Over the past ten days I have learned about literature reviews in general, examples of literature reviews, and how in my view it is anchoring piece that gives a foundation to a project. The article on Scholars Before Researchers cemented an outline and provided a set of tools for the researcher to assess other literature reviews and what is needed to create your own literature review. I took page of the article that supplied a rubric titled, “Literature Review and Scoring Rubric,” which was adapted from the following book publication:
Hart, C. (1999). Doing a Literature Review: Releasing the Social Science Research Imagination. London: SAGE.
Moving forward, I used it to critique an article of my interest and found it quite rewarding, as it provided a snapshot on what worked in the article quite well, and how the article could have provided more depth. Working with peers, we were also able to make comparisons between 3 articles that had specific Project Based Learning (PBL) activities, since all of the group members had picked articles of interest with similar content. We made comparisons on PBL was placed in a historical context of the field, as outlined by our rubric and found varied results. It was a valuable activity to be part of as a learner. Being a novice, more experience will provide better insight on the difference between outstanding, mediocre, and poorly written literature reviews.
Applying the “Literature Review Scoring Rubric” repeatedly feels like a Worked-Example exercise, but I do agree it would help you familiarize yourself with what constitutes as a good lit. review. With that in mind, where do you think readers stand in regards to fact-checking the lit review in the article? For example, one of the articles we were assigned discussed how researchers would omit or cherry-pick certain data; couldn’t someone do the same for their lit review. Should readers doing their on homework on the current progress in the study’s field, or should we merely take lit reviews with a grain of salt?
More inclined to follow through with the resources cited in the literature review, especially if that is my field of interest. However, one could consider that the article has been peer reviewed and the sources for the literature review have been checked out. It’s a good question that I don’t have a definitive answer to.