writing a literature review in education

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Writing a Literature Review

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A literature review is a document or section of a document that collects key sources on a topic and discusses those sources in conversation with each other (also called synthesis ). The lit review is an important genre in many disciplines, not just literature (i.e., the study of works of literature such as novels and plays). When we say “literature review” or refer to “the literature,” we are talking about the research ( scholarship ) in a given field. You will often see the terms “the research,” “the scholarship,” and “the literature” used mostly interchangeably.

Where, when, and why would I write a lit review?

There are a number of different situations where you might write a literature review, each with slightly different expectations; different disciplines, too, have field-specific expectations for what a literature review is and does. For instance, in the humanities, authors might include more overt argumentation and interpretation of source material in their literature reviews, whereas in the sciences, authors are more likely to report study designs and results in their literature reviews; these differences reflect these disciplines’ purposes and conventions in scholarship. You should always look at examples from your own discipline and talk to professors or mentors in your field to be sure you understand your discipline’s conventions, for literature reviews as well as for any other genre.

A literature review can be a part of a research paper or scholarly article, usually falling after the introduction and before the research methods sections. In these cases, the lit review just needs to cover scholarship that is important to the issue you are writing about; sometimes it will also cover key sources that informed your research methodology.

Lit reviews can also be standalone pieces, either as assignments in a class or as publications. In a class, a lit review may be assigned to help students familiarize themselves with a topic and with scholarship in their field, get an idea of the other researchers working on the topic they’re interested in, find gaps in existing research in order to propose new projects, and/or develop a theoretical framework and methodology for later research. As a publication, a lit review usually is meant to help make other scholars’ lives easier by collecting and summarizing, synthesizing, and analyzing existing research on a topic. This can be especially helpful for students or scholars getting into a new research area, or for directing an entire community of scholars toward questions that have not yet been answered.

What are the parts of a lit review?

Most lit reviews use a basic introduction-body-conclusion structure; if your lit review is part of a larger paper, the introduction and conclusion pieces may be just a few sentences while you focus most of your attention on the body. If your lit review is a standalone piece, the introduction and conclusion take up more space and give you a place to discuss your goals, research methods, and conclusions separately from where you discuss the literature itself.

Introduction:

• An introductory paragraph that explains what your working topic and thesis is
• A forecast of key topics or texts that will appear in the review
• Potentially, a description of how you found sources and how you analyzed them for inclusion and discussion in the review (more often found in published, standalone literature reviews than in lit review sections in an article or research paper)
• Summarize and synthesize: Give an overview of the main points of each source and combine them into a coherent whole
• Analyze and interpret: Don’t just paraphrase other researchers – add your own interpretations where possible, discussing the significance of findings in relation to the literature as a whole
• Critically Evaluate: Mention the strengths and weaknesses of your sources
• Write in well-structured paragraphs: Use transition words and topic sentence to draw connections, comparisons, and contrasts.

Conclusion:

• Summarize the key findings you have taken from the literature and emphasize their significance
• Connect it back to your primary research question

How should I organize my lit review?

Lit reviews can take many different organizational patterns depending on what you are trying to accomplish with the review. Here are some examples:

• Chronological : The simplest approach is to trace the development of the topic over time, which helps familiarize the audience with the topic (for instance if you are introducing something that is not commonly known in your field). If you choose this strategy, be careful to avoid simply listing and summarizing sources in order. Try to analyze the patterns, turning points, and key debates that have shaped the direction of the field. Give your interpretation of how and why certain developments occurred (as mentioned previously, this may not be appropriate in your discipline — check with a teacher or mentor if you’re unsure).
• Thematic : If you have found some recurring central themes that you will continue working with throughout your piece, you can organize your literature review into subsections that address different aspects of the topic. For example, if you are reviewing literature about women and religion, key themes can include the role of women in churches and the religious attitude towards women.
• Qualitative versus quantitative research
• Empirical versus theoretical scholarship
• Divide the research by sociological, historical, or cultural sources
• Theoretical : In many humanities articles, the literature review is the foundation for the theoretical framework. You can use it to discuss various theories, models, and definitions of key concepts. You can argue for the relevance of a specific theoretical approach or combine various theorical concepts to create a framework for your research.

What are some strategies or tips I can use while writing my lit review?

Any lit review is only as good as the research it discusses; make sure your sources are well-chosen and your research is thorough. Don’t be afraid to do more research if you discover a new thread as you’re writing. More info on the research process is available in our "Conducting Research" resources .

As you’re doing your research, create an annotated bibliography ( see our page on the this type of document ). Much of the information used in an annotated bibliography can be used also in a literature review, so you’ll be not only partially drafting your lit review as you research, but also developing your sense of the larger conversation going on among scholars, professionals, and any other stakeholders in your topic.

Usually you will need to synthesize research rather than just summarizing it. This means drawing connections between sources to create a picture of the scholarly conversation on a topic over time. Many student writers struggle to synthesize because they feel they don’t have anything to add to the scholars they are citing; here are some strategies to help you:

• It often helps to remember that the point of these kinds of syntheses is to show your readers how you understand your research, to help them read the rest of your paper.
• Writing teachers often say synthesis is like hosting a dinner party: imagine all your sources are together in a room, discussing your topic. What are they saying to each other?
• Look at the in-text citations in each paragraph. Are you citing just one source for each paragraph? This usually indicates summary only. When you have multiple sources cited in a paragraph, you are more likely to be synthesizing them (not always, but often
• Read more about synthesis here.

The most interesting literature reviews are often written as arguments (again, as mentioned at the beginning of the page, this is discipline-specific and doesn’t work for all situations). Often, the literature review is where you can establish your research as filling a particular gap or as relevant in a particular way. You have some chance to do this in your introduction in an article, but the literature review section gives a more extended opportunity to establish the conversation in the way you would like your readers to see it. You can choose the intellectual lineage you would like to be part of and whose definitions matter most to your thinking (mostly humanities-specific, but this goes for sciences as well). In addressing these points, you argue for your place in the conversation, which tends to make the lit review more compelling than a simple reporting of other sources.

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• How to Write a Literature Review | Guide, Examples, & Templates

How to Write a Literature Review | Guide, Examples, & Templates

Published on January 2, 2023 by Shona McCombes . Revised on September 11, 2023.

What is a literature review? A literature review is a survey of scholarly sources on a specific topic. It provides an overview of current knowledge, allowing you to identify relevant theories, methods, and gaps in the existing research that you can later apply to your paper, thesis, or dissertation topic .

There are five key steps to writing a literature review:

• Search for relevant literature
• Evaluate sources
• Identify themes, debates, and gaps
• Outline the structure
• Write your literature review

A good literature review doesn’t just summarize sources—it analyzes, synthesizes , and critically evaluates to give a clear picture of the state of knowledge on the subject.

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Table of contents

What is the purpose of a literature review, examples of literature reviews, step 1 – search for relevant literature, step 2 – evaluate and select sources, step 3 – identify themes, debates, and gaps, step 4 – outline your literature review’s structure, step 5 – write your literature review, free lecture slides, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions, introduction.

• Quick Run-through
• Step 1 & 2

When you write a thesis , dissertation , or research paper , you will likely have to conduct a literature review to situate your research within existing knowledge. The literature review gives you a chance to:

• Demonstrate your familiarity with the topic and its scholarly context
• Develop a theoretical framework and methodology for your research
• Position your work in relation to other researchers and theorists
• Show how your research addresses a gap or contributes to a debate
• Evaluate the current state of research and demonstrate your knowledge of the scholarly debates around your topic.

Writing literature reviews is a particularly important skill if you want to apply for graduate school or pursue a career in research. We’ve written a step-by-step guide that you can follow below.

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Writing literature reviews can be quite challenging! A good starting point could be to look at some examples, depending on what kind of literature review you’d like to write.

• Example literature review #1: “Why Do People Migrate? A Review of the Theoretical Literature” ( Theoretical literature review about the development of economic migration theory from the 1950s to today.)
• Example literature review #2: “Literature review as a research methodology: An overview and guidelines” ( Methodological literature review about interdisciplinary knowledge acquisition and production.)
• Example literature review #3: “The Use of Technology in English Language Learning: A Literature Review” ( Thematic literature review about the effects of technology on language acquisition.)
• Example literature review #4: “Learners’ Listening Comprehension Difficulties in English Language Learning: A Literature Review” ( Chronological literature review about how the concept of listening skills has changed over time.)

You can also check out our templates with literature review examples and sample outlines at the links below.

Download Word doc Download Google doc

Before you begin searching for literature, you need a clearly defined topic .

If you are writing the literature review section of a dissertation or research paper, you will search for literature related to your research problem and questions .

Make a list of keywords

Start by creating a list of keywords related to your research question. Include each of the key concepts or variables you’re interested in, and list any synonyms and related terms. You can add to this list as you discover new keywords in the process of your literature search.

• Social media, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, TikTok
• Body image, self-perception, self-esteem, mental health
• Generation Z, teenagers, adolescents, youth

Search for relevant sources

Use your keywords to begin searching for sources. Some useful databases to search for journals and articles include:

• Your university’s library catalogue
• Google Scholar
• Project Muse (humanities and social sciences)
• Medline (life sciences and biomedicine)
• EconLit (economics)
• Inspec (physics, engineering and computer science)

You can also use boolean operators to help narrow down your search.

Make sure to read the abstract to find out whether an article is relevant to your question. When you find a useful book or article, you can check the bibliography to find other relevant sources.

You likely won’t be able to read absolutely everything that has been written on your topic, so it will be necessary to evaluate which sources are most relevant to your research question.

For each publication, ask yourself:

• What question or problem is the author addressing?
• What are the key concepts and how are they defined?
• What are the key theories, models, and methods?
• Does the research use established frameworks or take an innovative approach?
• What are the results and conclusions of the study?
• How does the publication relate to other literature in the field? Does it confirm, add to, or challenge established knowledge?
• What are the strengths and weaknesses of the research?

Make sure the sources you use are credible , and make sure you read any landmark studies and major theories in your field of research.

You can use our template to summarize and evaluate sources you’re thinking about using. Click on either button below to download.

Take notes and cite your sources

As you read, you should also begin the writing process. Take notes that you can later incorporate into the text of your literature review.

It is important to keep track of your sources with citations to avoid plagiarism . It can be helpful to make an annotated bibliography , where you compile full citation information and write a paragraph of summary and analysis for each source. This helps you remember what you read and saves time later in the process.

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To begin organizing your literature review’s argument and structure, be sure you understand the connections and relationships between the sources you’ve read. Based on your reading and notes, you can look for:

• Trends and patterns (in theory, method or results): do certain approaches become more or less popular over time?
• Themes: what questions or concepts recur across the literature?
• Debates, conflicts and contradictions: where do sources disagree?
• Pivotal publications: are there any influential theories or studies that changed the direction of the field?
• Gaps: what is missing from the literature? Are there weaknesses that need to be addressed?

This step will help you work out the structure of your literature review and (if applicable) show how your own research will contribute to existing knowledge.

• Most research has focused on young women.
• There is an increasing interest in the visual aspects of social media.
• But there is still a lack of robust research on highly visual platforms like Instagram and Snapchat—this is a gap that you could address in your own research.

There are various approaches to organizing the body of a literature review. Depending on the length of your literature review, you can combine several of these strategies (for example, your overall structure might be thematic, but each theme is discussed chronologically).

Chronological

The simplest approach is to trace the development of the topic over time. However, if you choose this strategy, be careful to avoid simply listing and summarizing sources in order.

