GUIDE TO PREPARING A LITERATURE REVIEW

WHAT IS A LITERATURE REVIEW? A literature review is a narrative style found in scholarly writing. It is easily recognized by its use of references or citations. These may be inserted as parenthetical notations (author, year) or as numbers in the text. In either case, they refer to the sources from which the writer obtained the ideas in the immediately preceding statement. WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF A LITERATURE REVIEW? A well-written literature review is a hallmark of good scholarship in any discipline. A literature review tells the reader that the writer has a solid understanding of the topic under discussion. The actual purpose of the literature review depends somewhat on the overall purpose of the written work in which it appears. For example: In a standard textbook that surveys a discipline or subdiscipline, most of the narrative is in the form of a literature review. Journal articles that review the state of knowledge in a particular area take a similar form. I used an article like this as a supplementary reading in my Spring 2004 Introduction to Sociology Class. Here is the citation for that article: Mintz, Sidney W. and Christine M. DuBois (2002). The Anthropology of Food and Eating. Annual Review of Anthropology 31:99-119. In a theoretical article, the writer will use a literature review format to discuss the ways that different theorists approached a problem or idea. In this context, a literature review is often organized as a series of arguments between theorists, with the writer placing his/her own positions in the discussions. I encountered a lot of articles like this when I was writing my doctoral dissertation. Here is the citation for one of these: Lehman, Edward W. 1988. "The Theory of the State versus the State of Theory." American Sociological Review 53:807-823. The literature review is a standard component of any article that reports on original empirical research. In this kind of article, the literature review may provide information on the topic, on the theoretical explanations related to the topic, and/or on the ways that other researchers have studied the topic. The writer often uses it to show why his/her approach represents an original contribution or an advancement over previous work. An example that I have used in classes is this: Richman, E. L. and D.R. Shaffer (2000). If You Let Me Play Sports: How Might Sport Participation Influence the Self-Esteem of Adolescent Females? Psychology of Women Quarterly 24, 189-199. In a policy article, the literature review is often called a background section, and provides a way for the writer to provide a concise overview of the policy issue he or she is examining. Since most policy papers are intended to persuade the reader to adopt a position on the issue, this literature review may be selective in its choices of reference material or may use biased language to sway the reader to the desired position. A good example of this might be: Maine Center for Economic Policy. 2003. Reforming School Funding. Maine Center for Economic Policy, Augusta.

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WHAT ARE THE CHARACTERISTICS OF A LITERATURE REVIEW? Like any other form of scholarly writing, a good literature review follows certain conventions. Most of these are not specific to the discipline of sociology, although you might see some variations across literature reviews in the social sciences, natural sciences, and humanities. Among the characteristics you should expect to see (and to use) in any literature review are these: Any paper with a literature review MUST have a bibliography or reference section. ANY references you cite in the literature review MUST be included in the bibliography. The common practice is that the writer does not list references in the bibliography that are not directly cited in the literature review or elsewhere in the paper. A literature review is organized by subtopic, NOT by individual reference. In a typical literature review, the writer may cite several references in the same paragraph and may cite the same reference in more than one paragraph, if that source addresses more than one of the subtopics in the literature review. Typically, discussion of each source is quite brief. The contribution the present writer makes is organizing the ideas from the sources into a cogent argument or narrative that includes his/her perspectives. The writer should focus on citing the material that ORIGINATES with each reference. This may require a careful reading of the reference. If the reference author refers to another source whose ideas are relevant or interesting, you are better off tracking down and using THAT reference. Please see my Guide to Referencing for more information about this practice. WHAT ARE SOME STRATEGIES FOR WRITING A GOOD LITERATURE REVIEW? The process of writing a literature review typically involves a number of steps. These should include the following: Deciding on a relatively focused topic or question; Searching for relevant and relatively current literature (books, journal articles, newspaper articles, websites---the mix of these depends on your topic or question); Reading the materials you have found and noting how they approach your topic or question; Preparing a working outline for your literature review and grouping notes from your references in the appropriate section of your outline; Writing and revising the narrative; and Assembling a bibliography to correspond to your citations. If this sounds like it might be time consuming, youre right! It is. But it gets easier with practice. WHAT DOES A LITERATURE REVIEW LOOK LIKE? Below is part of a literature review from a paper I wrote in 2003. This is primarily a policy paper. History of peer review as a practice in post-secondary education While references to peer review of teaching appear in journal articles as early as the late 1940s (Batista, 1976), the first significant activity around this practice appeared in 1994. In January 1994, the American Association of Higher Education began a major peer review of teaching demonstration project aimed at developing, demonstrating, and disseminating best practices

