one aimag, far from Ulaanbataar, whereas Roll was studying 2 aimags close to the capital, where the influences on X are different.  Alternatively, the difference might be explained by…….”

Indicate the position of the work in the history of the research area: For example, “Early work by Roll shows….. but he later came to the conclusion that …… (Roll 1997; Roll 1999).”  Or “Nineteenth century work in Russia (or China, or Kazakhstan, or the UK, or Canada) focused on….. whereas in Mongolia X, Y and Z were the main issues.  During the last 50 years, educators in Mongolia have gradually been raising questions about P, Q, and R and investigated A and B issues.”

Move from a general discussion of the research to a more specific area:   For example,   “The general results reported by Cassey (2001) concerning the importance of the relationship between teacher and student are similar to those reported by James (2002).  Interestingly, they both highlight that this well-balanced relationship between teacher and student is crucial for engaging in interactive teaching/ learning situations.  According to their research, it would seem that certain interactive teaching approaches help students develop understandings that can be applied flexibly in a variety of different situations.  These strategies are……”

Be evaluative: (Following on from above: “ These strategies are ……..    Last year,  X technique has been tried in (the name of your school) and we found that……   This brings into question whether X really does work and whether it would not be better to try Y.  The crucial issue here seems to be ….Z and thus it would be important to carry out some research in the classroom, taking Z into account.”

Note:  Make sure that you organize your writing round ideas not researchers.

Avoid plagiarism: always acknowledge sources: If you use someone else’s ideas, even if you paraphrase them, you must cite the source.  This includes the work of colleagues as well as published sources.