Try to analyze patterns, turning points and key debates that have shaped the direction of the field. Give your interpretation of how and why certain developments occurred.

If you have found some recurring central themes, you can organize your literature review into subsections that address different aspects of the topic.

For example, if you are reviewing literature about inequalities in migrant health outcomes, key themes might include healthcare policy, language barriers, cultural attitudes, legal status, and economic access.

Methodological

If you draw your sources from different disciplines or fields that use a variety of research methods , you might want to compare the results and conclusions that emerge from different approaches. For example:

• Look at what results have emerged in qualitative versus quantitative research
• Discuss how the topic has been approached by empirical versus theoretical scholarship
• Divide the literature into sociological, historical, and cultural sources

Theoretical

A literature review is often the foundation for a theoretical framework . You can use it to discuss various theories, models, and definitions of key concepts.

You might argue for the relevance of a specific theoretical approach, or combine various theoretical concepts to create a framework for your research.

Like any other academic text , your literature review should have an introduction , a main body, and a conclusion . What you include in each depends on the objective of your literature review.

The introduction should clearly establish the focus and purpose of the literature review.

Depending on the length of your literature review, you might want to divide the body into subsections. You can use a subheading for each theme, time period, or methodological approach.

As you write, you can follow these tips:

• Summarize and synthesize: give an overview of the main points of each source and combine them into a coherent whole
• Analyze and interpret: don’t just paraphrase other researchers — add your own interpretations where possible, discussing the significance of findings in relation to the literature as a whole
• Critically evaluate: mention the strengths and weaknesses of your sources
• Write in well-structured paragraphs: use transition words and topic sentences to draw connections, comparisons and contrasts

In the conclusion, you should summarize the key findings you have taken from the literature and emphasize their significance.

When you’ve finished writing and revising your literature review, don’t forget to proofread thoroughly before submitting. Not a language expert? Check out Scribbr’s professional proofreading services !

This article has been adapted into lecture slides that you can use to teach your students about writing a literature review.

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If you want to know more about the research process , methodology , research bias , or statistics , make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples.

• Sampling methods
• Simple random sampling
• Stratified sampling
• Cluster sampling
• Likert scales
• Reproducibility

 Statistics

• Null hypothesis
• Statistical power
• Probability distribution
• Effect size
• Poisson distribution

Research bias

• Optimism bias
• Cognitive bias
• Implicit bias
• Hawthorne effect
• Anchoring bias
• Explicit bias

A literature review is a survey of scholarly sources (such as books, journal articles, and theses) related to a specific topic or research question .

It is often written as part of a thesis, dissertation , or research paper , in order to situate your work in relation to existing knowledge.

There are several reasons to conduct a literature review at the beginning of a research project:

• To familiarize yourself with the current state of knowledge on your topic
• To ensure that you’re not just repeating what others have already done
• To identify gaps in knowledge and unresolved problems that your research can address
• To develop your theoretical framework and methodology
• To provide an overview of the key findings and debates on the topic

Writing the literature review shows your reader how your work relates to existing research and what new insights it will contribute.

The literature review usually comes near the beginning of your thesis or dissertation . After the introduction , it grounds your research in a scholarly field and leads directly to your theoretical framework or methodology .

A literature review is a survey of credible sources on a topic, often used in dissertations , theses, and research papers . Literature reviews give an overview of knowledge on a subject, helping you identify relevant theories and methods, as well as gaps in existing research. Literature reviews are set up similarly to other  academic texts , with an introduction , a main body, and a conclusion .

An  annotated bibliography is a list of  source references that has a short description (called an annotation ) for each of the sources. It is often assigned as part of the research process for a  paper .  

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Education Basics

Literature review overview.

• Article and Media Sources
• Quick Stats and Reference
• OAE and Praxis Core
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There are eight general steps in conducting an education literature review. Please follow the eight numbered boxes, starting below.

Please note that the general framework for this guide is derived from the work of Joyce P. Gall, M.D. Gall, and Walter R. Borg in Applying Educational Research: a Practical Guide (5th ed., 2005). Also, much of the information on framing the research question comes from Emily Grimm's Selected Reference Sources for Graduate Students in Education and Education Related Areas (1995).

Step 1: Frame Your Research Question(s)

Basic Questions

• What do I want to know?  For what purpose? Consider subject terms, synonyms, related concepts and approaches.
• What do I know already?
• Who else might have performed similar research and why? Consider individuals, institutions, governmental agencies and other groups.
• What summarizing or descriptive information is already available? Consider the secondary sources found below.

Time Questions

• For which time span(s) do I need information?
• Would recurrent or temporal events in education affect my research?  For example: school terms, budget hearings, conference proceedings, legislative sessions, policy decisions, elections, administrative procedural changes.

Limitation(s) Questions

• Do I have other limitations?  For example:  language, age group, grade level, type of student, type of school, type of district, geography, curricular area, or style of teaching.

Aspect Questions

• What aspects of education interest me?  For example:  financial, administrative, teaching, legislative, gender, parental, theoretical, research, developmental, practical or other.

Subjective Aspect Questions

• What are my values, prejudices, biases, and areas of ignorance in regard to my research question(s)?
• Will I let these prejudices limit my research?
• Will I let these prejudices influence my note taking, choice of vocabulary and indexing terms, selection of data, evaluations of the work of other researchers, inclusion of conflicting theories, reporting of data, or my conclusions?

Step 2: Contact Experts to Get Answers or for Guidance to Relevant Publications

Consider consulting other educators, faculty or government officials who may specialize in your research area.

You may also want to consult the American Educational Research Association SIG (Special Interest Group) website for the names of groups and individuals who have expertise in different educational areas.  AERA provides the names, addresses, e-mail addresses, and phone numbers of individuals doing research in a variety of areas.

Step 3: Read Secondary Sources to Gain a Broad Overview of the Literature Related to Your Research Area

Use secondary sources to further define your research question and to expand your literature search.  Secondary sources include encyclopedias, handbooks, dictionaries, and thesauri. Secondary sources are resources that review research that others have done.  They provide a general overview, will give you ideas for key search terms, and often include useful bibliographies for further reading.

Here are some key secondary sources and books on doing educational research:

• Review of Educational Research The Review of Educational Research (RER) publishes critical, integrative reviews of research literature bearing on education, including conceptualizations, interpretations, and syntheses of literature and scholarly work in a field broadly relevant to education and educational research.

SAGE Research Methods is a research methods tool created to help researchers¸ faculty and students with their research projects. SAGE Research Methods links over 100¸000 pages of SAGE's book¸ journal and reference content with advanced search and discovery tools. Researchers can explore methods concepts to help them design research projects¸ understand particular methods or identify a new method¸ conduct their research¸ and write up their findings. Since SAGE Research Methods focuses on methodology rather than disciplines¸ it can be used across the social sciences¸ health sciences¸ and more.

• Educational Psychology Review Educational Psychology Review is an international forum for the publication of peer-reviewed integrative review articles, special thematic issues, reflections or comments on previous research or new research directions, interviews, and research-based advice for practitioners.
• Doing educational research : a guide to first-time researchers CECH Prof Ed LB1028 .D65 2004
• Effective action research: developing reflective thinking and practice Electronic (2011)
• Encyclopedia of Education Electronic and Langsam Library Reference, LB 15 .E47 2003
• Encyclopedia of Special Education [electronic resource] : a Reference for the Education of Children, Adolescents, and Adults with Disabilities and other Exceptional Individuals Electronic, 2007.
• Handbook of research on educational communications and technology CECH Library Reference, LB 1028.3 . H355 2008
• Handbook of research on multicultural education CECH Library Reference, LC 1099.3 .H35 2004
• Handbook of research on teaching CECH Library Reference, LB1028 .S39 2001
• How to design and evaluate research in education CECH Reserves LB1028 .F665 2012
• Methods in educational research: from theory to practice Electronic (2010)
• The Phi Delta Kappan [electronic resource] Electronic, Contains many articles that cite research and analyze practical implications.
• The Routledge International Encyclopedia of Education CECH Library Reference, LB 15 .R633 2008

Step 4: Select Preliminary Sources that Index Relevant Research Literature

Preliminary sources index primary research resources such as journal articles, conference proceeding papers, technical reports, government documents, dissertations and more.  The CECH Library has created several specialized library guides on topics such as special education, instructional design & technology, and teaching STEM related topics that list which resources are most helpful for doing research in these areas. See below for key databases in education:

Step 5: Identify Subject Terms, or Descriptors, and Use Them to Search Preliminary Sources

Choosing the most appropriate subject search terms, or descriptors, for searching indexes and catalogs can greatly influence your search results.  A good place to start is ERIC's thesaurus of descriptors:

Step 6: Read and Evaluate Primary Sources Discovered Through Indexes

For assistance in obtaining copies of primary sources, please consult your liaison librarian .

As you print out copies of articles, review copies of books or reports, remember to look in the sources for bibliographies, names of individuals or groups who have done research on the topic, and for additional subject terms to help you narrow or broaden your research.

Step 7: Classify the Publications You Have Reviewed into Meaningful Categories

As you review the sources you find, classify them into meaningful categories.  This will help you prioritize reading them and may indicate useful ways to synthesize what you discover.  You may want to create a simple code for the different categories.

Step 8: Prepare Your Literature Review Report

See the following resources for advice on preparing a literature review report:

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Education: Literature Reviews

• Handbooks, Encyclopedias, Dictionaries
• Books and Searchable E-Book Collections
• Articles in Education Databases
• Articles in Subject Databases
• Articles in Multidisciplinary Databases
• Full-text Dissertations
• Open Access
• Publications, Reports, Working Papers
• Literature Reviews
• Research Methods
• How to Search Better
• Manage your Citations
• Journal Info / Metrics
• Author Citation Metrics

Getting Started on Literature Reviews

• "Reviewing the Literature" Project Planner SAGE Research Methods. Provides checklists and bullet points for the literature review process, with "Search for reources" links to relevant SAGE Research Methods fulltext books and book chapters.
• "Literature reviews" / Lawrence A. Machi & Brenda T. McEvoy Oxford Bibliographies : Education, 2016. An annotated bibliography identifying and describing books and articles on the theory of literature reviews, their variety, and how to write them.

Selected Books on Writing Literature Reviews

Search Databases for Literature Review Articles and Overview Publications

• ERIC (ProQuest) Filter search results for Document Type = 070 : Information Analyses and 130 : Reference Materials - Bibliographies. ERIC Digests, research syntheses produced by ERIC ceased after ERIC's reform that closed its research-monitoring clearinghouses in the early 2000s. The ERIC database continues to make available the 3,000+ ERIC Digest published in 1980-2003. They may be found in ERIC (ProQuest) using the search filter for Document type = 073
• APA PsycInfo PsycINFO has a Methodology limit, with values of Literature review, Systematic Review, or Meta-analysis.
• Web of Science (WOS) Don't be misled by "science" in the title. WOS also covers the humanities and social sciences. On the left, under Refine Results, Select REVIEWS under Document Types. This is a limit for literature reviews or overview articles. THis may not get all lit reviews. Consider also searching the TS field (Title, Abstract, Author Keyword, Keywords Plus®) with meta-analysis, metaanalysis, synthesis, overview.
• Scopus Do a search in Scopus for a keyword. Then refine the results by selected under "Document type" - review.
• PubMed Perform a search, then under Article Type on the right, see Reviews or Systematic Reviews.
• ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global‎: Full Collection Dissertations can sometimes be useful for review-type surveys of the literature on a specific field. Most often authors begin their study with a review of the literature in order to offer context for their contribution.

