Week 6 (Feb. 27, 07) Literature Review (I)

Agenda for Today Hot Topics debate (30 mins) Conference in groups on draft#1: Learn from peers and support peers (40 mins). Process readings for literature review (20 mins) + Literature Review Draft # Learn from peers of previous classes (15 mins) APA style (10 mins) & course website (5). For next week: sign up meeting time with instructor (10).

Sharing life  A not-so-good moment  Weirdness of life - an idea, a feeling, an incident that you feel is hard to understand about your school, kids, classroom, life in general…  Your teaching, classroom? Anything that we can discuss and give suggestions?  Anything else

Agenda I Hot Topic Debate Hot Topic 3: Do High-Stakes Assessments Improve Learning? Discussion Leaders: Julie Bennett Rachel Storti Paula Harns Kathy McGowan

Agenda II Draft #1 Group Conference

Learn from peers and support peers  Form a group of 3/4 people.  Read two/three of your peers’ drafts carefully. Provide written comment including, but do not necessarily limit your comments to, the following points:  Give comment to each of your group member’s writing. In the comment, please include the following: What have you learned from reading your peer’s project (List one or two strong points – aspects that impressed you the most; things that you didn’t expect/know before). Weak points of the project? Suggestions to improve: provide at least one suggestion – and try to give as many as you can to help improve the project.

Agenda III Process the readings for literature review

The Rule of Thumb of a lit rev  Develop a coherent essay Rather than  Producing a series of connected summaries (or annotations)!

What is a Literature Review?  ‘to know what others have discovered before they begin investigations of their own’ (Cuba, 1988: 25).

Steps for literature review  Selecting a topic;  Reading and evaluating the relevant research articles;  Synthesizing and organizing your notes to identify patterns, relationships among studies, gaps in the body of the literature, and Strengths and weaknesses in particular studies.  Reorganize your notes and develop a detailed writing outline  Writing, revising, and redrafting your paper  Editing for correctness and adherence to the required style manual (APA style).

Some guidelines  How many articles to read?  How many to cite: at least 12  Be highly selective in identifying and citing references: usually, only select those that are most important/relevant and most current;  If there is too much research on your topic, perhaps you need to narrow down your topic, or identify delimiters such as review only recent articles;  If there isn’t enough research on the topic, perhaps you need to broaden your topic or investigate additional sources your literature search didn’t identify.

Structure of a literature review  Introductory section Which will include an overview of what will be covered in the rest of the document  Body – use subheadings  Conclusion/closure of some kind

Agenda IV Learn from peers of previous classes

Group work  Focus on Introduction Section and Literature Review Section  What are the strong points and what are the weak points?  Look through the structure of the whole proposal

Agenda IV APA Style

For Next Week  Sign up individual meeting time with instructor.  You can choose to meet with me individually or in pairs/groups (that might have similar research interest/questions/concerns)

Writing Lit Rev  The Literature Review: A few tips on conducting it:  A literature Review for an investigative report: ection1/one2.htm ection1/one2.htm  Why are lit rev often called “critical reviews”: ection2/two3.htm ection2/two3.htm