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(Hutchings, 1994). The project received financial support from The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and the Pew Charitable Trusts. Individual academic departments at twelve campuses (a mix of public and private) participated in the project. The leaders of this project were Lee S. Shulman, then a professor of education at Stanford (now President of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching); Russell Edgerton, formerly President of AAHE and now director of the Pew Forum on Undergraduate Learning; Pat Hutchings, affiliated with AAHE and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching; and Kathleen Quinlan, then a Stanford graduate student (Marincovich, 1998). Not surprisingly, many of these individuals are also key writers on the subject of peer review of teaching. During 1994, we also find the first references to state legislatures and related governance bodies imposing peer review of teaching as a requirement for promotion and tenure in public universities. In that year, for example, the North Carolina General Assembly instituted a requirement that peer observation of classroom teaching be used as part of the promotion and tenure process for untenured, tenure track faculty at state campuses (Yon, et al., 2002). During the same period, the University of Wisconsin Regents mandated post-tenure review with a peer review of teaching component (Taylor, 1999). Arguments for and against peer review of teaching These authors and others refer to legislative mandates as one argument in favor of peer review of teaching. The logic of this perspective is that we must regulate ourselves or expect some else to attempt to regulate us. A number of other authors, including some of those involved with the AAHE project, offer arguments in favor of peer review of teaching that are considerably more appealing. Building on Boyers reference to the scholarship of teaching, Hutchings (1996b) notes the comparability of teaching and research and suggests that peer review of the former could serve to elevate its status as a discipline in its own right. In related publications, Chism and Hutchings (Chism, 1999; Hutchings, 1996a) argue that structured reflection and inquiry about teaching can facilitate increased understanding (and improvement) of the process of teaching and learning. Hutchings (1996b) further comments that we dont learn to teach on our own---we learn to teach through a professional socialization process that includes imitation, mentoring, and responding to feedback from students. This is especially important because many faculty in postsecondary institutions have training in their disciplines but not in the art of teaching per se. Elsewhere, Hutchings states that we need to make our teaching much more public than it is, thus increasing the possibility for imitation and mentoring to occur (Hutchings, 1996a). Another argument favoring peer review of teaching notes that students arent qualified to assess all aspects of our teaching. Some authors have conducted studies that demonstrate limitations in the validity of the instruments commonly used to elicit evaluative information from students (Hobson and Talbot, 2001; Shevlin, et al., 2000). Others have shown that neither students nor faculty find these instruments entirely satisfactory in format or in their effect on teaching practice (Sojka, et al., 2002). Malik (1996) observes that students cant assess disciplinary competence, currency of materials, or relevance to related disciplines. At least two authors have commented specifically in favor of the use of peers or colleagues in review of teaching. According to French-Lazovik (1981) peers are best qualified to judge teaching because of disciplinary knowledge and training in collecting and evaluating evidence. Her argument refers back to the as yet underdeveloped connection between teaching and research. Keig and Waggoner (1994) argue that peer review is needed precisely because there