Selected Journals with Review Articles

• Review of Educational Research (RER) SAGE, for American Educational Research Association (AERA), 1931- . Publishes critical, integrative reviews of research literature bearing on education, including conceptualizations, interpretations, and syntheses of literature and scholarly work in a field broadly relevant to education and educational research.
• Review of Research in Education (RRE) SAGE, for AERA, 1973- . Each RRE annual volume is devoted to a single topic, with research syntheses and literature reviews.
• Educational Research Review Elsevier, for European Association for Research on Learning and Instruction (EARLI), 2006- .
• Campbell Systematic Reviews Wiley, for Campbell Collaboration, 2004- . CSR publishes finalized systematic reviews developed through the Campbell Collaboration. Subjects include education and child welfare.
• Educational Psychology Review An international forum for the publication of peer-reviewed integrative review articles, special thematic issues, reflections or comments on previous research or new research directions, interviews, and research-based advice for practitioners - all pertaining to the field of educational psychology.
• Annual Reviews AnnRev publishes literature-review journals in physical, life and social sciences. Includes anthropology, economics, linguistics, public health, psychology, and sociology. Education topics may be found in many of these discipline-specific journals.
• Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science SAGE, for AAPSS, 1890- . Penn's house journal for the social sciences, and one of the oldest US scholarly journals. Each issue presents research syntheses on a specific topic, with one issue per year focusing on education or child welfare.
• Emerging Trends in the Social and Behavioral sciences Wiley, 2015-201?. Review articles on new research fronts. Includes a recurring section on "Educational Institutions" .

Systematic Review Databases

• Systematic Review Data Repository (SRDR) U.S. Department of Health and Human Services - open and searchable archive of systematic reviews and their data.
• Campbell Collaboration - Library of Systematic Reviews Systematic reviews in areas such as education, criminal justice, social policy and social care. (The Campbell Collaboration was formally established at a meeting at the University of Pennsylvania on 24-25 February 2000.)
• EPPI-Centre The Evidence for Policy and Practice Information and Co-ordinating Centre (EPPI-Centre) is part of the Social Science Research Unit at the Institute of Education, University of London. EPPI develops systematic reviews and developing review methods in social science and public policy.
• Cochrane Collaboration Cochrane Reviews are systematic reviews of primary research in human health care and health policy. Since 2011, Cochrane has an official partnership with the WHO.
• What Works Clearinghouse - U.S. Department of Education
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Education Research Guide: How to Write a Literature Review

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Literature Reviews Explained

Use the articles below to learn about:

• what a literature review is
• how to select and research a topic
• how to write a literature review
• University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill The Writing Center: Literature Reviews
• OWL (Purdue University Online Writing Lab): Using APA to format your Literature Review

Synthesizing Explained

Synthesizing is a method of analyzing the main ideas and important information from your sources as you read and prepare to write a literature review. Review the resources below for sample synthesizing methods. Both examples have tables you can fill out as you read articles to help you organize your thoughts. 

• Writing a Literature Review and Using a Synthesis Matrix: NC University Tutorial Center
• Matrix Example from the University of West Florida Libraries
• Synthesizing Cornelsen This article is included in "Writing a Literature Review and Using a Synthesis Matrix" to illustrate synthesizing articles in the sample matrix.
• Synthesizing: Bruley This article is included in "Writing a Literature Review and Using a Synthesis Matrix" to illustrate synthesizing articles in the sample matrix.

Sample Literature Reviews

Make sure you follow any instructions from you professor on how to format your literature review! Use the examples below to get ideas for how you might write about the sources you found in your research.

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What's my goal in a lit review?

Your goal in a literature review is to present and analyze the literature about a particular topic. In research and grant proposals, literature reviews show the gaps in knowledge your study or project will address.

Each source in a lit review is a piece of a larger puzzle . You'll want to discover:

Where do your sources agree ?

Where do your sources contradict one another or show lack of consensus?

Where are the gaps in knowledge about your topic?

How did research on your topic develop over time ?

The lit review in 7 steps

You can write a literature review in 7 steps:

1. Make friends with your subject librarian. We're always happy to help !

2. Refine your research topic. Do a preliminary search to see what you find, then narrow your topic based on what turns up. You can even read other literature reviews (standalone articles or at the beginning of articles) to get your footing.

3. Select appropriate search tools. These might include specialized subject databases, Google Scholar, the library catalog, etc.

4. Conduct your search thoroughly and strategically. Consult with a librarian to help you develop keywords and search strings, use subject searching and filtering to your advantage, and track down full text of sources.

5. Choose what sources to use. Make sure you're capturing multiple perspectives on your issue or topic, not just a narrow view. In a comprehensive, "systematic review" you'll need to be rigorous about inclusion/exclusion criteria.

6. Read, annotate, analyze, and synthesize. Make your reading an active process by highlighting and taking notes. Consider using a matrix to organize your sources and identify scholarly conversations.

7. Write! Remember that your voice has a place in this conversation. Your analysis and organization is the glue of the lit review. Ask for feedback on your work from your instructor, peers, and librarian.

• "Lit reviews in 7 steps" handout Download a copy of the steps, including more details and tips about each one.

Synthesis in a lit review

Need more help?

• Literature Reviews: An overview for grad students View this 9 minute video created by NCSU giving a good, concise description of what a lit review accomplishes.
• Writing a Literature Review Check out this useful libguide from Boston College - it further outlines the process of writing a literature review and provides some useful research tips!

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Chapter 1: Introduction

Learning objectives.

At the conclusion of this chapter, you will be able to:

• Identify the purpose of the literature review in  the research process
• Distinguish between different types of literature reviews

1.1 What is a Literature Review?

Pick up nearly any book on research methods and you will find a description of a literature review.  At a basic level, the term implies a survey of factual or nonfiction books, articles, and other documents published on a particular subject.  Definitions may be similar across the disciplines, with new types and definitions continuing to emerge.  Generally speaking, a literature review is a:

• “comprehensive background of the literature within the interested topic area…” ( O’Gorman & MacIntosh, 2015, p. 31 ).
• “critical component of the research process that provides an in-depth analysis of recently published research findings in specifically identified areas of interest.” ( House, 2018, p. 109 ).
• “written document that presents a logically argued case founded on a comprehensive understanding of the current state of knowledge about a topic of study” ( Machi & McEvoy,  2012, p. 4 ).

As a foundation for knowledge advancement in every discipline, it is an important element of any research project.  At the graduate or doctoral level, the literature review is an essential feature of thesis and dissertation, as well as grant proposal writing.  That is to say, “A substantive, thorough, sophisticated literature review is a precondition for doing substantive, thorough, sophisticated research…A researcher cannot perform significant research without first understanding the literature in the field.” ( Boote & Beile, 2005, p. 3 ).  It is by this means, that a researcher demonstrates familiarity with a body of knowledge and thereby establishes credibility with a reader.  An advanced-level literature review shows how prior research is linked to a new project, summarizing and synthesizing what is known while identifying gaps in the knowledge base, facilitating theory development, closing areas where enough research already exists, and uncovering areas where more research is needed. ( Webster & Watson, 2002, p. xiii )

A graduate-level literature review is a compilation of the most significant previously published research on your topic. Unlike an annotated bibliography or a research paper you may have written as an undergraduate, your literature review will outline, evaluate and synthesize relevant research and relate those sources to your own thesis or research question. It is much more than a summary of all the related literature.

It is a type of writing that demonstrate the importance of your research by defining the main ideas and the relationship between them. A good literature review lays the foundation for the importance of your stated problem and research question.

Literature reviews:

• define a concept
• map the research terrain or scope
• systemize relationships between concepts
• identify gaps in the literature ( Rocco & Plathotnik, 2009, p. 128 )

The purpose of a literature review is to demonstrate that your research question  is meaningful. Additionally, you may review the literature of different disciplines to find deeper meaning and understanding of your topic. It is especially important to consider other disciplines when you do not find much on your topic in one discipline. You will need to search the cognate literature before claiming there is “little previous research” on your topic.

Well developed literature reviews involve numerous steps and activities. The literature review is an iterative process because you will do at least two of them: a preliminary search to learn what has been published in your area and whether there is sufficient support in the literature for moving ahead with your subject. After this first exploration, you will conduct a deeper dive into the literature to learn everything you can about the topic and its related issues.

Literature Review Tutorial

1.2 Literature Review Basics

An effective literature review must:

• Methodologically analyze and synthesize quality literature on a topic
• Provide a firm foundation to a topic or research area
• Provide a firm foundation for the selection of a research methodology
• Demonstrate that the proposed research contributes something new to the overall body of knowledge of advances the research field’s knowledge base. ( Levy & Ellis, 2006 ).

All literature reviews, whether they are qualitative, quantitative or both, will at some point:

• Introduce the topic and define its key terms
• Establish the importance of the topic
• Provide an overview of the amount of available literature and its types (for example: theoretical, statistical, speculative)
• Identify gaps in the literature
• Point out consistent finding across studies
• Arrive at a synthesis that organizes what is known about a topic
• Discusses possible implications and directions for future research

1.3 Types of Literature Reviews

There are many different types of literature reviews, however there are some shared characteristics or features.  Remember a comprehensive literature review is, at its most fundamental level, an original work based on an extensive critical examination and synthesis of the relevant literature on a topic. As a study of the research on a particular topic, it is arranged by key themes or findings, which may lead up to or link to the  research question.  In some cases, the research question will drive the type of literature review that is undertaken.

The following section includes brief descriptions of the terms used to describe different literature review types with examples of each.   The included citations are open access, Creative Commons licensed or copyright-restricted.

1.3.1 Types of Review

1.3.1.1 conceptual.

Guided by an understanding of basic issues rather than a research methodology. You are looking for key factors, concepts or variables and the presumed relationship between them. The goal of the conceptual literature review is to categorize and describe concepts relevant to your study or topic and outline a relationship between them. You will include relevant theory and empirical research.

Examples of a Conceptual Review:

• Education : The formality of learning science in everyday life: A conceptual literature review. ( Dohn, 2010 ).
• Education : Are we asking the right questions? A conceptual review of the educational development literature in higher education. ( Amundsen & Wilson, 2012 ).

1.3.1.2 Empirical

An empirical literature review collects, creates, arranges, and analyzes numeric data reflecting the frequency of themes, topics, authors and/or methods found in existing literature. Empirical literature reviews present their summaries in quantifiable terms using descriptive and inferential statistics.

Examples of an Empirical Review:

• Nursing : False-positive findings in Cochrane meta-analyses with and without application of trial sequential analysis: An empirical review. ( Imberger, Thorlund, Gluud, & Wettersley, 2016 ).
• Education : Impediments of e-learning adoption in higher learning institutions of Tanzania: An empirical review ( Mwakyusa & Mwalyagile, 2016 ).

1.3.1.3 Exploratory

Unlike a synoptic literature review, the purpose here is to provide a broad approach to the topic area. The aim is breadth rather than depth and to get a general feel for the size of the topic area. A graduate student might do an exploratory review of the literature before beginning a synoptic, or more comprehensive one.

Examples of an Exploratory Review:

• Education : University research management: An exploratory literature review. ( Schuetzenmeister, 2010 ).
• Education : An exploratory review of design principles in constructivist gaming learning environments. ( Rosario & Widmeyer, 2009 ).

