Critical thinking is the heart of good academic writing and hence also intrinsic to the literature review.
The Literature Review or Course Paper (COUN)
Overview
Introduction
We’ll continue with our review of scholarly communication by focusing attention on the course paper, which is, strictly speaking, a literature review. All scholarly works, including:
· Course papers
· Comprehensive examinations
· Dissertations
contain some form of literature review for their particular topics.
In this presentation, we will examine:
· The development of the key challenge in a course paper.
· The central role of the key challenge in forming your literature review and your paper as a whole.
Of course, everything we say about your selected course paper literature review applies to the literature review, for the comprehensive examination answers, and the dissertation. Let’s begin with some definitions.
What is a Literature Review?
Aristotle thought that it was important in defining objects to say what they are not to help define what they are. Let’s look at what literature reviews are not.
Literature reviews are not reports. Reports are listings of facts about some central object (topic). A report would tell you about the object or subject of interest. Reports are organized around the information. Academic reports, generally speaking, are not primarily about drawing conclusions as a good academic paper should be. Instead, reports disseminate information without interpreting the information.
Literature reviews are purposeful writing. The purpose may vary, but generally the purpose will be a mixture of the following parts.
· Any well-written academic paper should have a point, the key challenge that you are trying to prove or argue.
· Good academic writing often presents all considered sides of an issue; Consider how this is unlike political or opinion polls. After this balanced presentation, the literature review will draw a conclusion or conclusions based upon the evidence and it will defend that position(s). This process would demand any or all of the following:
a. Analysis
b. Synthesis
c. Evaluation
· Critical thinking is the heart of good academic writing and hence also intrinsic to the literature review.
Literature reviews are meant to accomplish three very specific goals:
· To identify and describe existing research that focuses on your topic. (Notice the two levels of critical thinking called for by this goal: identify and describe, both low levels.) This will include research or theory that supports your own main idea. To strengthen your argument, utilize research and theory that contradicts, disagrees, or conflicts with your main idea. This is where the balance comes from.
· To analyze and then to evaluate how the selected literature addresses the key challenge. (Note the two levels of critical analysis called for: analyze and evaluate.) Some literature will support and further the resolution of the key challenge; other literature will not.
· Finally, to draw conclusions about resolving the key challenge based on the literature reported and reviewed.
We’ll return to these goals later. Let’s look at the basic structure of a literature review.
Basic Elements of Scholarly Communications
You’ll recall, from the previous Presentation, that all writing is structured around three basic elements:
· An Introduction
· A Main Body
· A Conclusion
The table presented earlier illustrated how these elements function regardless of the scope of the writing. Let’s look again as a refresher.
Table 1. Elements of Writing by Scale of Assignment
Paragraph
Discussion Response
Literature Review/ Final Project
Comps Question
Dissertation
Introduction
1 sentence
1 paragraph
1–2 paragraphs
1–2 paragraphs
Chapter 1
Body
2 sentences
2 paragraphs
8–10 pages
12–16 pages
Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4
Conclusion
1 sentence
1 paragraph
1–2 paragraphs
1–2 paragraphs
Chapter 5
As you can see in the fourth column, the literature review or course project is longer than a discussion response, but they share the same structure:
1. Introduction — Tell them what you’ll tell them!
2. Main Body — Tell them!
3. Conclusion — Tell them what you told them! (For the conclusion, the number of pages may be stipulated in the assignment.)
In course papers:
· The literature review is the heart of the course paper.
· The literature review is integrated into the main body of course papers.
· The Literature Review in Course Papers form (including extensive directions for constructing high quality literature reviews) is in the Resources section of this Courseroom. Use this guidance when you construct your individual literature reviews.
Literature reviews always attempt to address and resolve a key challenge. Let’s look more closely at what that is.
Key Challenge
Identifying the Key Challenge
Each course paper should be built around a key challenge that
· answers a single question ,
· argues a single thesis , or
· solves a particular problem .
