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(Robert Squires) So, the literature review.
Um
I'm not gonna read this, you can obviously read this for yourself.
In the literature review,
obviously it's important to come at that review with a topic,
and then figure out what the key research is in that area,
and what conclusions have been made.
And, in a similar way,
and to what we've been doing with Wolcott and Hamre & Pianta,
um, take a critical perspective of that literature where you can
and understand the kinds of methods that we use
so you can make good judgments about whether or not a piece of literature
is good to have in your literature review.
So, let me just touch on those key steps.
In a systematic review you need to formulate a question,
you need to find the studies, you need to appraise and select those studies,
pull them all together, and come up with your conclusions.
You need to guide the reader through that literature
and point, you know, key landmarks along the way
and then determine how that literature leads to
the investigation that you're doing in this particular context.
So, for some of you, and for me, you know,
thinking of that initial research topic is the trick.
So...
It's not uncommon. And I've done this on many occasions
is to be: "Oh, you know, it's this kind of topic, let'*** Google.
Let's go Google that and see what we find."
But, um, good advice from the library is to, first of all,
spend some time formulating what it is that you're looking for.
Because there's obviously a world of different key terms
that can be used to get at the information.
So, you know--
let me just throw this document on the screen that I was, um, just thinking about
briefly as an example.
I mean, it's something I made up this morning as an example.
"I would like to research--"
I mean, just starting with a very simple kind of statement
"--how children who like to read by themselves do in school."
And, you know, I think that they do better.
Now, that took all of a couple of seconds to come up with something that interested me.
But that's not really a great research topic,
so I need to turn that into an area,
and turn that into a research topic that might be more searchable
and allow me to get at, kind of, that question.
So there's a few things there.
First of all, there's 'children.'
And there's 'people who like to read by themselves.'
And then there's this bit here.
And maybe achievement would be a better term for that.
So, I guess the question is, what do these terms mean?
I mean, I can do 'children,' I can do 'read by themselves,'
and maybe there's a term that's better than that.
And then there's 'achievement.'
But when we think of children is it young children?
Is it adolescents?
Maybe is it junior high school or high school? Teens?
I guess we need to be clearer there.
'Achievement?' Is it achievement on test scores?
Such as the Woodcock-Johnson test that was mentioned in the Hamre Pianta article?
Is it social, emotional conflict that we're looking at, potentially, with teachers?
I'm not entirely sure, so it's important to, kind of, break those down.
And that's... That's what we need to think about here.
So...
Kate mentions this in her document.
So you need to understand that research question,
identify the major concepts in your question
and identify potential terms that correspond to those concepts.
Select alternative terms.
And then she suggests using this ERIC resource
or the PsychINFO resource, the Psychological Times.
So let's just bring that resource over.
um, getting started.
"Describe the topic in your own words, divide the topic into major concepts,
use a thesaurus to locate the appropriate descriptors, subject headings."
Okay.
"And add the descriptors to your search."
Alright, so let's do some searching.
Um, reading.
Oh that was here just a moment ago so that goes in there.
Um
Let's search for children.
Okay.
There's 37 different descriptors in this thesaurus,
which means 37 different ways of thinking about that population.
And, when I'm thinking about my research topic I really haven't, kind of, defined it so clearly.
Are we talking about abused children?
Are we talking about disadvantaged children? Are we talking about--
Um, and some of these terms are older.
You can see that gifted children is a current one.
So, let's say we're talking about children who like to read by themselves in 'young children.'
And that's really my interest.
So, the nice thing about that is it gives me some narrow terms.
'infants, pre-school, toddlers.'
Well, I don't think there's a whole lot of independent readers
amongst infants, pre-school, toddlers, so let's go for...
Kindergarten's another area.
Elementary school is really what I was after, that's what I was thinking,
Well it looks like elementary is pretty specific.
So, um...
I'm gonna take that term.
And I'm gonna bring it over and put it in my document.
I'm really interested in that group there.
How children-- how elementary school children
who like to read by themselves. So let’s do reading.
See what we get with reading.
And it is-- maybe it’s more independent reading,
that’s almost the same.
Reading, critical reading, early reading, individualized…
Maybe that’s-- Oh. Okay.
Independent reading.
Excellent, look at that.