1.3.1.4 Focused

A type of literature review limited to a single aspect of previous research, such as methodology. A focused literature review generally will describe the implications of choosing a particular element of past research, such as methodology in terms of data collection, analysis and interpretation.

Examples of a Focused Review:

• Nursing : Clinical inertia in the management of type 2 diabetes mellitus: A focused literature review. ( Khunti, Davies, & Khunti, 2015 ).
• Education : Language awareness: Genre awareness-a focused review of the literature. ( Stainton, 1992 ).

1.3.1.5 Integrative

Critiques past research and draws overall conclusions from the body of literature at a specified point in time. Reviews, critiques, and synthesizes representative literature on a topic in an integrated way. Most integrative reviews are intended to address mature topics or  emerging topics. May require the author to adopt a guiding theory, a set of competing models, or a point of view about a topic.  For more description of integrative reviews, see Whittemore & Knafl (2005).

Examples of an Integrative Review:

• Nursing : Interprofessional teamwork and collaboration between community health workers and healthcare teams: An integrative review. ( Franklin,  Bernhardt, Lopez, Long-Middleton, & Davis, 2015 ).
• Education : Exploring the gap between teacher certification and permanent employment in Ontario: An integrative literature review. ( Brock & Ryan, 2016 ).

1.3.1.6 Meta-analysis

A subset of a  systematic review, that takes findings from several studies on the same subject and analyzes them using standardized statistical procedures to pool together data. Integrates findings from a large body of quantitative findings to enhance understanding, draw conclusions, and detect patterns and relationships. Gather data from many different, independent studies that look at the same research question and assess similar outcome measures. Data is combined and re-analyzed, providing a greater statistical power than any single study alone. It’s important to note that not every systematic review includes a meta-analysis but a meta-analysis can’t exist without a systematic review of the literature.

Examples of a Meta-Analysis:

• Education : Efficacy of the cooperative learning method on mathematics achievement and attitude: A meta-analysis research. ( Capar & Tarim, 2015 ).
• Nursing : A meta-analysis of the effects of non-traditional teaching methods on the critical thinking abilities of nursing students. ( Lee, Lee, Gong, Bae, & Choi, 2016 ).
• Education : Gender differences in student attitudes toward science: A meta-analysis of the literature from 1970 to 1991. ( Weinburgh, 1995 ).

1.3.1.7 Narrative/Traditional

An overview of research on a particular topic that critiques and summarizes a body of literature. Typically broad in focus. Relevant past research is selected and synthesized into a coherent discussion. Methodologies, findings and limits of the existing body of knowledge are discussed in narrative form. Sometimes also referred to as a traditional literature review. Requires a sufficiently focused research question. The process may be subject to bias that supports the researcher’s own work.

Examples of a Narrative/Traditional Review:

• Nursing : Family carers providing support to a person dying in the home setting: A narrative literature review. ( Morris, King, Turner, & Payne, 2015 ).
• Education : Adventure education and Outward Bound: Out-of-class experiences that make a lasting difference. ( Hattie, Marsh, Neill, & Richards, 1997 ).
• Education : Good quality discussion is necessary but not sufficient in asynchronous tuition: A brief narrative review of the literature. ( Fear & Erikson-Brown, 2014 ).
• Nursing : Outcomes of physician job satisfaction: A narrative review, implications, and directions for future research. ( Williams & Skinner, 2003 ).

1.3.1.8 Realist

Aspecific type of literature review that is theory-driven and interpretative and is intended to explain the outcomes of a complex intervention program(s).

Examples of a Realist Review:

• Nursing : Lean thinking in healthcare: A realist review of the literature. ( Mazzacato, Savage, Brommels, 2010 ).
• Education : Unravelling quality culture in higher education: A realist review. ( Bendermacher, Egbrink, Wolfhagen, & Dolmans, 2017 ).

1.3.1.9 Scoping

Tend to be non-systematic and focus on breadth of coverage conducted on a topic rather than depth. Utilize a wide range of materials; may not evaluate the quality of the studies as much as count the number. One means of understanding existing literature. Aims to identify nature and extent of research; preliminary assessment of size and scope of available research on topic. May include research in progress.

Examples of a Scoping Review:

• Nursing : Organizational interventions improving access to community-based primary health care for vulnerable populations: A scoping review. ( Khanassov, Pluye, Descoteaux, Haggerty,  Russell, Gunn, & Levesque, 2016 ).
• Education : Interdisciplinary doctoral research supervision: A scoping review. ( Vanstone, Hibbert, Kinsella, McKenzie, Pitman, & Lingard, 2013 ).
• Nursing : A scoping review of the literature on the abolition of user fees in health care services in Africa. ( Ridde, & Morestin, 2011 ).

1.3.1.10 Synoptic

Unlike an exploratory review, the purpose is to provide a concise but accurate overview of all material that appears to be relevant to a chosen topic. Both content and methodological material is included. The review should aim to be both descriptive and evaluative. Summarizes previous studies while also showing how the body of literature could be extended and improved in terms of content and method by identifying gaps.

Examples of a Synoptic Review:

• Education : Theoretical framework for educational assessment: A synoptic review. ( Ghaicha, 2016 ).
• Education : School effects research: A synoptic review of past efforts and some suggestions for the future. ( Cuttance, 1981 ).

1.3.1.11 Systematic Review

A rigorous review that follows a strict methodology designed with a presupposed selection of literature reviewed.  Undertaken to clarify the state of existing research, the evidence, and possible implications that can be drawn from that.  Using comprehensive and exhaustive searching of the published and unpublished literature, searching various databases, reports, and grey literature.  Transparent and reproducible in reporting details of time frame, search and methods to minimize bias.  Must include a team of at least 2-3 and includes the critical appraisal of the literature.  For more description of systematic reviews, including links to protocols, checklists, workflow processes, and structure see “ A Young Researcher’s Guide to a Systematic Review “.

Examples of a Systematic Review:

• Education : The potentials of using cloud computing in schools: A systematic literature review ( Hartmann, Braae, Pedersen, & Khalid, 2017 )
• Nursing : Is butter back? A systematic review and meta-analysis of butter consumption and risk of cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and total mortality. ( Pimpin, Wu, Haskelberg, Del Gobbo, & Mozaffarian, 2016 ).
• Education : The use of research to improve professional practice: a systematic review of the literature. ( Hemsley-Brown & Sharp, 2003 ).
• Nursing : Using computers to self-manage type 2 diabetes. ( Pal, Eastwood, Michie, Farmer, Barnard, Peacock, Wood, Inniss, & Murray, 2013 ).

1.3.1.12 Umbrella/Overview of Reviews

Compiles evidence from multiple systematic reviews into one document. Focuses on broad condition or problem for which there are competing interventions and highlights reviews that address those interventions and their effects. Often used in recommendations for practice.

Examples of an Umbrella/Overview Review:

• Education : Reflective practice in healthcare education: An umbrella review. ( Fragknos, 2016 ).
• Nursing : Systematic reviews of psychosocial interventions for autism: an umbrella review. ( Seida, Ospina, Karkhaneh, Hartling, Smith, & Clark, 2009 ).

For a brief discussion see “ Not all literature reviews are the same ” (Thomson, 2013).

1.4 Why do a Literature Review?

The purpose of the literature review is the same regardless of the topic or research method. It tests your own research question against what is already known about the subject.

1.4.1 First – It’s part of the whole. Omission of a literature review chapter or section in a graduate-level project represents a serious void or absence of critical element in the research process.

The outcome of your review is expected to demonstrate that you:

• can systematically explore the research in your topic area
• can read and critically analyze the literature in your discipline and then use it appropriately to advance your own work
• have sufficient knowledge in the topic to undertake further investigation

1.4.2 Second – It’s good for you!

• You improve your skills as a researcher
• You become familiar with the discourse of your discipline and learn how to be a scholar in your field
• You learn through writing your ideas and finding your voice in your subject area
• You define, redefine and clarify your research question for yourself in the process

1.4.3 Third – It’s good for your reader. Your reader expects you to have done the hard work of gathering, evaluating and synthesizes the literature.  When you do a literature review you:

• Set the context for the topic and present its significance
• Identify what’s important to know about your topic – including individual material, prior research, publications, organizations and authors.
• Demonstrate relationships among prior research
• Establish limitations of existing knowledge
• Analyze trends in the topic’s treatment and gaps in the literature

1.4.4 Why do a literature review?

• To locate gaps in the literature of your discipline
• To avoid reinventing the wheel
• To carry on where others have already been
• To identify other people working in the same field
• To increase your breadth of knowledge in your subject area
• To find the seminal works in your field
• To provide intellectual context for your own work
• To acknowledge opposing viewpoints
• To put your work in perspective
• To demonstrate you can discover and retrieve previous work in the area

1.5 Common Literature Review Errors

Graduate-level literature reviews are more than a summary of the publications you find on a topic.  As you have seen in this brief introduction, literature reviews are a very specific type of research, analysis, and writing.  We will explore these topics more in the next chapters.  Some things to keep in mind as you begin your own research and writing are ways to avoid the most common errors seen in the first attempt at a literature review.  For a quick review of some of the pitfalls and challenges a new researcher faces when he/she begins work, see “ Get Ready: Academic Writing, General Pitfalls and (oh yes) Getting Started! ”.

As you begin your own graduate-level literature review, try to avoid these common mistakes:

• Accepts another researcher’s finding as valid without evaluating methodology and data
• Contrary findings and alternative interpretations are not considered or mentioned
• Findings are not clearly related to one’s own study, or findings are too general
• Insufficient time allowed to define best search strategies and writing
• Isolated statistical results are simply reported rather than synthesizing the results
• Problems with selecting and using most relevant keywords, subject headings and descriptors
• Relies too heavily on secondary sources
• Search methods are not recorded or reported for transparency
• Summarizes rather than synthesizes articles

In conclusion, the purpose of a literature review is three-fold:

• to survey the current state of knowledge or evidence in the area of inquiry,
• to identify key authors, articles, theories, and findings in that area, and
• to identify gaps in knowledge in that research area.

A literature review is commonly done today using computerized keyword searches in online databases, often working with a trained librarian or information expert. Keywords can be combined using the Boolean operators, “and”, “or” and sometimes “not”  to narrow down or expand the search results. Once a list of articles is generated from the keyword and subject heading search, the researcher must then manually browse through each title and abstract, to determine the suitability of that article before a full-text article is obtained for the research question.

Literature reviews should be reasonably complete, and not restricted to a few journals, a few years, or a specific methodology or research design. Reviewed articles may be summarized in the form of tables, and can be further structured using organizing frameworks such as a concept matrix.

A well-conducted literature review should indicate whether the initial research questions have already been addressed in the literature, whether there are newer or more interesting research questions available, and whether the original research questions should be modified or changed in light of findings of the literature review.

The review can also provide some intuitions or potential answers to the questions of interest and/or help identify theories that have previously been used to address similar questions and may provide evidence to inform policy or decision-making. ( Bhattacherjee, 2012 ).

Read Abstract 1.  Refer to Types of Literature Reviews.  What type of literature review do you think this study is and why?  See the Answer Key for the correct response.

Nursing : To describe evidence of international literature on the safe care of the hospitalised child after the World Alliance for Patient Safety and list contributions of the general theoretical framework of patient safety for paediatric nursing.

An integrative literature review between 2004 and 2015 using the databases PubMed, Cumulative Index of Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL), Scopus, Web of Science and Wiley Online Library, and the descriptors Safety or Patient safety, Hospitalised child, Paediatric nursing, and Nursing care.

