Fluent Essays

Please read the article called Scholars before researchers and write your reflection in a few paragraphs. (No more than one page). I want you to be able to engage in a conversation regarding this paper and how this will assist your future work in this course.My research focuses on Social Media as a Learning Tool at the University of HailYOU MUST follow the APA 6th edition format. scholars_before_researchers.pdf Unformatted Attachment Preview Educational Researcher http://er.aera.net Scholars Before Researchers: On the Centrality of the Dissertation Literature Review in Research Preparation David N. Boote and Penny Beile EDUCATIONAL RESEARCHER 2005 34: 3 DOI: 10.3102/0013189X034006003 The online version of this article can be found at: http://edr.sagepub.com/content/34/6/3 Published on behalf of American Educational Research Association and http://www.sagepublications.com Additional services and information for Educational Researcher can be found at: Email Alerts: http://er.aera.net/alerts Subscriptions: http://er.aera.net/subscriptions Reprints: http://www.aera.net/reprints Permissions: http://www.aera.net/permissions Citations: http://edr.sagepub.com/content/34/6/3.refs.html >> Version of Record - Aug 1, 2005 What is This? Downloaded from http://er.aera.net at OHIO UNIV on June 6, 2014 Features Scholars Before Researchers: On the Centrality of the Dissertation Literature Review in Research Preparation by David N. Boote and Penny Beile A thorough, sophisticated literature review is the foundation and inspiration for substantial, useful research. The complex nature of education research demands such thorough, sophisticated reviews. Although doctoral education is a key means for improving education research, the literature has given short shrift to the dissertation literature review. This article suggests criteria to evaluate the quality of dissertation literature reviews and reports a study that examined dissertations at three universities. Acquiring the skills and knowledge required to be education scholars, able to analyze and synthesize the research in a field of specialization, should be the focal, integrative activity of predissertation doctoral education. Such scholarship is a prerequisite for increased methodological sophistication and for improving the usefulness of education research. e have all heard the joke before—as we move through graduate school, we learn more and more about less and less until we know everything about nothing. It is expected that someone earning a doctorate has a thorough and sophisticated understanding of an area of research and scholarship. Unfortunately, many doctoral dissertations in education belie the joke, their authors failing to master the literature that is supposed to be the foundation of their research. If their dissertation literature reviews are any indication, many of these now-doctors know bits and pieces of a disorganized topic. Yet we cannot blame them for their failure to demonstrate what we, the education research community, have not clearly articulated or valued. Acquiring the skills and knowledge required to be education scholars should be the focal, integrative activity of predissertation doctoral education. Preparing students to analyze and synthesize research in a field of specialization is crucial to understanding educational ideas. Such preparation is prerequisite to choosing a productive dissertation topic and appropriating fruitful methods of data collection and analysis. In this article, we first argue that a thorough, sophisticated review of literature is even more important in education research, with its messy, complex problems, than in most other fields and W Educational Researcher, Vol. 34, No. 6, pp. 3–15 disciplines. We then argue that current initiatives and faculty focuses have ignored the centrality of the literature review in research preparation, in turn weakening the quality of education research. This oversight has its roots, we believe, in a too-narrow conception of the literature review—as merely an exhaustive summary of prior research—and a misunderstanding of its role in research. By building on the extant literature that supports the centrality of the literature review, we offer a practical framework from which to analyze the quality of doctoral dissertation reviews of the literature. We end by further developing our understanding of the literature review and indicating some means of improving the situation. The Role and Purpose of the Literature Review in Education Research A substantive, thorough, sophisticated literature review is a precondition for doing substantive, thorough, sophisticated research. “Good” research is good because it advances our collective understanding. To advance our collective understanding, a researcher or scholar needs to understand what has been done before, the strengths and weaknesses of existing studies, and what they might mean. A researcher cannot perform significant research without first understanding the literature in the field. Not understanding the prior research clearly puts a researcher at a disadvantage. Shulman argues that generativity—along with discipline, publication, and peer review—is one of the hallmarks of scholarship (1999, p. 162–163). He defines generativity as the ability to build on the scholarship and research of those who have come before us. Generativity grants our work integrity and sophistication. To be useful and meaningful, education research must be cumulative; it must build on and learn from prior research and scholarship on the topic. Yet the messy, complicated nature of problems in education makes generativity in education research more difficult than in most other fields and disciplines (Berliner, 2002) and demands that we develop more sophisticated literature reviews. In traditional disciplinary research, where a researcher is communicating with a well-defined audience about commonly accepted problems and where disciplinary research often is based on a canon of shared knowledge, the researcher’s literature review is somewhat easier to construct. However, in education research we are often faced with the challenge of communicating with a diverse audience, and it is very difficult for us to assume shared knowledge, AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2005 Downloaded from http://er.aera.net at OHIO UNIV on June 6, 2014 3 methodologies, or even commonly agreed-upon problems (Boote & Gaudelli, 2002). Few of us work within a subfield of education research that approaches “normal science” (T. S. Kuhn, 1970)— there are very few clear, cumulative research programs in education. Because such well-formed research communities are the exception rather than the rule, it is all the more important that novice education researchers