So there’s a whole bunch of different related terms
that are gonna be useful for me when it comes to researching this topic.
So, I’m gonna make that…
“who like to read independently”
I'm typing over here
“they like to read independently in school.”
and then I'm gonna have...
Oh, not in school.
It’s really, who like to read independently outside of school.
And then, I’ve got these wonderful terms here now from ERIC to narrow things down.
So, let me go back to Kate’s document.
So we’ve got a few more terms, we’ve selected alternative terms,
we’ve got, um, individualized reading, independent study,
supplementary reading materials,
reading interests, etcetera.
Um...
And then, I can begin to think about how I’m gonna search for that.
Maybe I ought to search for elementary school children and independent study.
Elementary children and individualized reading.
Elementary school children and reading interests.
So those are the different ones that I can pop into the Mansfield search engine.
Go to those databases and just…
You know, I can put in “elementary school children and…”
Let me start with this,
“independent…”
The broadest two.
So that… That’s somewhat interesting.
It’s not targeted enough.
It’s not getting me a ton of articles that I’d like to get at.
So I maybe need to go more specifically into a database search.
But, already, with independent reading, you can see the problem.
And that is that it’s more related to school rather than outside of school.
So there’s gonna be terms amongst those ones that I’ve found in the ERIC search
that are more applicable.
Okay.
So let's go back and see what Kate's got here.
So she's worked through some, you know, different terms here,
and defining those 'and' and 'or's, those Boolean searches.
Boolean relationship between terms.
Um,
there's reference to a couple of ways of understanding the...
The value of an article by the amount of times it's been cited.
And that, if you haven't checked out the web of knowledge, Web of Science,
then it's an interesting way to do research.
So, get online and check that one out.
Google Scholar's probably familiar to most of you.
So...
Research resources.
Let's go and get into one of those databases and do some, kind of, more searching.
Um, there's a link to this, the UM thesis dissertation in our Moodle course.
And what's nice about that is that, you know, there's examples of topics
that other Master's students and Doctoral students have investigated,
so it gives you, kind of,
an idea of how they've framed their research topics, which is always helpful.
But the idea of finding models and examples of research in that area
can help you guide how you want to frame your research as well.
Um,
obviously, if the research has been done,
you just don't simply want to reproduce the research,
you need to kind of find your way through the different literature
to come up with a topic that is unique and valuable within the field.
That's what good research is about,
it's about creating that new knowledge, building on the work of others,
and critically analyzing that work,
and producing results that can inform future practice, and theory, and so on.
So, let's go back to the Mansfield Library site.
And I'll just go back to their homepage.
And so, if I want to go look at the database list, I can do this.
I made-- This is a complete list of all of the different, um,
databases that you can search, and search primarily for journals.
A really helpful one is Academic Search Complete.
This, as it says here, is multidisciplinary.
It has, um, multiple databases feeding into it, so it really covers a great deal of ground.
So let's click on Academic Search Complete.
Okay.
And this is where our searches are much more effective at this level.
We're in a database.
So if I did 'elementary school children'
and 'independent reading,'
let's see what we get.
So you'll see, already, that this is the first hit that came up before I think,
But there's several that are in academic journals here.
we're not getting the kind of mix that appeared on that search
where we just kind of dropped it in the main search area there.
Um
And not all of those are, kind of, necessarily so relevent to us,
we need to, kind of, narrow things down again.
And, we're getting some good hits.
Let's get one of those other key terms again.
Um
Yeah, you know, if I'm thinking about my topic,
it's modest recreational reading.
So let's... Let's pull that recreational reading and see what we get.
um
elementary school children and recreational reading.
And it's good to keep a record of
what it is that you're searching for so you can do those searches again.
So keep a note of those keywords.
Okay.
You know, and one helpful thing to do is to just say,
"okay, well I'm still not entirely sure what some of that literature means."
Um
So, why don't I just pull one of these up and have a look through the article.
Let me see where the link to the article is.
Okay
So these are the kind of things that are helpful to me
in thinking about what it is to
conceive of this impact of recreational reading on elementary school children.
Well, perhaps they just have a different attitude to reading,
and maybe attitude is going to make a difference.
So, is attitude...
The attitude of elementary school children towards recreational reading
something that might predict student achievement?
