Literature reviews

Whether you’ve been given a topic by your teacher, or you’ve been asked to decide upon your own topic or research question, it’s best to rephrase the topic as a specific question that you’re attempting to answer.

If your purpose is to summarise the existing research on the topic, it may be quite appropriate to have a very broad question, such as the example below.

If your purpose is to justify the need to conduct further primary research, you will need a more specific research question which takes into account how the existing research has failed to adequately answer the question you’re planning to address. 

This question allows the writer to narrow the focus of their literature review and, hopefully, find gaps in the amount or type of research conducted into this very specific topic. Sometimes you may start with a broader topic or question, then conduct some initial research into the existing literature, and then narrow the focus of your research question based on what you find.

When searching for relevant sources, it’s important to first decide the criteria you will use when trying to find existing research. This includes setting the scope of your research to decide what is important and why.

• How old can your research papers be? Must they be from the past 5 years, or would any papers from the previous 15 years be considered acceptable? The answers may depend on:
  • your discipline
  • the purpose of your research
  • the amount of research that has been conducted on that topic
  • the speed with which findings are considered no longer valid
• Which databases will you use? What types of journals are considered acceptable? Speaking with your teacher, and with a Librarian from UTS Library, can help you make these decisions.
• Are you focusing on research relating to a particular country, and if so, why?
• Are you focusing on particular research methods or specific theoretical approaches? If so, you need to explain to the reader what they are and why you have made these decisions.

What notes you take depends on your research question. Knowing what you’re trying to achieve or what question you’re trying to answer will help you choose what to focus on when reading the literature. Common aspects to look out for when reading include:

• the main research findings
• the researchers’ claims (usually based on their interpretation of the findings)
• where, when and how the research was conducted
• the scope and/or limitations of the research being reviewed

Remember to also take notes about your own response to the literature. If you see weaknesses in a particular study, or assumptions being made when interpreting the findings of a study, make a note of it, as your critical analysis of the literature is a key aspect of a literature review.

Before drafting your literature review, it’s useful to group together your sources according to theme. A good literature review is not structured based on having one paragraph for each paper that you review. Instead, paragraphs are based on topics or themes that have been identified when conducting your research, with various sources synthesised within each paragraph.

How you decide on your groupings will depend on the purpose of your literature review. You may be clear on this before you begin researching, or your themes may emerge during the research process. Examples can include:

• the methodology used to conduct the research
• the theoretical perspective used by the researchers
• themes identified when analysing the various research findings
• opinions presented by the researchers based on their analysis of the findings

Your literature review should tell some sort of story. After reading the various studies published on your topic, are you able to clearly answer your initial research question? If so, was it an answer you were expecting, and what evidence was most useful in helping you answer the question. If there is no clear answer to your question, is that because:

• not enough research has been conducted on the topic?
• the findings of the various studies are contradictory or inconclusive?
• the results are too dependent on a specific context?
• there are too many variables to consider?

Whatever you decide, you need to explain this clearly to your reader, guiding them through how you got to your answer by explaining what you were looking for and what connections you found when looking through the existing literature.

The introduction is usually one paragraph in a short literature review, or series of paragraphs in a longer review, outlining:

• the content being covered,
• the structure (or how the review is organised), and
• the limits of what will be covered.

Example introduction to a literature review

[1] Education  is one aspect of society that everyone has experienced, and that everyone therefore has an opinion about. However, despite decades of research into pedagogical approaches to education, there is still surprisingly little consensus regarding how learning and teaching should be conducted in order to be most effective. This is especially true with regards to critical pedagogy, which can be defined as the theory and practice of helping students achieve critical consciousness about what they are learning, how they are learning it, and the context which shapes both of these aspects (Windsor, 2018). [2] The  purpose of this literature review is to demonstrate the lack of analytical approaches to teaching in the higher education sphere, and the importance of critical pedagogy in enhancing curriculum development, teacher training and classroom practice. When reviewing the literature, it soon becomes clear that research studies in the ESL field are dominated by language instruction techniques, with less attention given to ways teachers can adopt a more critical stance with their learners (Pennycook 1999; Saroub & Quadros 2015). [3] For  the purposes of this review, respected ESL and Adult Education journals, online publications, unpublished theses and academic books from the late 1980s to 2016 will be examined, with a coverage of sources from Australia, the US, Asia, the Middle East and South America. Pennycook (1994, 1999), Giroux (1988) and Freire (1970) are commonly cited in these research studies. It is rare to find authors or research questioning the value of critical pedagogy; Ellsworth (1989) and Johnson (1999) are notable exceptions. [4] This  literature review covers two main areas. Firstly, research into what pre-service and existing teachers know and think about critical pedagogy is examined. The second area investigates teacher and student resistance to some critical teaching practices.

Rather than writing one paragraph for each piece of research being discussed, literature reviews are usually organised so that each paragraph (or section) covers one theme or sub-topic. These themes will differ depending on your topic and your purpose, but may relate to:

• different theoretical perspectives on your topic
• different ways of conducting research on the topic
• different sub-topics within the broader topic

Each section ends with a brief summary which relates this theme to the main focus of the research area. It may do this by focusing on parts of the topic where the literature agrees or disagrees. The body paragraphs should be well organised and structured. See our resources on effective paragraph writing.

Example body paragraph from a literature review

[1] Resistance to change is another area that was found to restrict the adoption of critical teaching practices in the ESL area. [2] Canh and Barnard’s small case study (2009) of Vietnamese teachers’ capacity to take on a national curriculum change directed by the Vietnamese government found implementation was different from the ‘idealised world of innovation designers’ (p. 30). While also recommending better teacher training, they cited the need for an adjustment of teachers’ belief systems to make change happen, since an individual’s practice ‘behind the closed doors of their classroom’ (p. 21) is a largely unobserved space, despite mandated curriculum changes. [3] Similarly,  resistance and avoidance among EFL teachers was noted by Cox & De Assis–Peterson’s Brazilian study (1999). They found that teachers often avoided political language questions from students, for example, ‘Why should we learn English if we’re Brazilian?’ [4] This suggests that any uptake of critical practices may be more dependent on teacher attitudes, reflecting their internal reality, than on external factors.

The conclusion summarises the main themes that were identified when reviewing the literature.

Example conclusion from a literature review

[1] This review of relevant literature has quite clearly shown a lack of understanding of critical pedagogy among a range of teachers, despite the strong likelihood of it being included in their training. [2] It also demonstrated that many teachers used avoidance when faced with difficult topics or situations related to critical language education. [3] Calls for curriculum changes, better training and more teaching materials were common in research recommendations, and it may be that teachers’ personal attitudes also play an important role in changing classroom practice.

If the literature review is part of a larger research project, the conclusion should also summarise any gaps in the existing literature, and use this to justify the need for your own proposed research project. The types of gaps in the existing literature may relate to:

• a lack of research into a particular aspect of the topic, or
• the fact that existing evidence is conflicting or inconclusive, and therefore more evidence is required to help provide conclusive evidence, or
• problems in the methodology used in previous research, meaning that a different research method is required.

When describing a particular study or piece of research (or the researchers who conducted it), it is common to use past tense.

For example:

If you are sharing your own views about a previous study, or conveying the views of other experts, then present tense is more common.

For example:

If you are making generalisations about past research, present perfect tense is used.

For example:

Several researchers have studied the effects of stress on very young children (Baggio, 2014; Suarez, 2017; Van Djik et al., 2020).