learn the craft of constructing a foundation on which their research can be built. As the foundation of any research project, the literature review should accomplish several important objectives. It sets the broad context of the study, clearly demarcates what is and what is not within the scope of the investigation, and justifies those decisions. It also situates an existing literature in a broader scholarly and historical context. It should not only report the claims made in the existing literature but also examine critically the research methods used to better understand whether the claims are warranted. Such an examination of the literature enables the author to distinguish what has been learned and accomplished in the area of study and what still needs to be learned and accomplished. Moreover, this type of review allows the author not only to summarize the existing literature but also to synthesize it in a way that permits a new perspective. Thus a good literature review is the basis of both theoretical and methodological sophistication, thereby improving the quality and usefulness of subsequent research. It is a broadly held assumption that successful doctoral candidates need to be “comprehensive and up to date in reviewing the literature” (Barry, 1997) and that their dissertations demonstrate this prowess. For most education researchers, the doctoral dissertation is the capstone to formal academic training and, as such, should be high quality and comprehensive and should reflect emerging research. The academic community ought to be able to assume that a dissertation literature review indicates a doctoral candidate’s ability to locate and evaluate scholarly information and to synthesize research in his or her field. Despite the assumption that dissertation literature reviews are comprehensive and up-to-date, the dirty secret known by those who sit on dissertation committees is that most literature reviews are poorly conceptualized and written. Our secret is made public by editors and reviewers who openly lament the inadequacy of literature reviews in manuscripts submitted for journal publication (Alton-Lee, 1998; Grant & Graue, 1999; LeCompte, Klingner, Campbell, & Menk, 2003). From Alton-Lee’s compilation of reviews of manuscripts submitted to Teaching and Teacher Education, we can begin to see the problems associated with research by scholars who do not know the literature in their fields. For the 58 manuscripts submitted for review over a 1-year period, she identified 369 distinct criticisms in the 142 reviews, which she divided into 13 broad categories. Methodological issues were most common, but reviewers also identified theoretical shortcomings (31 times), inadequacies in literature review (29), parochial focus (23), failure to add to the international literature (21), and failure to link findings to literature (20). In short, it appears that either many of the authors who submit manuscripts to this international journal do not know the literature in their fields or else their knowledge of their fields does not inform the presentation of their manuscripts. Moreover, a better understanding of the research in their field might have aided them with the other methodological problems that the re4 viewers identified. We speculate that the shortcomings that editors and reviewers bemoan stem from insufficient preparation in doctoral programs. Methodological training cannot occur in a vacuum, and increased training in research methods alone will not lead to better research. Instead, we must recognize the centrality of the literature review in doctoral research preparation and broaden our understanding of what literature reviewing entails. Education Research and Doctoral Preparation There is an emerging consensus that the perceived lack of quality in education research stems from problems with doctoral preparation and that improving doctoral education is key to improving education research. Initiatives by several foundations have spawned a small but healthy literature analyzing the problems of doctoral education, describing revised programs, and making recommendations.1 When considering the criteria and standards used to evaluate a dissertation, we need to keep in mind that most people with doctorates in education do not go on to pursue research careers. Most teach, administer, or lead (Passmore, 1980). Yet anyone earning a doctorate ought to be a steward of the field of education (Richardson, 2003), with all the rights and responsibilities thereto appertaining. One of our responsibilities—whether we become a researcher, teacher, administrator, or leader—is to know the literature in our field. And the best avenue for acquiring knowledge of the literature (beyond taking courses and comprehensive examinations) is the dissertation literature review. Yet it is apparent that for many, if not most, doctoral candidates and dissertation committees, the literature review is of secondary importance. This was not always the case. Until the 19th century, the doctorate was primarily a teaching degree, certifying that one had a thorough and sophisticated grasp of a particular field of study. As such, the dissertation and accompanying oral examination served primarily to assess one’s suitability as a scholar and a teacher. Graduate education in the United States developed in a period when German universities were ascendant and when “America copied the German version of advanced studies . . . unfortunately the period when the Berlin positivists were in the ascendancy” (Berelson, 1960, p. 12; see also Storr, 1969). As a result, the U.S. doctorate was designed to focus on research training, and the dissertation became a vehicle for demonstrating research prowess.2 Consistent with the assumption that the doctorate is primarily for research training, the limited U.S. literature on education doctorates has focused primarily on methodological and epistemological issues and to a lesser extent on the core and canon of education knowledge. Barger and Duncan (1986) raise difficult questions about the assumption that doctoral candidates should be expected to do creative scholarly work, and outline what they feel are the psychological, theoretical–methodological, and institutional contexts required for creative work. Based on a collection of anecdotes and experiences, Schoenfeld (1999) identifies a number of difficulties and dilemmas facing doctoral education. Among these are specialization that leads to compartmentalization, theorizing that leads to superficiality, and simplistic approaches to methodology that hinder a deep understanding of what it means to make and justify a claim about educational phenomena. Schoenfeld suggests that many graduates complete their EDUCATIONAL RESEARCHER Downloaded from http://er.aera.net