Educational Topic Literature Review
Assignment Description:
For this assignment you are asked to complete a small-scale literature review on an educational topic of your choice. You have already collected 5 educational journal articles on 2 different topics. Select the topic of your choice from the 2 and write a 4 -5 page literature review on the articles you’ve selected.
Steps to complete your small-scale literature review:
- Choose your topic.
- Formulate an inquiry question that specifically describes what would like to know about your educational topic.
- Find articles, read the abstracts and skim the articles to determine if they correspond well to your topic AND inquiry question (You have already completed this, go to the next step).
- Select at least 5 journal articles and photocopy them for your project (You have already completed this, go to the next step).
- Read your articles and begin to sort and classify them according to their findings.
- Organize your articles by sorting and classifying their findings in a meaningful way, always considering your original topic and inquiry question.
- Write an outline for your small-scale literature review.
- Write your review.
Educational Topic Literature Review
Outline for writing your small-scale literature review :
- Introduction
The introduction is used to establish the context of your review to the reader. To establish the context, it is important to do the following in this opening paragraph:
- Define the topic of your study and provide any background information that helps your reader to understand the topic.
- Explain your reason (perspective) for reviewing the literature on this topic.
- State your inquiry question for this review.
- Body
This section of your paper begins with an explanation of how you have organized your small-scale literature review and describes findings from articles that provide answers to your inquiry question. Before you begin this section, be sure that you have sorted your articles into different themes based on the articles’ findings (sometimes called results). After you sort your articles, it is important to give your sorted groups a descriptive name. The names of the sorted articles will become your headings for each of the paragraphs that you write in the body of your review. To write the body of your small-scale literature review, it is important to include the following:
Educational Topic Literature Review
- Write an introduction paragraph for the body of your review.
This paragraph tells the reader specific information on how many articles you reviewed and how you sorted the articles into common themes based on the findings (results).
- This will be a paragraph that describes the first theme that you identified and compare, contrast and/or connect the articles you’ve selected.
- This will be a paragraph that describes the second theme that you identified and compare, contrast and/or connect the articles you’ve selected.
- This will be a paragraph that describes the third theme that you identified and compare, contrast and/or connect the articles you’ve selected.
- Summary
Educational Topic Literature Review
This is the last paragraph of your small-scale literature review. In this paragraph, it is important to summarize the main findings from the articles that you reviewed and to point out the information that you found particularly important to know that answered the inquiry question that you established in the first paragraph of your review. Try to conclude your paper by connecting your inquiry question back to the context of the general topic of study.
- References
This is the last page of your review. It serves as a listing of all references that you mentioned in your paper. Please use APA style when completing this list.
Please use the resources at the link below to guide you in writing your small scale literature review.