Thirty-two articles were analysed, most of which were from North American, with a descriptive approach. The quality of the recorded information in the medical records, the use of checklists, and the training of health workers contribute to safe care in paediatric nursing and improve the medication process and partnerships with parents.

General information available on patient safety should be incorporated in paediatric nursing care. ( Wegner, Silva, Peres, Bandeira, Frantz, Botene, & Predebon, 2017 ).

Read Abstract 2.  Refer to Types of Literature Reviews.  What type of lit review do you think this study is and why?  See the Answer Key for the correct response.

Education : The focus of this paper centers around timing associated with early childhood education programs and interventions using meta-analytic methods. At any given assessment age, a child’s current age equals starting age, plus duration of program, plus years since program ended. Variability in assessment ages across the studies should enable everyone to identify the separate effects of all three time-related components. The project is a meta-analysis of evaluation studies of early childhood education programs conducted in the United States and its territories between 1960 and 2007. The population of interest is children enrolled in early childhood education programs between the ages of 0 and 5 and their control-group counterparts. Since the data come from a meta-analysis, the population for this study is drawn from many different studies with diverse samples. Given the preliminary nature of their analysis, the authors cannot offer conclusions at this point. ( Duncan, Leak, Li, Magnuson, Schindler, & Yoshikawa, 2011 ).

Test Yourself

See Answer Key for the correct responses.

The purpose of a graduate-level literature review is to summarize in as many words as possible everything that is known about my topic.

A literature review is significant because in the process of doing one, the researcher learns to read and critically assess the literature of a discipline and then uses it appropriately to advance his/her own research.

Read the following abstract and choose the correct type of literature review it represents.

Nursing: E-cigarette use has become increasingly popular, especially among the young. Its long-term influence upon health is unknown. Aim of this review has been to present the current state of knowledge about the impact of e-cigarette use on health, with an emphasis on Central and Eastern Europe. During the preparation of this narrative review, the literature on e-cigarettes available within the network PubMed was retrieved and examined. In the final review, 64 research papers were included. We specifically assessed the construction and operation of the e-cigarette as well as the chemical composition of the e-liquid; the impact that vapor arising from the use of e-cigarette explored in experimental models in vitro; and short-term effects of use of e-cigarettes on users’ health. Among the substances inhaled by the e-smoker, there are several harmful products, such as: formaldehyde, acetaldehyde, acroleine, propanal, nicotine, acetone, o-methyl-benzaldehyde, carcinogenic nitrosamines. Results from experimental animal studies indicate the negative impact of e-cigarette exposure on test models, such as ascytotoxicity, oxidative stress, inflammation, airway hyper reactivity, airway remodeling, mucin production, apoptosis, and emphysematous changes. The short-term impact of e-cigarettes on human health has been studied mostly in experimental setting. Available evidence shows that the use of e-cigarettes may result in acute lung function responses (e.g., increase in impedance, peripheral airway flow resistance) and induce oxidative stress. Based on the current available evidence, e-cigarette use is associated with harmful biologic responses, although it may be less harmful than traditional cigarettes. (J ankowski, Brożek, Lawson, Skoczyński, & Zejda, 2017 ).

• Meta-analysis
• Exploratory

Education: In this review, Mary Vorsino writes that she is interested in keeping the potential influences of women pragmatists of Dewey’s day in mind while presenting modern feminist re readings of Dewey. She wishes to construct a narrowly-focused and succinct literature review of thinkers who have donned a feminist lens to analyze Dewey’s approaches to education, learning, and democracy and to employ Dewey’s works in theorizing on gender and education and on gender in society. This article first explores Dewey as both an ally and a problematic figure in feminist literature and then investigates the broader sphere of feminist pragmatism and two central themes within it: (1) valuing diversity, and diverse experiences; and (2) problematizing fixed truths. ( Vorsino, 2015 ).

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Literature Reviews for Education and Nursing Graduate Students Copyright © by Linda Frederiksen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Literature Review Tutorials

• Literature Reviews: An Overview for Students What is a literature review? What purpose does it serve in research? What should you expect when writing one? Find out here in this guide from NCSU libraries.
• Write a Lit Review from Virginia Commonwealth University Follow this guide to learn how to write a literature review, beginning with a synthesis matrix.
• Literature Review: The What, Why and How-to Guide This guide will help you understand what is a Literature Review, why it is important and how it is done. Also includes information on Annotated Bibliographies.
• Writing a Literature Review from the University of Toledo Covers what a lit review is, lit review types, writing a lit review and further readings.
• The Literature Review Process A guide from the University of North Texas on selecting a topic, searching the literature, plan before reviewing, reviewing the literature and writing the review.
• The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Permission granted to use this guide.

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A literature review is a summary and synthesis of existing research on a topic that gives the background of current knowledge on the topic, establishes a thesis, and provides credible evidence. Another way to think of a literature review is as an analysis of the discussion between authors. The literature review will contain common themes as well as agreeing and disagreeing perspectives.

Steps to Prepare Writing Your Literature Review

Frame your research area . Choose an area of research that interests you, considering recent issues, class discussions and topics you have encountered in your previous research.

Select resources and begin your search . Search the library’s catalog, and find the appropriate journal databases to explore for your particular topic. See your class’ topic guide for recommended databases and contact your librarian for additional help with selecting resources. Then, scan recent articles and reviews related to your research area. Remember to create reference lists of your resources.

Define your topic. Now that you have an overview of the existing research about your research area, define your topic. Consider what aspects of your research area interest you the most, which specific topics are discussed the most in the existing research, and whether you need to restrict your topic to a certain time period or field of study.

Survey the literature and select research most relevant to your topic. Read the articles and reviews you have already discovered and conduct additional research as necessary to select appropriate literature to include in your review. It is critical that you read all of your sources before you write your review.

Critique and analyze the literature . Evaluate the articles and reviews. Consider what assumptions researchers seem to be making, what procedures and methods they have used, and what findings and conclusions they have. Note any important trends revealed in the literature.

When preparing to write your literature review, you may find yourself completing these steps in a different order or even repeating steps. This is a natural part of the process as you learn more about your topic and the literature about it.

Often, one of the more difficult aspects of writing the literature review is figuring out how to structure it. Jonathan Cisco (2014) outlines a method for a “Theme-Based Literature Review” that helps you focus on analysis rather than description, leading to a true synthesis of the literature.

Define common themes

Once your themes are defined and your literature organized, you can create an outline for your literature review, structuring it by using the most important themes as subheadings.

Your introduction should define the general topic and context for the focus of your literature review. It should also point out general trends, conflicts, and conclusions while presenting your thesis on the research. You may also include any necessary criteria for analyzing the literature and the scope of your research.

Each section should contain a topic sentence introducing the theme (subheading) and then should present an analysis of the different authors’ perspectives, approaches, theories, and conclusions. Provide summaries of studies or articles only as part of the analysis, and synthesize the research by drawing parallels, pointing out conflicting results, and providing “so what” brief explanations.

Conclude your literature review by summarizing the significant themes in the literature. Provide insight into the relationship between your themes and their relationship to the overall body of knowledge of your topic area.

Note. “Theme-Based Literature Review” structure, idea, explanations and illustrations are adapted from “Teaching the Literature Review: A Practical Approach for College Instructors,” by J. Cisco, 2014, Teaching & Learning Inquiry: The ISSOTL Journal , 2.2, pp. 41-57. Used with permission.

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15 Literature Review Examples

Chris Drew (PhD)

Dr. Chris Drew is the founder of the Helpful Professor. He holds a PhD in education and has published over 20 articles in scholarly journals. He is the former editor of the Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education. [Image Descriptor: Photo of Chris]

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Literature reviews are a necessary step in a research process and often required when writing your research proposal . They involve gathering, analyzing, and evaluating existing knowledge about a topic in order to find gaps in the literature where future studies will be needed.

Ideally, once you have completed your literature review, you will be able to identify how your research project can build upon and extend existing knowledge in your area of study.

Generally, for my undergraduate research students, I recommend a narrative review, where themes can be generated in order for the students to develop sufficient understanding of the topic so they can build upon the themes using unique methods or novel research questions.

If you’re in the process of writing a literature review, I have developed a literature review template for you to use – it’s a huge time-saver and walks you through how to write a literature review step-by-step:

Get your time-saving templates here to write your own literature review.

Literature Review Examples

For the following types of literature review, I present an explanation and overview of the type, followed by links to some real-life literature reviews on the topics.

1. Narrative Review Examples

Also known as a traditional literature review, the narrative review provides a broad overview of the studies done on a particular topic.

It often includes both qualitative and quantitative studies and may cover a wide range of years.

The narrative review’s purpose is to identify commonalities, gaps, and contradictions in the literature .

I recommend to my students that they should gather their studies together, take notes on each study, then try to group them by themes that form the basis for the review (see my step-by-step instructions at the end of the article).

Example Study

Title: Communication in healthcare: a narrative review of the literature and practical recommendations

Citation: Vermeir, P., Vandijck, D., Degroote, S., Peleman, R., Verhaeghe, R., Mortier, E., … & Vogelaers, D. (2015). Communication in healthcare: a narrative review of the literature and practical recommendations. International journal of clinical practice , 69 (11), 1257-1267.

Source: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/ijcp.12686  

Overview: This narrative review analyzed themes emerging from 69 articles about communication in healthcare contexts. Five key themes were found in the literature: poor communication can lead to various negative outcomes, discontinuity of care, compromise of patient safety, patient dissatisfaction, and inefficient use of resources. After presenting the key themes, the authors recommend that practitioners need to approach healthcare communication in a more structured way, such as by ensuring there is a clear understanding of who is in charge of ensuring effective communication in clinical settings.

Other Examples

• Burnout in United States Healthcare Professionals: A Narrative Review (Reith, 2018) – read here
• Examining the Presence, Consequences, and Reduction of Implicit Bias in Health Care: A Narrative Review (Zestcott, Blair & Stone, 2016) – read here
• A Narrative Review of School-Based Physical Activity for Enhancing Cognition and Learning (Mavilidi et al., 2018) – read here
• A narrative review on burnout experienced by medical students and residents (Dyrbye & Shanafelt, 2015) – read here

2. Systematic Review Examples

This type of literature review is more structured and rigorous than a narrative review. It involves a detailed and comprehensive plan and search strategy derived from a set of specified research questions.

The key way you’d know a systematic review compared to a narrative review is in the methodology: the systematic review will likely have a very clear criteria for how the studies were collected, and clear explanations of exclusion/inclusion criteria. 

The goal is to gather the maximum amount of valid literature on the topic, filter out invalid or low-quality reviews, and minimize bias. Ideally, this will provide more reliable findings, leading to higher-quality conclusions and recommendations for further research.

You may note from the examples below that the ‘method’ sections in systematic reviews tend to be much more explicit, often noting rigid inclusion/exclusion criteria and exact keywords used in searches.

Title: The importance of food naturalness for consumers: Results of a systematic review  

Citation: Roman, S., Sánchez-Siles, L. M., & Siegrist, M. (2017). The importance of food naturalness for consumers: Results of a systematic review. Trends in food science & technology , 67 , 44-57.

Source: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S092422441730122X  

Overview: This systematic review included 72 studies of food naturalness to explore trends in the literature about its importance for consumers. Keywords used in the data search included: food, naturalness, natural content, and natural ingredients. Studies were included if they examined consumers’ preference for food naturalness and contained empirical data. The authors found that the literature lacks clarity about how naturalness is defined and measured, but also found that food consumption is significantly influenced by perceived naturalness of goods.

