The benefit and the drawback of education /traditional research literature review paper

Final Paper Assignment

Instead of the traditional research literature review paper, you will do a summary & analysis/synthesis of journal articles/book chapters.
• Develop a statement of inquiry (e.g., what you are interested in and why)
• Find 8 or more journal articles/book chapters, 4 of which must be primary.
• For each article, 1) develop a brief summary which helps you understand and remember the info and 2) write a critique and/or reflection on how it relates to interest.
• As a conclusion, write up a brief analysis/synthesis of all the articles as a whole specifically related to your statement of inquiry (e.g., what you learned and how that could help you as a teacher, principal, counselor, parent, concerned adult).

The purposes of this assignment are for you to 1) gain experience in critiquing the literature; 2) learn more about a specific topic of human development that interests you; and perhaps 3) help you with your final project for your masters’ degree.

Most empirical (primary) research articles have six parts (excluding an appendices or figures) that will help you to identify them: (1) an abstract, (2) an introduction section that serves as a literature review of the topic, (3) a methods section that describes what the researcher(s) did, (4) a results section, (5) a conclusion section, and (6) a list of references. The APA manual also has a listing of these segments and a more detailed description of each. Many secondary research articles have some of the above sections but typically not 3) methods nor 4) results sections. If you are not familiar with the differences between empirical/primary and secondary sources, please let me know and I can help you learn more about this.

Typically chapters are NOT empirical (primary) but the occasional one could be. Magazine articles and websites can NOT be used.

Parts to the final paper that you MUST include:

Intro:
Brief statement of inquiry (e.g., what you are interested in and why).

References in APA format:
This can either start each individual article or it can be as a reference page at the end.

For each article/book chapter:
1. Statement of what type of article you think it is (and why):
a. Empirical (primary) — data-based, author(s) collected data themselves
i) Qualitative, Quantitative, or Mixed
b. Secondary
i) literature review, meta-analysis, application (translation of research into classroom or other settings)
ii) theoretical or opinion paper
c. other type
2. Summary of the main points relating to your topic (see below for more details)
a. This should be the important elements that YOU need to understand and remember about this article. However, there are some standard details that you will need to include, depending on type of article (see more info below)
b. It should be in a format that will be easy for you to skim/reread later when you want to refresh your memory about these articles. So, I highly suggest bullets and phrases instead of full sentences and paragraphs.
c. It should NOT include anything that is NOT relevant to your topic. For instance, if your topic is about high schoolers and the article deals with elementary and high school, you only need to report the information related to high school. So, many times it isn’t a true summary of the whole article

Summary for Empirical/Primary sources: Brief description of the article, including some or all of the following (bold are most important):
(1) Hypotheses/purposes for the study
(2) participants — how many, who, what grade/age, how did they recruit them?
(3) methodology — what did they do, design of their study
(4) data analysis — many times the actual stats used isn’t important
(5) data results/findings — these are typically the most important elements
(6) Discussion/conclusions — the authors’ (your own will be under critique or final analysis)

Summary for Secondary sources: Brief description of the article, including some or all of the following (bold are most important):
(1) purposes for article
(2) methodology, — if applicable (e.g., meta analysis)
(3) data analysis — same as for Primary sources
(4) data results/findings — same as for Primary sources
(5) Application to specific settings, — if applicable (e.g., application) — what setting, advice/tips
(6) Discussion/conclusions — the authors’ (your own will be under critique or final analysis)

3. Your own Analysis/Critique
ii) flaws — what are they, why are they flaws, how could they be corrected?
iii) (potential) strengths — what are they, why are they strengths?

Conclusion:
For all articles in combination, analyze and synthesize of all the articles/chapters and their relationship to your topic. Potential questions you could answer:
• What are the similarities/differences among the information in these articles/chapters?
• Are there any major flaws in this research?
• How does the information in these articles/chapters help you as a teacher/principal/counselor or parent/concerned adult (i.e., how can you apply it in your own life)?

Parts to the final paper that you MIGHT include:

1. Interesting Quotes (denote p. #). If you do not paraphrase, make sure you use “quotation marks” and (p.#). Not doing so is the easiest accidental way to plagiarize and it is frustrating to try and find a quote later so denoting (page #) is time-effective here.
2. Potential Relationship to a) other articles you are reading, b) your final project; and/or c) your life as a teacher/parent/coach
3. Anything else that might be important

Comments (some relate more to one or the other of the options and some to both):
• Please feel free to show me the abstract of the articles or the articles themselves and discuss their relevancy to your topic and whether they are empirical/primary or secondary sources.
• In my experience, the majority of time and effort (and frustration) will be in figuring out the exact topic, locating appropriate articles, discarding inappropriate articles and reading these articles rather than in writing the paper. If you are having a hard time with any of these, please ask me for help. Depending on your topic, I might know who is doing research in that area or other ways to help you find information.
• Many of the articles that you will find will be written for people who are already knowledgeable in that topic and/or statistics; therefore, you might have difficulty understanding them. If so, please ask me and I can attempt to help you decipher these articles.
• Honestly, please feel free to ask me about anything related to this paper. I truly would rather spend time discussing this paper with you before you turn it in then equal or more time reading a ‘bad’ paper.
• I have suggestions for a timeline which I highly recommend that you attempt to keep to. As mentioned above, a lot of time/effort will be needed to be done in organizing and finding the articles; therefore, the earlier you start it the better. Also, the earlier you start it, the easier it will be for me to help you.
• If you haven’t done a literature search via ‘good’ search engines (e.g., ERIC, PsychLit — Not Ebsco, google), please contact me so I can help you learn about this important search engines.