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Lesson 7
What is the purpose of a literature review?
Whether or not our questions are new to us, asking those questions enters us into existing conversations among teachers, researchers, policy makers, and other stakeholders.
These ongoing, expansive conversations are ultimately how the knowledge base about teaching and learning grows.
There's a lot to gain by taking time to do some reading, getting more familiar with what others are saying about our topic before we begin our own inquiry and throughout our data collection and analysis. Reviewing the literature helps us get ideas about what kinds of studies others have done, gather potential strategies to try in our teaching or research, and figure out how our own research will fit into or nudge the conversation forward.
Later, when we share our inquiry findings with others, including a review of the literature gives readers an overview of the conversation we've entered and provides important insight into how we made informed decisions about our own research. This last point may feel intimidating, but it's so important. As a teacher-researcher, you should thoughtfully consider how you'll bring your ideas into the public sphere and share what you've learned with colleagues in your school and beyond. Ideas left in a single classroom will never shape conversations. Teacher inquiry is one way to disrupt the notion that teachers should just close their doors and do what they know is best. We reject this claim and are committed to the idea that educators have an obligation to continue to grow in knowledge and wisdom and to share their growth with others in the profession.
Please recall the national organizations that were presented in a previous lesson (e.g., the National Association of Special Education Teachers, the National Science Teachers Association, the National Council for the Social Studies, etc.). If you reach out and talk with other professionals, how does your conception of who is a “colleague” expand? What kinds of conversations (e.g., professional journals, blogs, conferences) do these organizations help facilitate? How could you join those conversations—not just as a knowledge consumer, but as a producer as well?
Be a good scholar; cite your sources!
It is also important to cite our sources, giving appropriate credit, when we use another's idea. Later we'll discuss how to cite properly but for now, please keep this web page from Purdue's University Writing Center as an excellent source for APA citation, as is required in this course.