• A systematic review of research on online teaching and learning from 2009 to 2018 (Martin, Sun & Westine, 2020) – read here
• Where Is Current Research on Blockchain Technology? (Yli-Huumo et al., 2016) – read here
• Universities—industry collaboration: A systematic review (Ankrah & Al-Tabbaa, 2015) – read here
• Internet of Things Applications: A Systematic Review (Asghari, Rahmani & Javadi, 2019) – read here

3. Meta-analysis

This is a type of systematic review that uses statistical methods to combine and summarize the results of several studies.

Due to its robust methodology, a meta-analysis is often considered the ‘gold standard’ of secondary research , as it provides a more precise estimate of a treatment effect than any individual study contributing to the pooled analysis.

Furthermore, by aggregating data from a range of studies, a meta-analysis can identify patterns, disagreements, or other interesting relationships that may have been hidden in individual studies.

This helps to enhance the generalizability of findings, making the conclusions drawn from a meta-analysis particularly powerful and informative for policy and practice.

Title: Cholesterol and Alzheimer’s Disease Risk: A Meta-Meta-Analysis

Citation: Sáiz-Vazquez, O., Puente-Martínez, A., Ubillos-Landa, S., Pacheco-Bonrostro, J., & Santabárbara, J. (2020). Cholesterol and Alzheimer’s disease risk: a meta-meta-analysis. Brain sciences, 10(6), 386.

Source: https://doi.org/10.3390/brainsci10060386  

O verview: This study examines the relationship between cholesterol and Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Researchers conducted a systematic search of meta-analyses and reviewed several databases, collecting 100 primary studies and five meta-analyses to analyze the connection between cholesterol and Alzheimer’s disease. They find that the literature compellingly demonstrates that low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) levels significantly influence the development of Alzheimer’s disease.

• The power of feedback revisited: A meta-analysis of educational feedback research (Wisniewski, Zierer & Hattie, 2020) – read here
• How Much Does Education Improve Intelligence? A Meta-Analysis (Ritchie & Tucker-Drob, 2018) – read here
• A meta-analysis of factors related to recycling (Geiger et al., 2019) – read here
• Stress management interventions for police officers and recruits (Patterson, Chung & Swan, 2014) – read here

Other Types of Reviews

• Scoping Review: This type of review is used to map the key concepts underpinning a research area and the main sources and types of evidence available. It can be undertaken as stand-alone projects in their own right, or as a precursor to a systematic review.
• Rapid Review: This type of review accelerates the systematic review process in order to produce information in a timely manner. This is achieved by simplifying or omitting stages of the systematic review process.
• Integrative Review: This review method is more inclusive than others, allowing for the simultaneous inclusion of experimental and non-experimental research. The goal is to more comprehensively understand a particular phenomenon.
• Critical Review: This is similar to a narrative review but requires a robust understanding of both the subject and the existing literature. In a critical review, the reviewer not only summarizes the existing literature, but also evaluates its strengths and weaknesses. This is common in the social sciences and humanities .
• State-of-the-Art Review: This considers the current level of advancement in a field or topic and makes recommendations for future research directions. This type of review is common in technological and scientific fields but can be applied to any discipline.

How to Write a Narrative Review (Tips for Undergrad Students)

Most undergraduate students conducting a capstone research project will be writing narrative reviews. Below is a five-step process for conducting a simple review of the literature for your project.

• Search for Relevant Literature: Use scholarly databases related to your field of study, provided by your university library, along with appropriate search terms to identify key scholarly articles that have been published on your topic.
• Evaluate and Select Sources: Filter the source list by selecting studies that are directly relevant and of sufficient quality, considering factors like credibility , objectivity, accuracy, and validity.
• Analyze and Synthesize: Review each source and summarize the main arguments  in one paragraph (or more, for postgrad). Keep these summaries in a table.
• Identify Themes: With all studies summarized, group studies that share common themes, such as studies that have similar findings or methodologies.
• Write the Review: Write your review based upon the themes or subtopics you have identified. Give a thorough overview of each theme, integrating source data, and conclude with a summary of the current state of knowledge then suggestions for future research based upon your evaluation of what is lacking in the literature.

Literature reviews don’t have to be as scary as they seem. Yes, they are difficult and require a strong degree of comprehension of academic studies. But it can be feasibly done through following a structured approach to data collection and analysis. With my undergraduate research students (who tend to conduct small-scale qualitative studies ), I encourage them to conduct a narrative literature review whereby they can identify key themes in the literature. Within each theme, students can critique key studies and their strengths and limitations , in order to get a lay of the land and come to a point where they can identify ways to contribute new insights to the existing academic conversation on their topic.

Ankrah, S., & Omar, A. T. (2015). Universities–industry collaboration: A systematic review. Scandinavian Journal of Management, 31(3), 387-408.

Asghari, P., Rahmani, A. M., & Javadi, H. H. S. (2019). Internet of Things applications: A systematic review. Computer Networks , 148 , 241-261.

Dyrbye, L., & Shanafelt, T. (2016). A narrative review on burnout experienced by medical students and residents. Medical education , 50 (1), 132-149.

Geiger, J. L., Steg, L., Van Der Werff, E., & Ünal, A. B. (2019). A meta-analysis of factors related to recycling. Journal of environmental psychology , 64 , 78-97.

Martin, F., Sun, T., & Westine, C. D. (2020). A systematic review of research on online teaching and learning from 2009 to 2018. Computers & education , 159 , 104009.

Mavilidi, M. F., Ruiter, M., Schmidt, M., Okely, A. D., Loyens, S., Chandler, P., & Paas, F. (2018). A narrative review of school-based physical activity for enhancing cognition and learning: The importance of relevancy and integration. Frontiers in psychology , 2079.

Patterson, G. T., Chung, I. W., & Swan, P. W. (2014). Stress management interventions for police officers and recruits: A meta-analysis. Journal of experimental criminology , 10 , 487-513.

Reith, T. P. (2018). Burnout in United States healthcare professionals: a narrative review. Cureus , 10 (12).

Ritchie, S. J., & Tucker-Drob, E. M. (2018). How much does education improve intelligence? A meta-analysis. Psychological science , 29 (8), 1358-1369.

Roman, S., Sánchez-Siles, L. M., & Siegrist, M. (2017). The importance of food naturalness for consumers: Results of a systematic review. Trends in food science & technology , 67 , 44-57.

Sáiz-Vazquez, O., Puente-Martínez, A., Ubillos-Landa, S., Pacheco-Bonrostro, J., & Santabárbara, J. (2020). Cholesterol and Alzheimer’s disease risk: a meta-meta-analysis. Brain sciences, 10(6), 386.

Vermeir, P., Vandijck, D., Degroote, S., Peleman, R., Verhaeghe, R., Mortier, E., … & Vogelaers, D. (2015). Communication in healthcare: a narrative review of the literature and practical recommendations. International journal of clinical practice , 69 (11), 1257-1267.

Wisniewski, B., Zierer, K., & Hattie, J. (2020). The power of feedback revisited: A meta-analysis of educational feedback research. Frontiers in Psychology , 10 , 3087.

Yli-Huumo, J., Ko, D., Choi, S., Park, S., & Smolander, K. (2016). Where is current research on blockchain technology?—a systematic review. PloS one , 11 (10), e0163477.

Zestcott, C. A., Blair, I. V., & Stone, J. (2016). Examining the presence, consequences, and reduction of implicit bias in health care: a narrative review. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations , 19 (4), 528-542

• Chris Drew (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/chris-drew-phd-2/ 25 Number Games for Kids (Free and Easy)
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ED 500 Foundations of Education: Teaching & Learning: Literature Review

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• Literature Review

What is a Literature Review?

A  Literature Review  is a summary and assessment of the key research on a specific topic. It is not a research study itself, although research studies will often include a literature review. Literature reviews are considered secondary sources because they provide an overview of published research on a topic. They also reflect the relationship between research studies, how one study builds on the findings of an earlier study, as well as what each study contributes to scholarship on the topic.

Here are a few links with further information:

http://library.ucsc.edu/ref/howto/literaturereview.html

http://writingcenter.unc.edu/handouts/literature-reviews/

https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/conducting_research/writing_a_literature_review.html

Writing Literature Reviews

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• Volume 24, Issue 2
• Five tips for developing useful literature summary tables for writing review articles
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• http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0157-5319 Ahtisham Younas 1 , 2 ,
• http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7839-8130 Parveen Ali 3 , 4
• 1 Memorial University of Newfoundland , St John's , Newfoundland , Canada
• 2 Swat College of Nursing , Pakistan
• 3 School of Nursing and Midwifery , University of Sheffield , Sheffield , South Yorkshire , UK
• 4 Sheffield University Interpersonal Violence Research Group , Sheffield University , Sheffield , UK
• Correspondence to Ahtisham Younas, Memorial University of Newfoundland, St John's, NL A1C 5C4, Canada; ay6133{at}mun.ca

https://doi.org/10.1136/ebnurs-2021-103417

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Introduction

Literature reviews offer a critical synthesis of empirical and theoretical literature to assess the strength of evidence, develop guidelines for practice and policymaking, and identify areas for future research. 1 It is often essential and usually the first task in any research endeavour, particularly in masters or doctoral level education. For effective data extraction and rigorous synthesis in reviews, the use of literature summary tables is of utmost importance. A literature summary table provides a synopsis of an included article. It succinctly presents its purpose, methods, findings and other relevant information pertinent to the review. The aim of developing these literature summary tables is to provide the reader with the information at one glance. Since there are multiple types of reviews (eg, systematic, integrative, scoping, critical and mixed methods) with distinct purposes and techniques, 2 there could be various approaches for developing literature summary tables making it a complex task specialty for the novice researchers or reviewers. Here, we offer five tips for authors of the review articles, relevant to all types of reviews, for creating useful and relevant literature summary tables. We also provide examples from our published reviews to illustrate how useful literature summary tables can be developed and what sort of information should be provided.

Tip 1: provide detailed information about frameworks and methods

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Tabular literature summaries from a scoping review. Source: Rasheed et al . 3

The provision of information about conceptual and theoretical frameworks and methods is useful for several reasons. First, in quantitative (reviews synthesising the results of quantitative studies) and mixed reviews (reviews synthesising the results of both qualitative and quantitative studies to address a mixed review question), it allows the readers to assess the congruence of the core findings and methods with the adapted framework and tested assumptions. In qualitative reviews (reviews synthesising results of qualitative studies), this information is beneficial for readers to recognise the underlying philosophical and paradigmatic stance of the authors of the included articles. For example, imagine the authors of an article, included in a review, used phenomenological inquiry for their research. In that case, the review authors and the readers of the review need to know what kind of (transcendental or hermeneutic) philosophical stance guided the inquiry. Review authors should, therefore, include the philosophical stance in their literature summary for the particular article. Second, information about frameworks and methods enables review authors and readers to judge the quality of the research, which allows for discerning the strengths and limitations of the article. For example, if authors of an included article intended to develop a new scale and test its psychometric properties. To achieve this aim, they used a convenience sample of 150 participants and performed exploratory (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) on the same sample. Such an approach would indicate a flawed methodology because EFA and CFA should not be conducted on the same sample. The review authors must include this information in their summary table. Omitting this information from a summary could lead to the inclusion of a flawed article in the review, thereby jeopardising the review’s rigour.

