WRITING A LITERATURE REVIEW

WRITING A LITERATURE REVIEW

Entering an academic conversation through writing a paper requires knowledge of the topic.

Acquiring this knowledge involves two fundamental processes:

• Reading published works on the topic.

• Forming a perspective on what one has read.

Academics demonstrate their knowledge of the published literature in a written literature review. The literature review demonstrates that “the writer has insightfully and critically surveyed relevant literature on his or her topic in order to convince an intended audience that this topic is worth addressing” (Clark, 2007, p. 105). In a literature review, the writer synthesizes a topic through his or her own perspective, a perspective that is formed after reading and analyzing the information and perspectives of relevant writers in the field.

To write informed reviews of the academic literature in your field, you must first spend considerable time reading that literature. Over time, reading a variety of sources will add to your knowledge of the field; these sources include books, journal articles, published studies, and other credible academic materials. This reading constitutes the majority of your time in graduate school, and your reading choices will help to form your individual identity as a scholar-practitioner.[unique_solution]

Placing the Literature Review in an Academic Conversation

Conducting a literature review allows you to identify your individual voice and stance on important topics within a field. Culminating in the writing of a dissertation, a graduate education is your official entry into the academic conversation that advances knowledge in a field.

The literature review establishes a context, history, and reason for your writing. The early placement of the literature review in the manuscript (appearing in the dissertation as Chapter 2) is important for the following reasons:

• It offers a critical look at existing research that is significant to your topic.
• It demonstrates your knowledge of the field.

• It justifies your study.

• It sets the context for your research.

• It defines which issues and authors are important and which are not.

Thus, the literature review defines you as a writer and scholar-practitioner in the field. In the literature review, you choose to include some sources while choosing not to include others. To an audience familiar with the research in your field, these choices offer much information about you as a scholar-practitioner.

• EXAMPLE: You are writing about educational theories. John Dewey serves as the foundational source for your literature review. You read two scholars who come after Dewey: Paolo Freire and Malcolm Knowles. You speak favorably about what Knowles adds to Dewey’s ideas, but you note several shortcomings in Freire’s assumptions. From those statements, readers in your field understand that you are aligned with the Knowles school of thought and not with the Freirian school of thought. Readers

WRITING A LITERATURE REVIEW

can also place what you value within the context of their own perspectives and within the larger issues of the field.

In academic writing, the primary audience situates new voices within an already existing conversation. An audience member will evaluate the sources you use in the context of his or her own established identity in the academic conversation. Just as you have your individual perspective on the topic, so will your audience.

Crafting the Literature Review

Know Your Goals

For a literature review to be accepted as a credible representation of your understanding of your field, it must accomplish several goals:

• Be organized around and related directly to research questions you are developing.
• Synthesize results into a summary of what is known and not known.

• Identify areas of controversy in the literature.

• Formulate questions that need further research.

Three tools help you craft a literature review that accomplishes all of these goals. Whether you are writing a short paper or a dissertation, these tools can assist you in synthesizing your readings, giving your readers a clear understanding of issues and scholars, and outlining your own stance.

Use Three Tools

Three basic tools will help you share your synthesis of the literature you read with your audience: defining terms, providing examples, and acknowledging critics.

Tool 1: Defining Terms

Definitions bolster your argument by making sure that you and the reader are starting on the same page and with the same definitions. Definitions can be a derived from multiple sources—from specialized dictionaries to reference books to seminal works in the field.

• EXAMPLE: Your topic is the color blue. In writing about the color, you might rely on a reputable art dictionary to define what blue means in terms of the color spectrum. You might also rely on a book of literary criticism to enhance that definition by looking at how the color blue has historically been used to symbolize courage in great Western literature, including Shakespeare. Combining these two definitions gives you a definition of your own for the color blue in the context of your specific topic—your unique argument.

When using key words and concepts from a field in your literature review, remember that over time, terms and concepts gather many meanings. Simply relying on a dictionary definition might not be enough to define a term for your audience, a group of academics in your field.

• EXAMPLE: The term unconscious has many meanings in the field of psychology. That term means different things to, say, Sigmund Freud than it does to those who came

WRITING A LITERATURE REVIEW

after him, like, for example, Jacques Lacan. Therefore, in a literature review about psychoanalytic theories for an academic audience, it will be important to talk about which scholar you follow, which definition of that term you agree with, and how you will apply that definition to your own theory.

You can also use definitions to define a concept or topic by what it is not.

For example, if you follow Lacan’s definition of the unconscious, you might want to include Freud’s definition to show where it differs from Lacan’s. You will also want to offer specific reasons to justify why those differences prompted you to side with Lacan’s definition.

Remember: Definitions can be used to define both what something is and what it is not.

Tool 2: Providing Examples

Examples bolster your argument by adding an extra level of explanation for the reader. Examples often serve to make a concept concrete for the reader. Imagine that you are trying to explain a method for teaching. After the key terms in the method are defined, take the next step: offering examples of the method at work.