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are no set criteria for evaluating teaching excellence---thus an informed observer is necessary to interpret the data. Arguments against peer review of teaching are not absent from the literature. Even the staunchest advocates for the practice agree that it is time consuming. Some authors point to the considerable ambiguity of the classroom observation instruments developed by departments (Cohen and McKeachie, 1980; Yon et al., 2002). Strenski (1995) suggests that faculty members are unlikely to make critical comments about peers performance. This is especially the case when the review has a summative as well as a formative purpose. Cohen and McKeachie (1980) also note a persistent lack of empirical evidence supporting use of peer review of teaching. More than twenty years later, I was also unable to ferret out articles based on empirical studies of the impact of peer review on teaching practice or student learning outcomes. References for Sample Literature Review Batista, Enrique E. 1976. "The Place of Colleague Evaluation in the Appraisal of College Teaching: A Review of the Literature." Research in Higher Education 4:257-271. Chism, Nancy Van Note. 1999. Peer Review of Teaching: A Sourcebook. Bolton, MA: Anker Publishing. Cohen, Peter A. and Wilbert J. McKeachie. 1980. "The Role of Colleagues in the Evaluation of College Teaching." Improving College and University Teaching 28:147-154. French-Lazovik, Grace. 1981. "Peer Review: Documentary Evidence in the Evaluation of Teaching." Pp. 73-89 in Handbook of Teacher Evaluation, edited by J. Millman. Beverly Hills: Sage Publications. Hobson, Suzanne M. and Donna M. Talbot. 2001. "Understanding Student Evaluations: What All Faculty Should Know." College Teaching 49:26-31. Hutchings, Pat. 1994. "Peer Review of Teaching: From Idea to Prototype." AAHE Buletin 47:37. . 1996a. Making Teaching Community Property: A Menu for Peer Collaboration and Peer Review. Washington, DC: American Association for Higher Education. . 1996b. "The Peer Review of Teaching: Progress, Issues and Prospects." Innovative Higher Education 20:221-234. Keig, Larry and Michael D. Waggoner. 1994. "Collaborative Peer Review: The Role of Faculty in Improving College Teaching." Washington, DC: Office of Educational Research and Improvement, U.S. Department of Education. Malik, David J. 1996. "Peer Review of Teaching: External Review of Course Content." Innovative Higher Education 20:277-286. Marincovich, Michele. 1998. "Ending the Disconnect Between the Student Evaluation of Teaching and the Improvement of Teaching: A Faculty Developer's Plea." Stanford University, Stanford.

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Shevlin, Mark, Philip Banyard, Mark Davies, and Mark Griffiths. 2000. "The Validity of Student Evaluation of Teaching in Higher Education: love me, love my lectures?" Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education 25:397-405. Sojka, Jane, Ashok K. Gupta, and Dawn R. Deeter-Schmelz. 2002. "Student and Faculty Perceptions of Student Evaluations of Teaching: A Study of Similarities and Differences." College Teaching 50:44-49. Strenski, Ellen. 1995. "Two Cheers for Peer Review: Problems of Definition, Interpretation and Appropriate Function." Excellence in College Teaching 6:31-49. Taylor, James W. 1999. "Lessons Learned About Post-tenure Review from the AAHE Peer Review of Teaching Project." Innovative Higher Education 24:73-80. Yon, Maria, Charles Burnap, and Gary Kohut. 2002. "Evidence of Effective Teaching: Perceptions of Peer Reviewers." College Teaching 50:104-110.

WHAT CAN YOU DO TO IMPROVE YOUR LITERATURE REVIEWS?

I can think of several ways that you can improve your literature reviews: Follow these guidelines. Write literature reviews whenever you get a chance. Critically read other peoples literature reviews. Read about writing literature reviews. A book I found useful is Hart, Chris. 1998. Doing a Literature Review. London: Sage Publications. Choose related research topics when you have papers to write for different classes, so you start to become familiar with certain writers and researchers. Save the articles you obtain for literature reviews and use them again. This means you should store them in a way that facilitates easy access---a file box or drawer is a good place. Consider filing them alphabetically by primary authors last name. Write yourself notes on the articles you use for the literature reviews. You can do this on the hard copy of the article or on separate sheets or electronic files (as long as you remember where you keep the notes). Seriously consider investing in EndNote bibliographic database software. Its available to USM students for a very good price at the Bookstore and is well worth the investment of money and the time you spend entering the information about the articles in your files. With EndNote, you can conduct key word searches of your collection of articles and easily construct bibliographies for all your papers---using whatever style your professor prefers!

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