Tip 2: include strengths and limitations for each article

Critical appraisal of individual articles included in a review is crucial for increasing the rigour of the review. Despite using various templates for critical appraisal, authors often do not provide detailed information about each reviewed article’s strengths and limitations. Merely noting the quality score based on standardised critical appraisal templates is not adequate because the readers should be able to identify the reasons for assigning a weak or moderate rating. Many recent critical appraisal checklists (eg, Mixed Methods Appraisal Tool) discourage review authors from assigning a quality score and recommend noting the main strengths and limitations of included studies. It is also vital that methodological and conceptual limitations and strengths of the articles included in the review are provided because not all review articles include empirical research papers. Rather some review synthesises the theoretical aspects of articles. Providing information about conceptual limitations is also important for readers to judge the quality of foundations of the research. For example, if you included a mixed-methods study in the review, reporting the methodological and conceptual limitations about ‘integration’ is critical for evaluating the study’s strength. Suppose the authors only collected qualitative and quantitative data and did not state the intent and timing of integration. In that case, the strength of the study is weak. Integration only occurred at the levels of data collection. However, integration may not have occurred at the analysis, interpretation and reporting levels.

Tip 3: write conceptual contribution of each reviewed article

While reading and evaluating review papers, we have observed that many review authors only provide core results of the article included in a review and do not explain the conceptual contribution offered by the included article. We refer to conceptual contribution as a description of how the article’s key results contribute towards the development of potential codes, themes or subthemes, or emerging patterns that are reported as the review findings. For example, the authors of a review article noted that one of the research articles included in their review demonstrated the usefulness of case studies and reflective logs as strategies for fostering compassion in nursing students. The conceptual contribution of this research article could be that experiential learning is one way to teach compassion to nursing students, as supported by case studies and reflective logs. This conceptual contribution of the article should be mentioned in the literature summary table. Delineating each reviewed article’s conceptual contribution is particularly beneficial in qualitative reviews, mixed-methods reviews, and critical reviews that often focus on developing models and describing or explaining various phenomena. Figure 2 offers an example of a literature summary table. 4

Tabular literature summaries from a critical review. Source: Younas and Maddigan. 4

Tip 4: compose potential themes from each article during summary writing

While developing literature summary tables, many authors use themes or subthemes reported in the given articles as the key results of their own review. Such an approach prevents the review authors from understanding the article’s conceptual contribution, developing rigorous synthesis and drawing reasonable interpretations of results from an individual article. Ultimately, it affects the generation of novel review findings. For example, one of the articles about women’s healthcare-seeking behaviours in developing countries reported a theme ‘social-cultural determinants of health as precursors of delays’. Instead of using this theme as one of the review findings, the reviewers should read and interpret beyond the given description in an article, compare and contrast themes, findings from one article with findings and themes from another article to find similarities and differences and to understand and explain bigger picture for their readers. Therefore, while developing literature summary tables, think twice before using the predeveloped themes. Including your themes in the summary tables (see figure 1 ) demonstrates to the readers that a robust method of data extraction and synthesis has been followed.

Tip 5: create your personalised template for literature summaries

Often templates are available for data extraction and development of literature summary tables. The available templates may be in the form of a table, chart or a structured framework that extracts some essential information about every article. The commonly used information may include authors, purpose, methods, key results and quality scores. While extracting all relevant information is important, such templates should be tailored to meet the needs of the individuals’ review. For example, for a review about the effectiveness of healthcare interventions, a literature summary table must include information about the intervention, its type, content timing, duration, setting, effectiveness, negative consequences, and receivers and implementers’ experiences of its usage. Similarly, literature summary tables for articles included in a meta-synthesis must include information about the participants’ characteristics, research context and conceptual contribution of each reviewed article so as to help the reader make an informed decision about the usefulness or lack of usefulness of the individual article in the review and the whole review.

In conclusion, narrative or systematic reviews are almost always conducted as a part of any educational project (thesis or dissertation) or academic or clinical research. Literature reviews are the foundation of research on a given topic. Robust and high-quality reviews play an instrumental role in guiding research, practice and policymaking. However, the quality of reviews is also contingent on rigorous data extraction and synthesis, which require developing literature summaries. We have outlined five tips that could enhance the quality of the data extraction and synthesis process by developing useful literature summaries.

• Aromataris E ,
• Rasheed SP ,

Twitter @Ahtisham04, @parveenazamali

Funding The authors have not declared a specific grant for this research from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.

Competing interests None declared.

Patient consent for publication Not required.

Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.

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Doctor of Education Resources

Finding research, identifying peer-reviewed literature, writing your literature review, formatting your bibliography, setting up refworks, getting help.

Welcome to the Research Guide for Delaware Valley University's graduate education resources. Please use the menu to navigate. Contact Elise Georgulis, Graduate Instruction and Research Librarian, with any questions.

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Library staff members are always willing and eager to help you with your assignments.  Please contact us by email, phone, or text message, and we will respond to your questions as soon as possible.

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• Interlibrary Loan If a book or article you want is not available, use Interlibrary Loan (ILL). The Library can order books and articles from other libraries. This process takes few days but is completely free for DelVal students, faculty, and staff. Before you submit an ILL, check Google Scholar or Summon to see if we have immediate access or if it is freely available online.

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• American Counseling Association Source: ACS Promoting counselors through work in advocacy, research and professional standards.
• American School Counselor Association Source: ASCA Provides professional development, publications and other resources, research and advocacy to professional school counselors around the globe.
• National Alliance of Specialized Instructional Support Personel Source: NASISP Provide and support school-based prevention and intervention services to address barriers to educational success.
• National Association of School Psychologists Source: NASP Represents and supports the profession of school psychology by advancing effective practices to improve students' learning, behavior, and mental health.
• National Association of Social Workers Source: NASW Largest membership organization of professional social workers in the world.
• Center for Mental Health in Schools Source: UCLA Seeks to improve outcomes for young people by enhancing the field of mental health in schools.
• Pennsylvania Association of Student Assistance Professionals Source: PASAP Association of school and community-based program specialists organized to meet the needs of Pennsylvania youth for education.
• Pennsylvania Association of Private School Administrators Source: PAPSA Workshops, seminars, and conferences.
• Pennsylvania Training and Technical Assistance Network Source: PA Department of Education Support the efforts and initiatives of the Bureau of Special Education, and to build the capacity of local educational agencies to serve students who receive special education services.

Education Journals & Newspapers

You can browse through education journals and newspapers for topic ideas, or go straight to journals if you are looking for an article that you know was published in a specific journal. Go to our journal list here to search for specific journals/newspapers and find out if we subscribe to them!

Some journals/newspapers you might find useful that we do subscribe to:

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• Administrative Issues Journal: Education, Practice, and Research
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• Education and The Law
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Checklist for Peer-Reviewed Research Article

If you have answered "yes" to these five questions you have probably located a scientific article.

Research Articles

Research articles are also often known as scientific or peer-reviewed articles. If the article is NOT written by the person or group who did the research, it is NOT a peer-reviewed or scientific article. Research articles are important for knowing what new discoveries have been made. This is why it is important to use recent articles, since they will be the first things published on a new scientific development. 

Here's a quick overview of how to identify these journal articles:

• written by the scientist(s) who actually did the research
• introduction
• materials & methods
• conclusions
• references 
• assumes reader already knows background information about the topic has been evaluated by experts
• Tip:  Look for a statement about when the article was accepted for publication. Most peer-reviewed articles will include one.

Interlibrary Loan

If a book or article you want is not available, use Interlibrary Loan (ILL). The Library can order books and articles from other libraries. This process takes few days but is completely free for DelVal students, faculty, and staff.

Before you submit an ILL, check  Google Scholar  or Summon  to see if we have immediate access or if it is freely available online.

What is a Literature Review?

Introduction

OK. You’ve got to write a literature review. You dust off a novel and a book of poetry, settle down in your chair, and get ready to issue a “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” as you leaf through the pages. “Literature review” done. Right?

Wrong! The “literature” of a literature review refers to any collection of materials on a topic, not necessarily the great literary texts of the world. “Literature” could be anything from a set of government pamphlets on British colonial methods in Africa to scholarly articles on the treatment of a torn ACL. And a review does not necessarily mean that your reader wants you to give your personal opinion on whether or not you liked these sources.

What is a literature review, then?

A literature review discusses published information in a particular subject area, and sometimes information in a particular subject area within a certain time period.

A literature review can be just a simple summary of the sources, but it usually has an organizational pattern and combines both summary and synthesis. A summary is a recap of the important information of the source, but a synthesis is a re-organization, or a reshuffling, of that information. It might give a new interpretation of old material or combine new with old interpretations. Or it might trace the intellectual progression of the field, including major debates. And depending on the situation, the literature review may evaluate the sources and advise the reader on the most pertinent or relevant.

But how is a literature review different from an academic research paper?

The main focus of an academic research paper is to develop a new argument, and a research paper is likely to contain a literature review as one of its parts. In a research paper, you use the literature as a foundation and as support for a new insight that you contribute. The focus of a literature review, however, is to summarize and synthesize the arguments and ideas of others without adding new contributions.

Why do we write literature reviews?

Literature reviews provide you with a handy guide to a particular topic. If you have limited time to conduct research, literature reviews can give you an overview or act as a stepping stone. For professionals, they are useful reports that keep them up to date with what is current in the field. For scholars, the depth and breadth of the literature review emphasizes the credibility of the writer in his or her field. Literature reviews also provide a solid background for a research paper’s investigation. Comprehensive knowledge of the literature of the field is essential to most research papers.

Who writes these things, anyway?

Literature reviews are written occasionally in the humanities, but mostly in the sciences and social sciences; in experiment and lab reports, they constitute a section of the paper. Sometimes a literature review is written as a paper in itself.

Let’s get to it! What should I do before writing the literature review?

If your assignment is not very specific, seek clarification from your instructor:

• Roughly how many sources should you include?
• What types of sources (books, journal articles, websites)?
• Should you summarize, synthesize, or critique your sources by discussing a common theme or issue?
• Should you evaluate your sources?
• Should you provide subheadings and other background information, such as definitions and/or a history?

Find models

Look for other literature reviews in your area of interest or in the discipline and read them to get a sense of the types of themes you might want to look for in your own research or ways to organize your final review. You can simply put the word “review” in your search engine along with your other topic terms to find articles of this type on the Internet or in an electronic database. The bibliography or reference section of sources you’ve already read are also excellent entry points into your own research.

Narrow your topic

There are hundreds or even thousands of articles and books on most areas of study. The narrower your topic, the easier it will be to limit the number of sources you need to read in order to get a good survey of the material. Your instructor will probably not expect you to read everything that’s out there on the topic, but you’ll make your job easier if you first limit your scope.

And don’t forget to tap into your professor’s (or other professors’) knowledge in the field. Ask your professor questions such as: “If you had to read only one book from the 90’s on topic X, what would it be?” Questions such as this help you to find and determine quickly the most seminal pieces in the field.

Consider whether your sources are current

Some disciplines require that you use information that is as current as possible. In the sciences, for instance, treatments for medical problems are constantly changing according to the latest studies. Information even two years old could be obsolete. However, if you are writing a review in the humanities, history, or social sciences, a survey of the history of the literature may be what is needed, because what is important is how perspectives have changed through the years or within a certain time period. Try sorting through some other current bibliographies or literature reviews in the field to get a sense of what your discipline expects. You can also use this method to consider what is currently of interest to scholars in this field and what is not.

