Literature review sections of a paper or thesis are a tricky beast, to be sure. In my writing workshops, and face-to-face work with writers and their texts, this section, next to ‘theory and analysis’ presents the greatest challenge. This stems, in large part, from a struggle to marry what other authors are saying with what the writers want to say: to let your own ‘voice’ come through as you base and inform your argument on and with relevant reading and research.

Firstly, to be clear, when I say ‘voice’ in academic writing, I mean argument. In a piece of academic text, such as a thesis, paper or book chapter, your ‘voice’ is the argument you are making, and that is driving the text forward. It is your contribution to knowledge in your field.

I have written here and here and here about literature reviews, and Pat Thomson and Inger Mewburn have some useful posts that you should check out too. In this post, I want to look at less conceptual and more ‘nuts and bolts’ issues in actually writing a literature review that makes your ‘voice’ audible, and builds one part of the argument of your paper or thesis. Essentially, this section must make an argument for what the GAP is that your research is addressing, and discuss the ways in which the gap HAS been addressed in other studies, yet point out clearly the shortcomings/blindspots/remaining questions that this research leaves open, which is where YOUR STUDY comes in.

I trialled an approach to thinking about this, and revising drafts of literature reviews in a recent writing workshop, and their feedback gave me the courage to try it here. I call it ‘concepts and claims over author names’. Other have written about literature review sections that are a citation dump, or a laundry list –  essentially as long list of which authors made which claims, and who contradicts who and how, and so on. This shows that you have read, but not that you necessarily understand how to use what you have read to build your own argument (in support of the need for your research or study). Thus, you need to move from the ‘who said what’ approach (author names) to which concepts, claims, findings etc are useful to tell the reader about so that they can position and understand the argument you want to make.

Look at this example, kindly lent from a student’s early draft of a proposal:

The goal of ODL is to widen participation and to overcome geographical, social and economic barriers (Kelly & Mills: 2007, p.149) to education. Learners experience isolation due to separation from their institution, lecturers and fellow students (Rumble: 2000, p.1). Although according to Daniel et al. (2009, p.24), ODL has been identified as an effective way of reaching out to large student numbers, Perraton (2000) observes that ODL institutions have high dropout and low pass rates. While there are many factors that contribute to attrition in distance education programmes, at the top of the list according to Stacy, Ludwig, Hardman and Dunlap (2003) is level of interaction and support. Successful distance learners are driven by intrinsic motivation, and quality personalised and affective learning support (Holmberg, 2003). However McKenna (2004) disagrees with this assertion by saying that student success in higher education environment is not a function of motivation but rather of student investment in his/her studies which agrees with Tinto’s (1975, 1993, 1997) assertion that student success is a function of stunt’s commitment to his/her personal goals and that of the institution.   He further says that this investment is both material and psychological. The greater the input to the provision of student support services, the greater the success rate (Sewart, 1993).

There are three main observations I make that I’d like to highlight here:

The first is the positioning of the references (in green) – throughout, they placed after claims (as indeed they should be) but in such a way as to make the effect of the whole paragraph more a list of these claims, than using the ideas advanced by these authors in support of the student’s own claim. So, this is a little ‘laundry list’-like right now. The second, then, is the student’s own claim: what is it? It could be about the goal of ODL institutions, or challenges they face, or student attrition. It is not yet clear. Each paragraph you write needs to have a claim YOU advance, and that selected claims and evidence from reading can be organised around, before you connect this back to the golden thread you are spinning – what is this information helping the reader to understand about YOUR STUDY? The final observation is this, precisely: the connection between this selected information from the readings with the student’s own project. I have attempted a re-write:

Online and Distance Learning (ODL) faces several key, student-related challenges in addressing its central goal. The goal of ODL is to widen participation and to overcome geographical, social and economic barriers to education (Kelly & Mills, 2007). Yet, many learners experience isolation due to separation from their institution, lecturers and fellow students (Rumble, 2000). This sense of isolation may then result in lower levels of persistence, resulting in ODL institutions having high dropout and low pass rates (Daniel et al., 2009; Perraton, 2000). While there are many factors that contribute to attrition in distance education programmes, at the top of the list is students’ level of interaction and support (Stacy, Ludwig, Hardman and Dunlap, 2003). Holmberg (2003), for example, argues that successful distance learners are driven by intrinsic motivation, and personalized, affective learning support. However McKenna (2004) disagrees, saying that student success in a higher education environment is not primarily a function of motivation per se, but rather of a student’s investment in her studies, both material and psychological and the systems created to enable this. Tinto (1975, 1993, 1997) echoes a call for a more systemic, rather than individualised approach to student support, which should be applied in ODL contexts. What all of this means for ODL institutions, is that increasing student retention and success is a complex challenge with numerous variables. These authors, however, seem to be pointing to a need to begin with addressing student support, to decrease alienation and increase students’ ability and willingness to invest in their education more meaningfully.

What I have tried to do here is address my three concerns. In orange, a point, and an explanation of how this information is all pointing back towards the larger study, which is about creating relevant ODL student support structures to increase student success. It may sound mechanical, but try to be conscious of beginning paragraphs with a claim of your creation – based on your reading, but in your own words, and that advances or builds your argument or voice. Not every paragraph will end with an explanatory note, but you should be conscious of drawing the connections between the research you have done and your own argument: as Pat Thomson points out, all reading you include in your thesis must have relevance to, or be positioned in relation to, your argument.

In pink, I have highlighted connecting phrases that position the authors’ claims in relation to one another, yet enable the voice of the writer to come through more clearly, as you get a sense of the writer choosing where to place the claims and what claims to use in making this small part of the argument. Yet, however, while, although – these kinds of ‘transitional’ words are incredible useful in writing, not just to create more readable text, but chiefly to indicate the position of claims made by other writers in relation to one another, and in relation to the argument you want to make.

Perhaps approaching any ‘review’ of the literature from this kind of starting point – concepts and claims over author names (and lists of their points) – will re-orientate you away from ‘reviewing’ the literature, towards using selected literature to make an argument. The point is not to show your readers everything you have read, and what everyone else thinks about your research; the point is to tell us what you think is relevant, and why, using established research to shore up and solidify the credibility and significance of your claims.