Using a course final project as our example, let’s identify the key challenge. The assignment reads like this:
For your course project, you will integrate your selected theoretical framework with your research topic. This will include demonstrating how your selected school of thought aligns with your research topic, as well as how your research topic contributes to the knowledge base.
1. Study how the assignment is written; using the skills you developed previously.
2. Find the content issues. Write them down in a list.
3. Then find the levels of critical thinking, and write them down as well.
4. What are you challenged to do in the assignment?
5. Take some time to reflect on the assignment. Then write down in one sentence what the key challenge of this assignment is.
Did you write that the key challenge is:
1. “To demonstrate how your selected theoretical framework aligns with your research topic?”
2. “To show how your research topic contributes to the knowledge base?”
3. “To integrate your selected theoretical framework with your research topic?”
Feedback for answer 1: That’s part of it, but it is not the key challenge. Notice how that clause starts with the word “including.” So this element is included in the key challenge, but that means it cannot be the key challenge itself.
Feedback for answer 2: Well, in that case you’re again partly right, but you missed the key challenge. This element is opened with the words “as well as,” which like “including,” indicates a subordinate role for the clause. It is included in the key challenge, but it is not the key challenge itself.
Feedback for answer 3: Good for you! That’s it. Integrating your theoretical framework with your research topic includes a number of things, two of which are spelled out for you.
An Example of Writing the Key Challenge for This Course Paper
You can phrase the key challenge in one of three ways. By way of example, suppose a learner is interested in social-cognitive theory. Suppose further that she is very interested in doing her dissertation on caseworkers who suffer burnout while working with alcoholics, and she has come up with the following research topic statement:
Caseworkers’ burnout in alcohol treatment programs.
Recall that a key challenge:
· answers a single question,
· argues a single thesis, or
· solves a particular problem.
The key challenge only does one of these three things.
She can phrase her key challenge, then, in one of three ways — and only in one:
· As a question to be answered: She will answer the question “What constructs of social cognitive theory can provide an understanding of caseworkers’ burnout while working with alcoholics?”
· As a thesis to be argued: She will argue the following thesis: “The construct of social cognitive theory, self-efficacy, provides an understanding of the mechanisms of a caseworkers’ burnout while treating alcoholics.”
· Or as a problem to be solved: She will contribute to solving the problem of therapist burnout by asking, “How can the principles of social-cognitive theory be used to reduce burnout in caseworkers working with alcoholics?”
In your introduction to the literature review (course paper), you will repeat the original assignment and then identify what key challenge you have identified for the paper. There are other points to cover in the introduction, but we’ll get to that later.
Before you move on, let’s have some more practice in how to identify the key challenge. Here is another course project assignment from a different course. Read it and reflect on the key challenge in this one.
Practice Sample Assignment:
This course provides a solid grounding in practice theory, and the purpose of the course project is to further explore and understand the many connections a theory has to your field on a practical level. For the course project, you will write a 15-page paper analyzing a chosen practice theory and its relationship to your Scholarly field. The project will consist of a detailed analysis of a practice theory of your choice. Course readings provide several theories from which to choose. In this analysis, you will connect your chosen theory to a discipline or field of practice.
To complete this project, you will be expected to:
1. Analyze a practice theory, including its assumptions, scope, and main intervention strategies.
2. Evaluate the processes of how a theory is generated, validated, and incorporated into a discipline.
3. Describe the bodies of knowledge used to derive a theory’s interventions.
4. Compare the assumptions of a practice theory with those of its underlying philosophical paradigm.
How many key challenges does this assignment offer?
1. One key challenge.
2. Two key challenges.
Feedback for answer 1:
· If you found one key challenge, notice that there are four specific expectations. Now within those four, it’s possible to see some similarities. For instance, number 1 and number 4 could be a single key challenge: To analyze the theory, including its assumptions, and then to compare its assumptions with…