EXAMPLES: Notice the “for example” patterns in the following familiar statements:

• Definitions can be a derived from multiple sources, from dictionaries to reference books to seminal works in a field. For example, if your topic is the color blue, you might rely on a reputable art dictionary to define what blue means in terms of the color spectrum.

• Simply relying on a dictionary definition might not be enough to define a term for your audience. For example, unconscious is a term that has many meanings in the field of psychology. That term means different things to, say, Sigmund Freud than it does to those who came after him, like, for example, Jacques Lacan.

• You can also use definitions to define a concept or topic by what it is not. For example, if you follow Lacan’s definition of the unconscious, you might want to include Freud’s definition to show where it differs from Lacan’s and why those differences don’t offer a definition that works within the context of your argument.

In these examples, a statement is made and then applied by the use of examples. Examples, either hypothetical or from the literature, bring your synthesis to life by offering real-life connections to your theories and interpretations. As a Capella University scholar-practitioner, connecting theory to practice underpins your educational journey, and examples are an excellent and primary method for making that theory-to-practice connection.

Remember: Examples can be used to enhance definitions and to give the reader another perspective on evaluative statements you are making.

Tool 3: Acknowledging Critics

Although many in your audience will agree with the position that your literature review takes on your topic, many will not. An important function of the literature review is to

WRITING A LITERATURE REVIEW

acknowledge the critics of your argument. To create an informed perspective about the literature of a field, you must read many perspectives about key issues and discussions within your field. In an academic conversation, a writer who has looked at all sides of the argument comes across as an informed and balanced speaker. Just as working to define something by what it is not is an effective tool, so too is presenting a position on a subject and including the perspectives and arguments that differ from that position.

• EXAMPLE: Many scholars in your field have conjectured that the sky is blue. You define blue in terms of meteorology and you give examples of what you mean by the color blue. During your research, you discover many speakers who say that the sky is not blue. Some of these speakers are not credible, so you discard those dissenting positions. But some of those speakers are credible. They are published in peer-reviewed journals, and they have many followers at universities across the country. Omitting those credible sources from your literature review creates a slanted perspective on the body of literature in the field; acknowledging those critics shows that you have considered all perspectives but that, for at least one reason, you have decided to reject those critics in favor of your chosen perspective.

Acknowledging the critics also offers you the chance to create new ways of thinking about your topic within your field.

• EXAMPLE: You want to address the way in which Scholar A and Scholar B use shape to discuss a concept. You note that Scholar A and those after him have conjectured that the term square is effective for describing a concept that encompasses four terms. You also acknowledge that Scholar B has conjectured that the term square, which implies that all four sides are equal in length, is too limiting and thus must be changed to the term quadrangle. Although you acknowledge the validity of Scholar B’s purpose in expanding the term, you also note that in the context of the concept being discussed, all angles in Scholar B’s conception are actually 90-degree angles.

Therefore, in spite of the difference in terms, both scholars are really talking about a similar concept. In essence, from your perspective, Scholar B supports Scholar A’s assertion but with a different definition of square, which perhaps you relabel as rectangle.

In this example, by noting the other side of the argument, you have discovered a new understanding of the concept addressed by both Scholar A and Scholar B. Even though acknowledging the critics shows a depth of exposure to the literature of the field, in this case it has also led to an interpretation not yet published in your field, thus filling a gap, as well as boosting your credibility as a new voice entering the field.

Apply the Tools

Your literature review is not a summary but rather a synthesis of the literature in your field. You express this synthesis by defining terms, providing examples, and acknowledging critics. Your synthesis becomes a persuasive argument that creates the context in which your readers will understand your research.

Now that you have explored the tools, you are ready to apply them to a literature review in your field. Using a sample literature review, one you have chosen or one you have been assigned, locate the author’s definitions, examples, and acknowledgment of critics. Make

WRITING A LITERATURE REVIEW

notes in the margins to mark places the author has used these three tools. You may also want to highlight each tool in a different color, such as definitions in blue, examples in green, and acknowledging critics in red.

Once you’ve completed this process, ask yourself the following questions about the tools:

Definitions

• Which definitions worked well? Why?
• Which definitions could have worked better? How?

• Which definitions convinced you because they came from credible sources? Why?

• Which definitions did not convince you due to lack of credibility of the source? Why?

Examples

• Which examples worked well? Why?
• Which examples could have worked better? How?

• Which examples convinced you because they came from credible sources? Why?

• Which examples did not convince you due to lack of credibility of the source? Why?

Acknowledging Critics

• Which acknowledgment of critics worked well? Why?

• Which acknowledgment of critics could have worked better? How?

• Which acknowledgment of critics convinced you because it came from credible sources? Why?
• Which acknowledgments of critics did not convince you due to lack of credibility of the source? Why?

As you identify and question the effectiveness of all three tools, work to find methods that you might want to use in your own literature reviews. Do you see methods of incorporating these tools that you’d like to model in your own review? Note what you like and what you don’t like in these examples. You can often learn as much about your own writing process by charting what you don’t like as you can learn by charting what you like.