What is a Literature Review?
A literature review is scholarly work presenting synthesis and analysis of research about a specific topic and can be either part of a larger document or a stand-alone piece. It provides the audience with context for the main argument of the paper by citing relevant current and historical knowledge, and it tells a story about how your research contributes to existing scholarship.
Synthesis: drawing interpretations across sources, reorganization of information, tracing of major debates or progression of the topic, compare and contrast
Analysis: examination of the elements or structure of something in order to interpret essential features and their relations (i.e., why the research is important), can also involve evaluation of sources (i.e., what is most relevant)
What is the Purpose of a Literature Review?
- Identify key works and what is well known + what gaps exist in the literature
- Build a foundation that supports the rationale for the research objective and can be referenced in discussion to connect past and present research
- Identify relationships between previous studies and theories (synthesis > summary)
- Communicates field’s perspective on a topic and the methods typically employed
The most effective literature reviews tell a story about how your research contributes to existing scholarship. The literature review will take your research question as a starting point and address its key components; in other words, the literature review is bounded by the scope and goals of your research.
Strategies for Organizing Your Literature Review
- Search databases, library books, and dissertations for sources
- Read other literature reviews in your field and in the genre of writing that you are producing to see how they structured their reviews
- Think about what informs the perspectives of your source: Who agrees or disagrees with the authors? Are the findings well-supported? Are some sources considered “more important” than others?
Strategies for Organizing Your Literature Review
- During/after reading, identify what sources have in common and how they differ (e.g., similar/different theoretical framework for analysis? methodology? results?)
- Organize subsections and paragraphs by ideas, not by papers. In other words, you don’t need to have one paragraph per source—one source might take up two paragraphs, while three are synthesized in one to describe a particular theory
**Tip: If you’re beginning a paragraph with an author’s last name, you’re likely not effectively synthesizing sources
Chronological: arranges sources or topics as they happened in time, rarely used except in cases where timing mattered to scholarship
Thematic: arranges sources or topics by their relevance to one another, often themes represent individual branches of the same topic; depending on the literature may be separated by methods or hypothesis
Argumentative: arranges sources by agreement/disagreement with one another, often hinges on the “big names” in a field of scholarship, separates sources into “camps”, often based on framework or theoretical perspective
No matter which strategy you use, everything in your literature review needs to speak back to the research questions and/or gap you’re seeking to address. The elements of your literature review also need to speak to each other.
Consider scope in your organization:
Broad: provide overview, contextualize topic within wider subject, introduce key theories or models
Narrow: hone-in on literature that overlaps with area of focus, can be broken down further into themes
Specific: delve deeper into select few studies most pertinent to your research
Tips for Writing
- Be careful not to rely on summaries of sources
- Make it clear how each source relates to the research question/topic
- Sources should be integrated into larger paragraphs with topic sentences that describe the important information to follow
- Quote only when necessary: The primary voice should be the author’s (yours!)
Common Pitfalls
- Listing studies or isolating studies/sources
- Taking sources out of context
- Providing an overly detailed description of single source
- Lacking a clear, manageable scope and purpose
Example Workflow (from Education Policy)
Topic:
Language of instruction = the language used in teaching/materials (in the US- English)
Tanzania – country in southeast Africa with about 125 languages
Research question:
What is the best language of instruction for Tanzania?
Step 1: Identify and read as many sources as possible about the topic (historical background & related academic research)
Step 2: Find patterns in the research (For example: about half of the articles were concerned with how the language of instruction is related to the economy and half were concerned with how the language of instruction is related to the identity of the students)
Step 3: What affects these patterns? Decide how you will synthesize the information in a meaningful way (by field? research methods? results of the research?)
Step 4: Outlining key content for your paper
Introduction
- Why is this topic important?
- What are the main themes / methods / findings of literature review overall? (this may be one of the last sections you write)
Themes
- What are some themes (and subthemes) of the research?
- What are similarities and differences in how these themes have been approached in previous literature? E.g., in terms of the researcher’s methods, applications of theories, discussions, recommendations
Gaps
- What insights do the previous literature provide for your research?
- What are some gaps in this research? How will your work add to this literature?