How to Write a Literature Review

What is a literature review?

To summarise briefly and simply, a literature review is already published answers that you find as literature. 

The video attached below is useful to watch, as he breaks down how to write this thing in 5 steps. Make sure to relate your literature to your inquiry plan, question yourself whether it is relevant, and if so why? Include ethical discussion where you can, any literature that involves ethical consideration that might reflect in your study plan. 

Step 1: Strip the Summaries

You have already sourced the citation of a text/piece of work/article/book/guide you have found. Below it will be a detailed summary of what you have found, which will be the body of the literature review. Here is an example: 

Citation - Costley, C. Elliott, G. and Gibbs, P. (2010) Doing Work Based Research: Approaches to Enquiry for Insider-Researchers. London: SAGE Publications.

Summary - key concepts behind the significance of being an insider-researcher. The writers present that an insider-researcher tends to find a valuable depth of knowledge and understanding of a range of perspectives, as an insider-researcher would make an impact from the inside. What they consider is the lack of funding that may occur with an insider-researcher project, and not merely self-critique but the need for external feedback. The book focuses on the field of work-based learning, and the continuous learning from those at work. Professional and experienced practitioners supply an abundant source of data that relates to the ‘real World’ and ‘real-time’, which has influenced the subject of this work.

• Start the summary paragraph as follows:

Costley, Elliot and Gibbs (2010) explain the key concepts behind...

• Next, use in-text citation to make the summary paragraph flow. Such as:

"The authors present" "The article..." - You refer to them, as this review is not your thoughts, but their words and their work.

• You only need to use the date (2010) once in the relevant paragraph. 

Step 2: Re-Order Paragraphs 

• Find similarities and differences between each summary paragraph
• Re-order into a logical list based on connections you find
• Problem, followed by solution, followed by a need for understanding the problem (might not be relevant to your BAPP inquiry plan)

Step 3: Combine Paragraphs (if necessary)

• How closely related are the paragraphs?
• Limit to 14 lines per paragraph
• Group paragraphs by theme
• Prepare to deal with cultural differences 

Step 4: Add Topic Sentences and Transitions 

• Have an entrance sentence, eg "Sports science has long been recognised as..." or "As far back as 1988, Dewey stated..." 
• Transition sentences such as: "Johnson's findings were replicated by Smithy (1973) who studied..." 

Step 5: Introduction and Conclusion 

A review summarises the published work of others. A thesis brings together major points from the sources. In a literature review, there are no opinions or claims from the writer. You can start your conclusion as:

"The following review of literature confirms..." 

Open your conclusion with a re-statement of your thesis. This brings the reader back to the original point. 

• Comment on any flaws or gaps in the research reviewed
• Ensure to have good titles, and use subtitles when necessary 

These are the notes I jotted down when watching this video. Hope this helps people now and in the future. 

References: 

Taylor, D. (2017) How to Write a Literature Review in 30 Minutes or Less. 27 March 2017. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TdJxY4w9XKY (Accessed 28 March 2020).