Week 3 readings for TE 902 ...
This week covered summery, and one journal article, both relating to writing, decisions to be made in relation to citations used, etc.
The first, a summary of A Beginner’s Guide to Doing Your Education Research Project, by Mike Lambert, was narrowed down to ten sections, each with their own set of explanations. I, then, took the ten sections as outline headings, and tried to summarize the writing within. The outcome was the following:
Tip 1: Plan & build: the ‘swimming-pool’ approach
Set section titles
Add to each section as literature contributes to that section
Tip 2: Taking notes from your reading
Write out concise, clear notes
Compare and contrast as literature becomes more well rounded
Maintain database, of sorts, to keep references in line
Tip 3: Taking notes from your reading - contd.
Keep track of relevant statistical data
Make a note of your reaction/thoughts related to readings …
strong/weak case
gaps in thinking
how the topic is discussed (discourse)
Tip 4: History of events, or history of ideas?
Track important dates/establish timeline
How has content evolved, if at all
Tip 5: Use a range of literature
Books, dependable
Journals, more up to date
Newspaper/TV, popular opinion
Official reports, evidence of institution’s implementation, often “rosey” image provided by the institution
Research reports, shed light on what has been tested, what has been discovered
Internet, almost a member-check … may help establish that findings are rational, reasonable, well thought through
Tip 6 ‘Criticality’ -Strengthening criticality
Compare studies …
Compare perspectives
Evaluate the literature
Tip 7: Citing literature in your text
Vary the way you write the citations …
Do not vary the tense used
Tip 8: Where do research questions go?
They can go anywhere …
As long as the structure of the paper makes sense
Tip 9: Writing tips
Vary your vocabulary … nobody wants to be the “apparently” kid
Be mindful how you’re writing numbers … generally ten and below written as a word, above ten numerically … unless it starts a sentence, in which case it is words (what does APA say?)
Integrate short quotes when/where possible
Use long quotes sparingly?
Tip 10: Link your review to your own investigation (self explanatory?)
The second portion of this reading task was to sift through Kennedy’s “Defining a Literature” (citation below). In this article, Kennedy walks the reader through the establishment of three rules set for the systematic review leading to a teacher-qualification and quality-teaching (TQ-QT) database, from which multitude of literature reviews have come.
Of the more important items drawn from Kennedy’s piece (and I know this to be the case because it is the only highlighted portion in it’s own color), the effort of a systematic review must begin with rules in place governing what is, and is not, accepted into the pool of literature to be considered.
Other aspects discuss how the author established the 465 separate studies (with some papers discussing more than one study, others referencing the same study).
Kennedy follows their selection process by discussing the “lore” that arises form second-hand accounts of the work being done. This makes me think of the telephone game we played in elementary school, where “it is almost time for recess” might be reported as “aliens landed on the playground yesterday and thus no recess for a month.” The author, though, admits that any one individual has little chance to read all the papers relevant to their work (in this case over 450 such articles) and thus the lore created becomes an important part of one’s understanding.
On a final note, Kennedy demonstrated that, based on the research criteria stated for the TQ-QT project, journal articles were marginally better than books or book chapters. Dissertations and Reports or Electronic Sources seemed to have more viable information for the project’s efforts. Peer-reviewed journals are a staple of academic writing, but this one database (and yeah, it’s just one, so there’s that) demonstrates that journal articles may not be the end-all when it comes to scholarly writing. Of course, the excerpt of Lambert’s work outlined above stated that as well.