That's one potential topic.
Gender
So, does it make a difference whether boys or girls are recreational readers in this case?
The method section's very interesting
'cause it gives you an idea of a couple of ways that this has been done
or similar things have been done before.
And really, what I was looking for when I came here,
was to get to the list of references at the end,
because this is also gonna provide me with some very, very helpful literature,
that, in similar areas, that it's been done on this topic.
Um
So that one might be interesting although the age group's slightly different.
So, if I took that piece of research from that paper,
I could then look at that and say:
"well, to what extent does this apply to my particular group here?"
And that would be one angle of critiquing that particular item.
So, um, if I go back to Kate's suggestion there,
that was just an example of how to do a quick database search to...
On a particular topic.
And, what I'll have Kate do when she... when we do catch up
is talk a little bit more about how these databases work,
'cause she's the expert in that area.
So let me go back to Kate's original guide.
As she says, there's no one resource that searches all the literature within a discipline.
Um
So, there's a number of things that it's helpful to search for,
and as we just saw,
we searched in Academic Search Complete for leadership and curriculum.
Um...
For elementary school children and recreational reading.
But, you might want to look in educational administration abstracts.
You might want to look in the Education Resources Information Center.
which is kind of a clearinghouse of different articles and media groups and so on.
PsychInfo is another helpful database that you can look up.
And if it has a more medical kind of aspect. Then maybe PubMed is one that's helpful too.
So journals, if you're looking for a specific journal,
then you can visit the journals tab.
Let's go back to the Mansfield Library.
There's the journals tab.
Mkay, find a journal.
Well, you know, if I still have that...
That article from-- the one that I just pulled up,
then there will probably be a bunch of journals identified in that references list
that I could just-- if I knew what they were,
I could just pull up now and, uh, and then find a specific journal,
but let's see if there's a journal, there must be a journal of elementary education.
Elementary education online. Okay.
Well, um...
I don't think it's an online--
It's about online education,
it's about elementary education and available online,
so that seems like a pretty good shot.
And it looks like it's an open access journal.
And Kate has a note in this document on open access journals.
They're essentially articles that are published and openly available from the web
without subscription.
So, a rather wonderful thing that academics publishing their work openly
so everyone can benefit from their scholarship.
I went to the directory there, I should have perhaps gone to...
Well,
it's not helpful that it's gonna be in a language that I...
I don't recognize.
Um so, we'll probably go back to the...
That's the beauty of research. Uh... [chuckles]
You don't know what you're gonna get sometimes.
So, a journal of...
And you school teachers out there know these ones probably better than I do.
But I know there is a journal [chuckles] of online learning and teaching.
If I spell it correctly.
-
Let's see if it'll pull that up for me.
Okay.
So,
I go there and I can access my specific journal for the specific topic that I am focused on.
So I can do the same, presumably,
if I do a little more hunting around in the bibliographies of papers
to find out what the elementary school journals were,
I could identify a specific periodical
and then connect there and search through that one.
And of course, some earlier versions are available at the library.
So you... you might want to do that.
But a world of resources are available online,
so it should be possible to do the kind of research that you need to do online.
Okay.
um...
The impact factor of particular journals. That's interesting.
Um...
The journal citation reports give you and idea of which journals are most impactful.
And you would imagine things like Nature and Science,
two huge journals that you hear NPR mention from time to time
and are some of the most, kind of, impactful journals to publish in.
But other journals, key journals in the field,
will have a higher rating than ones that are less so.
So there's obviously some distinctions in terms of getting published
within one that is very difficult to get work published in and one that is less so.
And, uh, and their impact rating
makes a difference in terms of what particular journal you're being published in.
Journal Citation Reports will provide information about that.
The open access that should...
We just looked at an example.
The Emmet journal for online learning and teaching is open access as well.
It's content published by academics who make it freely available.
uh...
The citation management software, I've only spent so much time on that,
but if you want to learn more about EndNote or RefWorks,
I guess I've been kind of leaning towards RefWorks,
in terms of those two systems.
And RefWorks is pretty handy,
and Kate an other staffhands at the library would help you kind of explore that.
I'd attend one of the workshops on RefWorks to start with.
But I have an account and you can organize your literature
and then pull it into a bibliography at the end, which is very helpful.