Week 6 (Feb. 27, 07)

1. Week 6 (Feb. 27, 07) Literature Review (I)

2. Agenda for Today Hot Topics debate (30 mins) Conference in groups on draft#1: Learn from peers and support peers (40 mins). Process readings for literature review (20 mins) + Literature Review Draft #2 ------------------------------ Learn from peers of previous classes (15 mins) APA style (10 mins) & course website (5). For next week: sign up meeting time with instructor (10).

3. Sharing life • A not-so-good moment • Weirdness of life - an idea, a feeling, an incident that you feel is hard to understand about your school, kids, classroom, life in general… • Your teaching, classroom? Anything that we can discuss and give suggestions? • Anything else

4. Agenda I Hot Topic Debate Hot Topic 3: Do High-Stakes Assessments Improve Learning? Discussion Leaders:Julie BennettRachel StortiPaula HarnsKathy McGowan

5. Agenda II Draft #1 Group Conference

6. Learn from peers and support peers • Form a group of 3/4 people. • Read two/three of your peers’ drafts carefully. Provide written comment including, but do not necessarily limit your comments to, the following points: • Give comment to each of your group member’s writing. In the comment, please include the following: • What have you learned from reading your peer’s project (List one or two strong points – aspects that impressed you the most; things that you didn’t expect/know before). • Weak points of the project? • Suggestions to improve: provide at least one suggestion – and try to give as many as you can to help improve the project.

7. Agenda III Process the readings for literature review

8. The Rule of Thumb of a lit rev • Develop a coherent essay Rather than • Producing a series of connected summaries (or annotations)!

9. What is a Literature Review? • ‘to know what others have discovered before they begin investigations of their own’ (Cuba, 1988: 25).

10. Steps for literature review • Selecting a topic; • Reading and evaluating the relevant research articles; • Synthesizing and organizing your notes to identify • patterns, • relationships among studies, • gaps in the body of the literature, and • Strengths and weaknesses in particular studies. • Reorganize your notes and develop a detailed writing outline • Writing, revising, and redrafting your paper • Editing for correctness and adherence to the required style manual (APA style).

11. Some guidelines • How many articles to read? • How many to cite: at least 12 • Be highly selective in identifying and citing references: usually, only select those that are most important/relevant and most current; • If there is too much research on your topic, perhaps you need to narrow down your topic, or identify delimiters such as review only recent articles; • If there isn’t enough research on the topic, perhaps you need to broaden your topic or investigate additional sources your literature search didn’t identify.

12. Structure of a literature review • Introductory section • Which will include an overview of what will be covered in the rest of the document • Body – use subheadings • Conclusion/closure of some kind

13. Agenda IV Learn from peers of previous classes

14. Group work • Focus on Introduction Section and Literature Review Section • What are the strong points and what are the weak points? • Look through the structure of the whole proposal

15. Agenda IV APA Style http://web.cortland.edu/shis/651/classnotes.htm

16. For Next Week • Sign up individual meeting time with instructor. • You can choose to meet with me individually or in pairs/groups (that might have similar research interest/questions/concerns)

17. Writing Lit Rev • The Literature Review: A few tips on conducting it: http://www.utoronto.ca/writing/litrev.html • A literature Review for an investigative report: http://ecdev.hku.hk/acadgrammar/litrev/section1/one2.htm • Why are lit rev often called “critical reviews”:http://ecdev.hku.hk/acadgrammar/litrev/section2/two3.htm