Education Research Guide:Literature Reviews

Literature Review - a systematic review of the published material, or scholarly writings, on a specific topic or research question.  The primary goal is analysis - and not simply summarization - of these scholarly writings. This analysis serves to provide background information on your topic and detail the connection between those writings and your research question. After all, we cannot know where we're going until we know where we've been.

Often, when researching for your literature review, you will not find exact matches to your research question - this is ok, and often expected. Your goal will be to pull relevant information regarding aspects of your research, analyzing these writings, and (as previously mentioned) connecting them to each other and your topic.

A Literature Review will help you achieve the following:

• Provides background on research topic
• Guides you in detailing or focusing your own research question
• Provides a framework for research or future research - identifying major themes and concepts
• Offers insights on unexplored ideas related to a topic, gaps in the research
• Assists with avoiding repetition of earlier research
• Tests assumptions; may help counter preconceived ideas and remove unconscious bias
• Identifies points of disagreement, or potentially flawed methodology or theoretical approaches

Searching the education databases and others such as Web of Science and Dissertations & Theses is the way you are able to discover the research that has been done on any given subject.

The "Find Articles" tab in this research guide is where you can begin this search.