at OHIO UNIV on June 6, 2014 degrees unable to identify and frame workable research problems. In a theme issue of Educational Researcher, several authors (Metz, 2001; Page, 2001; Pallas, 2001) discussed similar challenges that they had faced in educating doctoral students and methods that they had used in their programs to address those challenges. On the basis of his experience coordinating and teaching in a doctoral program, Labaree (2003) outlined some of the general problems facing doctoral education. He framed the problems in terms of a clash between school and university cultures that occurs when we ask teachers to shift from a normative to an analytic way of thinking, from a personal to an intellectual relationship with educational phenomena, from a particular to a universal perspective, and from an experimental to a theoretical disposition. An important exception to the emphasis on methodology is Richardson (2003), who develops the concept of doctors of education as stewards of both the field of study and the enterprise of education. She uses this conceptual framework to argue for the knowledge, skills, and dispositions that doctoral programs in education should inculcate. The U.S. literature on the education doctorate is reminiscent of the early research on learning to teach (Wideen, Mayer-Smith, & Moon, 1999); with little or no support from solid data, the authors rely on their personal prestige to discuss the problems of practice and make recommendations for improvement. But like the literature on learning to teach, the literature on learning to research must move from anecdotes, generalizations, and reports of programs to systematic investigation and recommendations based on evidence. The Literature Review: A Necessary Chore? The perceived lack of importance of the dissertation literature review is seen in the paucity of research and publications devoted to understanding it. Doctoral students seeking advice on how to improve their literature reviews will find little published guidance worth heeding. Every introductory educational, social, and behavioral research textbook contains a chapter or section on reviewing prior research as part of the research process (e.g. Babbie, 1998; Creswell, 2002; Fraenkel & Wallen, 2003; Gay & Airasian, 2000; McMillan & Schumacher, 2001). These chapters typically indicate the importance of the literature review, albeit in vague terms, and briefly summarize techniques for searching electronic databases and methods for abstracting prior research. We infer from these chapters and sections that the authors of these textbooks acknowledge the importance of the literature review, at least in a salutatory way, but place a much greater emphasis on an understanding of methods of data collection and analysis. In accordance with other textbooks, Creswell (1994) suggests that the literature review should meet three criteria: “to present results of similar studies, to relate the present study to the ongoing dialogue in the literature, and to provide a framework for comparing the results of a study with other studies” (p. 37). To accomplish these criteria Creswell (2002) recommends a fivestep process: “identifying terms to typically use in your literature search; locating literature; reading and checking the relevance of the literature; organizing the literature you have selected; and writing a literature review” (p. 86). With guidelines like these, graduate students could be forgiven for thinking that writing a literature review is no more complicated than writing a high school term paper. These chapters and sections in introductory research textbooks are not the extent of the literature, but other sources devoted to the topic of literature reviewing and dissertation writing are little more sophisticated (e.g., Galvan, 2004; Lester, 2002; Mauch, 1998; Nickerson, 1993; Ogden, 1993; Pan, 2003). More advanced research textbooks and handbooks ignore the subject, focusing entirely on methods of data collection, interpretation, and philosophical issues. In other words, with the very few exceptions noted below, most graduate students receive little or no formal training in how to analyze and synthesize the research literature in their field, and they are unlikely to find it elsewhere. Bruce’s (1994) phenomenographic study of metaphors for the literature review sheds further light on the limitations of published criteria for reviewing literature. She found that research students perceive themselves in quite diverse metaphorical relationships with the literature in their field, ranging from listing, searching, and surveying to acting as a vehicle for learning, facilitating, and reporting. Note that the metaphor of vehicle for learning, facilitating, and reporting suggests more sophisticated, developed, and integrated literature reviews. Although a literature review consistent with any of these metaphors can fulfill textbook criteria, candidates may view themselves as anywhere from metaphorically standing aside and haphazardly cataloguing prior findings to critically analyzing and synthesizing the field of study. Bruce’s account offers further support for the view that criteria published in popular textbooks are too vague and do not provide clear standards. That doctoral candidates would espouse such naïve conceptions of literature reviewing and perceive it as relatively low in importance would seem to be a product of the culture of doctoral programs in education. Zaporozhetz (1987) reported that doctoral candidates felt their library skills were inadequate, while their faculty advisors admitted expecting their candidates to possess advanced bibliographic skills even though the advisors themselves had little knowledge of information retrieval. Faculty also ranked the review-of-literature chapter the lowest in importance when considered in relation to the other standard dissertation chapters. Zaporozhetz also reported that most dissertation chairs and students saw the literature review as a relatively routine activity that doctoral candidates should be able to complete alone with little help from their advisors. And Labaree (2003) reminds us that most doctoral students in education have little formal training in education research and scholarship before they start their doctorate, with their undergraduate and master’s degrees usually in other fields or disciplines or focused almost entirely on education practice. Both Zaporozhetz and Labaree note that education doctoral students tend to be mature, accomplished professionals who are committed to improving education practice. Yet these qualities make it more difficult for them to admit that they may lack library search and information synthesis skills and knowledge. We may ... 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