Alternative Education Research Paper

American InterContinental University Alternative Education Research Paper

Literature Review

MRP4

4. Literature review 1st draft

A Literature Review is a coherent essay of a critical review or examination of the literature. It will be a review of the literature directly related to your chosen topic, followed by an explanation of how your research question grows out of that review, that is, showing how you identify your own research focus in term of “gap” in previous research. The purpose of the literature review is to know what others have discovered before you begin your investigation of your own, to ground your study in a particular context of what is known about a subject in order to establish a foundation for the topic (or question) being researched.

The purpose of this assignment is to facilitate your abilities to research a topic of study so you can learn to (1) identify and formulate an inquiry question that defines what you’d like to learn, (2) know how to search and locate literature (eg. Journal articles) using library and internet resources; (3) analyze information found in educational journal articles, and (4) synthesize new knowledge into a written literature review and (5) establish context for your inquiries.

Assignment Description:

For this assignment you are asked to complete a literature review on an educational topic of your choice (the MRP1 assignment). You are asked to locate at least 10 educational journal articles on your topic (the MRP2 and MRP3 assignments) and write a 2,000-2,500 word literature review on the articles you’ve selected. This will likely be in the 8-12 page range.

Steps to complete your literature review:

1. Choose an educational topic: Topic: Do male and female students differ in the satisfaction of their experience in attending alternative schools?

2. Formulate an inquiry question that specifically describes what would like to know about your educational topic: In what ways does the relationship between teachers and students with social and emotional learning difficulties impact childhood experiences?

3. Go to the library to search for and locate journals that include your topic’s information (You learned how to do this during your library time).

4. Find articles, read the abstracts and skim the articles to determine if they correspond well to your topic AND inquiry question.

5. Select at least 10 journal articles and save PDFs of them for your project.

6. Read your articles and begin to sort and classify them.

7. Organize your articles by sorting and classifying their findings in a meaningful way, always considering your original topic and inquiry question.

8. Write an outline for your literature review.

9. Write your review.

10. Revise your review.

Outline for writing your literature review:

1. Introduction (without this heading)

Write an introduction paragraph for your review. This paragraph

a. states the topic and inquiry questions for this review

b. tells the reader specific information on how many articles you reviewed and how you sorted the articles into common themes based on findings (results).

2. Body (without this heading)

Before you begin this section, be sure that you have sorted your articles into different themes based on the articles’ findings (sometimes called results). After you sort your articles, it is important to give your sorted groups a descriptive name. The names of the sorted articles will become your headings for each of the paragraphs that you write in the body of your review. The body of your literature review will include,

a. Theme 1: a paragraph or several paragraphs that describe the first theme that you identified and compare, contrast and/or connect the articles you’ve selected.

b. Theme 2: a paragraph or several paragraphs that describes the second theme that you identified and compare, contrast and/or connect the articles you’ve selected.

d. Theme 3: a paragraph or several paragraphs that describes the third theme that you identified and compare, contrast and/or connect the articles you’ve selected.

… …

3 Summary

This is the last paragraph of your literature review. In this paragraph, it is important to briefly summarize the main findings from the articles that you reviewed and to point out how your inquiry questions were answered or not answered, what the gap is (what if my questions are all answered – you then need to identify new inquiries so that you will contribute to the field)..

4. References

This is the last pages of your review. It serves as a listing of all references that you mentioned in your paper (both draft 1 and draft 2). Please make sure that only references cited in your drafts will be listed here. Other references that you earlier found/read but not cited will be listed in your bibliography. Please use APA style when completing this list.

Proposal:

Proposal – The proposal consists of your integrative literature review and method. In the method section, you need describe in detail how you will conduct your study. (CACREP Section II: G.8.a, G.8.b, G.8.c)

Description

The structure of your proposal must be in accordance with the following provided outline.

++++Start of the outline++++

I. Title page (Title and My name)

II. Introduction (basically your integrative literature review, the MRP4)

III. Specific research question(s)

IV. Method

a. Participants (describe your proposed sample and sample selection methods)

b. Measures

c. Procedures (describe proposed procedures)

d. Plan of data analysis (You must present your research question first, and then explain what statistical procedures you would use to address that research question.)

V. References