Secondary literature:
- Looking and grouping studies- bringing your own interpretation into the evidence and knowledge gathered from sources
- Secondary literature = any form of academic writing about a topic that is not considered to be primary research
- What do you do with secondary literature? Review, synthesis, summary, critique, and analysis; being able to summarize what you are seeing and reading
- Trying to convince the reader we need their study
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3 phases of scholarly reading:
Gathering, Engaging, Deploying
Train your brain to looks for patterns in the material
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- Gathering sources should feel like a treasure hunt. You’re not doing deep reading at this point
- You’re pursuing keyword searches and combing through bibliographies for clues to follow and trails to trace
- During this phase trying only to determine the lay of the land — skimming and organizing the scholarly books and articles and the names of scholars we find, into categories we can use later
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Engaging:
- Once gathered main sources, interact with them closely and thoughtfully
- Choose from your broad bibliography the specific books and articles that offer you the most interesting, surprising, disquieting, puzzling information
- Looking at these sources and identifying those patterns
- seeking material dealing with emerging research questions, *do not skim
- goal is to read, highlight, and annotate only the sources most relevant to your focus
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Deploying:
Identify and retrieve crucial quotes, ideas, and points of view
make the insights of others available for your own future readers, to demonstrate how your work connects with the work of other scholars in your subfield and discipline
Use quotations sparingly; picking something that helps make your point and solidifies the argument
Identify and retrieve crucial quotes, ideas, and points of view
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What is a literature review:
- A literature review is a comprehensive overview of prior research regarding a specific topic
- shows the reader what is known about a topic, and what is not yet known
- It shares with the reader the results of other studies that are closely related to the study being reported
- filling in gaps and extending prior studies.
- It provides a framework for establishing the importance of the study
- The literature review is where you identify the theories and previous research which have influenced your choice of research topic and the methodology you are choosing to adopt; quantitative, qualitative, positivist
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Why are literature reviews crucial:
force a writer to educate him/herself on as much information as possible pertaining to the topic chosen
Literature reviews demonstrate to readers that the author has a firm understanding of the topic
By reviewing and reporting on all prior literature, weaknesses and shortcomings of prior literature will become more apparent
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What does a literature review include:
- Literature reviews include a comprehensive overview of a general topic
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What Various Foci Should a Literature Review Take:
- summarizing past research based on overall conclusions of the past research
- Methodological (highlighting different methodological approaches used in past research and the contributions of each type of research)
- By the end of the literature review, the reader should have a solid understanding of what is already known about the topic, what is not yet to be known, and therefore a good idea of what exactly the current study is going to examine, and why
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What types of sources are appropriate to use:
Scholarly empirical articles, dissertations, and books
Scholarly, nonempirical articles and essays
Textbooks, encyclopedias, and dictionaries;Trade journal articles
Certain nationally and internationally recognized “good” newsmagazines
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What is the Appropriate Way to End a Literature Review?
- it is at this point where the weaknesses in findings or the methodology of prior research are explicitly stated
- by understanding what the topic is, all of the relevant literature on the topic, any weaknesses in prior findings/methodology, and what this study is going to contribute to the further understanding of this topic
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