Week 6 (Feb. 27, 07)

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Week 6 (Feb. 27, 07)

• Literature Review (I)

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Agenda for Today

• Hot Topics debate (30 mins)
• Conference in groups on draft1 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).

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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

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Agenda I

• Hot Topic Debate
• Hot Topic 3 Do High-Stakes Assessments Improve
  Learning?
• Discussion LeadersJulie BennettRachel
  StortiPaula HarnsKathy McGowan

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Agenda II

• Draft 1 Group Conference

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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 members
  writing. In the comment, please include the
  following
• What have you learned from reading your peers
  project (List one or two strong points aspects
  that impressed you the most things that you
  didnt 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.

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Agenda III

• Process the readings for literature review

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The Rule of Thumb of a lit rev

• Develop a coherent essay
• Rather than
• Producing a series of connected summaries (or
  annotations)!

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What is a Literature Review?

• to know what others have discovered before they
  begin investigations of their own (Cuba, 1988
  25).

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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).

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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 isnt enough research on the topic,
  perhaps you need to broaden your topic or
  investigate additional sources your literature
  search didnt identify.

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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

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Agenda IV

• Learn from peers of previous classes

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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

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Agenda IV

• APA Style
• http//web.cortland.edu/shis/651/classnotes.htm

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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)

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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/on
  e2.htm
• Why are lit rev often called critical
  reviewshttp//ecdev.hku.hk/acadgrammar/litrev/s
  ection2/two3.htm