Strategies for writing the literature review

Find a focus

A literature review, like a term paper, is usually organized around ideas, not the sources themselves as an annotated bibliography would be organized. This means that you will not just simply list your sources and go into detail about each one of them, one at a time. No. As you read widely but selectively in your topic area, consider instead what themes or issues connect your sources together. Do they present one or different solutions? Is there an aspect of the field that is missing? How well do they present the material and do they portray it according to an appropriate theory? Do they reveal a trend in the field? A raging debate? Pick one of these themes to focus the organization of your review.

Convey it to your reader

A literature review may not have a traditional thesis statement (one that makes an argument), but you do need to tell readers what to expect. Try writing a simple statement that lets the reader know what is your main organizing principle. Here are a couple of examples:

The current trend in treatment for congestive heart failure combines surgery and medicine.

More and more cultural studies scholars are accepting popular media as a subject worthy of academic consideration.

Consider organization

You’ve got a focus, and you’ve stated it clearly and directly. Now what is the most effective way of presenting the information? What are the most important topics, subtopics, etc., that your review needs to include? And in what order should you present them? Develop an organization for your review at both a global and local level:

First, cover the basic categories

Just like most academic papers, literature reviews also must contain at least three basic elements: an introduction or background information section; the body of the review containing the discussion of sources; and, finally, a conclusion and/or recommendations section to end the paper.

Introduction:  Gives a quick idea of the topic of the literature review, such as the central theme or organizational pattern.

Body:  Contains your discussion of sources and is organized either chronologically, thematically, or methodologically (see below for more information on each).

Conclusions/Recommendations:  Discuss what you have drawn from reviewing literature so far. Where might the discussion proceed?

Organizing the body

Once you have the basic categories in place, then you must consider how you will present the sources themselves within the body of your paper. Create an organizational method to focus this section even further.

To help you come up with an overall organizational framework for your review, consider the following scenario and then three typical ways of organizing the sources into a review:

You’ve decided to focus your literature review on materials dealing with sperm whales. This is because you’ve just finished reading  Moby Dick , and you wonder if that whale’s portrayal is really real. You start with some articles about the physiology of sperm whales in biology journals written in the 1980’s. But these articles refer to some British biological studies performed on whales in the early 18th century. So you check those out. Then you look up a book written in 1968 with information on how sperm whales have been portrayed in other forms of art, such as in Alaskan poetry, in French painting, or on whale bone, as the whale hunters in the late 19th century used to do. This makes you wonder about American whaling methods during the time portrayed in  Moby Dick , so you find some academic articles published in the last five years on how accurately Herman Melville portrayed the whaling scene in his novel.

Chronological

If your review follows the chronological method, you could write about the materials above according to when they were published. For instance, first you would talk about the British biological studies of the 18th century, then about Moby Dick, published in 1851, then the book on sperm whales in other art (1968), and finally the biology articles (1980s) and the recent articles on American whaling of the 19th century. But there is relatively no continuity among subjects here. And notice that even though the sources on sperm whales in other art and on American whaling are written recently, they are about other subjects/objects that were created much earlier. Thus, the review loses its chronological focus.

By publication

Order your sources by publication chronology, then, only if the order demonstrates a more important trend. For instance, you could order a review of literature on biological studies of sperm whales if the progression revealed a change in dissection practices of the researchers who wrote and/or conducted the studies.

A better way to organize the above sources chronologically is to examine the sources under another trend, such as the history of whaling. Then your review would have subsections according to eras within this period. For instance, the review might examine whaling from pre-1600-1699, 1700-1799, and 1800-1899. Under this method, you would combine the recent studies on American whaling in the 19th century with Moby Dick itself in the 1800-1899 category, even though the authors wrote a century apart.

Thematic reviews of literature are organized around a topic or issue, rather than the progression of time. However, progression of time may still be an important factor in a thematic review. For instance, the sperm whale review could focus on the development of the harpoon for whale hunting. While the study focuses on one topic, harpoon technology, it will still be organized chronologically. The only difference here between a “chronological” and a “thematic” approach is what is emphasized the most: the development of the harpoon or the harpoon technology.

But more authentic thematic reviews tend to break away from chronological order. For instance, a thematic review of material on sperm whales might examine how they are portrayed as “evil” in cultural documents. The subsections might include how they are personified, how their proportions are exaggerated, and their behaviors misunderstood. A review organized in this manner would shift between time periods within each section according to the point made.

Methodological

A methodological approach differs from the two above in that the focusing factor usually does not have to do with the content of the material. Instead, it focuses on the “methods” of the researcher or writer. For the sperm whale project, one methodological approach would be to look at cultural differences between the portrayal of whales in American, British, and French art work. Or the review might focus on the economic impact of whaling on a community. A methodological scope will influence either the types of documents in the review or the way in which these documents are discussed.

Once you’ve decided on the organizational method for the body of the review, the sections you need to include in the paper should be easy to figure out. They should arise out of your organizational strategy. In other words, a chronological review would have subsections for each vital time period. A thematic review would have subtopics based upon factors that relate to the theme or issue.

Sometimes, though, you might need to add additional sections that are necessary for your study, but do not fit in the organizational strategy of the body. What other sections you include in the body is up to you. Put in only what is necessary. Here are a few other sections you might want to consider:

Current Situation : Information necessary to understand the topic or focus of the literature review.

History : The chronological progression of the field, the literature, or an idea that is necessary to understand the literature review, if the body of the literature review is not already a chronology.

Methods and/or Standards : The criteria you used to select the sources in your literature review or the way in which you present your information. For instance, you might explain that your review includes only peer-reviewed articles and journals.

Questions for Further Research : What questions about the field has the review sparked? How will you further your research as a result of the review?

Begin composing

Once you’ve settled on a general pattern of organization, you’re ready to write each section. There are a few guidelines you should follow during the writing stage as well. Here is a sample paragraph from a literature review about sexism and language to illuminate the following discussion:

Use evidence

In the example above, the writers refer to several other sources when making their point. A literature review in this sense is just like any other academic research paper. Your interpretation of the available sources must be backed up with evidence to show that what you are saying is valid.

Be selective

Select only the most important points in each source to highlight in the review. The type of information you choose to mention should relate directly to the review’s focus, whether it is thematic, methodological, or chronological.

Use quotes sparingly

Falk and Mills do not use any direct quotes. That is because the survey nature of the literature review does not allow for in-depth discussion or detailed quotes from the text. Some short quotes here and there are okay, though, if you want to emphasize a point, or if what the author said just cannot be rewritten in your own words. Notice that Falk and Mills do quote certain terms that were coined by the author, not common knowledge, or taken directly from the study. But if you find yourself wanting to put in more quotes, check with your instructor.

Summarize and synthesize

Remember to summarize and synthesize your sources within each paragraph as well as throughout the review. The authors here recapitulate important features of Hamilton’s study, but then synthesize it by rephrasing the study’s significance and relating it to their own work.

Keep your own voice

While the literature review presents others’ ideas, your voice (the writer’s) should remain front and center. Notice that Falk and Mills weave references to other sources into their own text, but they still maintain their own voice by starting and ending the paragraph with their own ideas and their own words. The sources support what Falk and Mills are saying.

Use caution when paraphrasing

When paraphrasing a source that is not your own, be sure to represent the author’s information or opinions accurately and in your own words. In the preceding example, Falk and Mills either directly refer in the text to the author of their source, such as Hamilton, or they provide ample notation in the text when the ideas they are mentioning are not their own, for example, Gastil’s. For more information, please see our handout on  plagiarism .

Revise, revise, revise

Draft in hand? Now you’re ready to revise. Spending a lot of time revising is a wise idea, because your main objective is to present the material, not the argument. So check over your review again to make sure it follows the assignment and/or your outline. Then, just as you would for most other academic forms of writing, rewrite or rework the language of your review so that you’ve presented your information in the most concise manner possible. Be sure to use terminology familiar to your audience; get rid of unnecessary jargon or slang. Finally, double check that you’ve documented your sources and formatted the review appropriately for your discipline. For tips on the revising and editing process, see our handout on revising drafts .

Works consulted

We consulted these works while writing the original version of this handout. This is not a comprehensive list of resources on the handout’s topic, and we encourage you to do your own research to find the latest publications on this topic. Please do not use this list as a model for the format of your own reference list, as it may not match the citation style you are using. For guidance on formatting citations, please see the  UNC Libraries citation tutorial .

Anson, Chris M. and Robert A. Schwegler, The Longman Handbook for Writers and Readers. Second edition. New York: Longman, 2000.

Jones, Robert, Patrick Bizzaro, and Cynthia Selfe. The Harcourt Brace Guide to Writing in the Disciplines. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1997.

Lamb, Sandra E. How to Write It: A Complete Guide to Everything You’ll Ever Write. Berkeley, Calif.: Ten Speed Press, 1998.

Rosen, Leonard J. and Laurence Behrens. The Allyn and Bacon Handbook. Fourth edition. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 2000.

Troyka, Lynn Quitman. Simon and Schuster Handbook for Writers. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 2002.

Information collected from  The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, with permission.

Helpful Video on Lit. Reviews

• Literature Review How-To Source: North Carolina State University Libraries Video on literature reviews, from purpose to writing.

Paper Formatting

A title page is required for all APA Style papers, unless noted otherwise by your professor. Students should follow the guidelines fo their instructor when determining which title page format is mst appropriate to use. If not instructed otherwise, students should include the following elements on the title page. 

NOTE: Student title pages do not require a running head, unlike a professional title page. 

Title Name  University attended, including department or division Course number and name Instructor name Assignment due date

In-Text Citations

Paraphrasing

When the author's name appears in the sentence, it does not need to be repeated in the citation.

Example:  Recent literature has examined long-run price drifts following initial public offerings and other factors (Luna, 2020). Luna (2020) reaches more or less the same conclusion.

Two or more sources within same parentheses

Order the citations of two or more works by different authors within the same parentheses alphabetically in the same order in which they appear in the reference list (including citations that would otherwise shorten to et al.). Separate the citations with semicolons. 

Example:  Several studies (Adams et al., 2019; Shumway & Shulman, 2015; Westinghouse, 2017))...

For people with osteoarthritis, "painful joints should be moved through a full range of motion every day to maintain flexibility and to slow deterioration of cartilage" (Flores, 2019, p. 20).  (Gecht-Silver & Duncombe, 2015, p. 210) 

More than three authors

Example: (Smith et al., 2014, p. 203)

No author (Title Page #)

Example:  (Plagiarism and You 1942)  ("Five Ways to Protect Yourself" 1993)

No page number

Because the material does not include page numbers, you can include any of the following in the text to cite the quotation:

• A paragraph number, if provided; alternatively, you could count paragraphs down from the beginning of the document.
• An overarching heading plus a paragraph number within that section.
• A short title in quotation marks, in cases in which the heading is too unwieldy to cite in full.

(Anderson, 2013, para. 1).

Reference List

Start the reference list on a new page after the txt and before any tables, figures, and/or appendices. Label the reference list "References," capitalized, in bold, and centered.

Double-space all reference list entries (including between and within references). 

Use a hanging indent for all references, meaning that the first line of each reference is flush left and subsequent lines are indented by 0.5 in. 

Works are listed in alphabetical order by the last name of the first listed author. 

Journal Articles

 Last name, Initials. (Year). Article title, sentence style capitalization.  Journal title , volume(issue, if available), pages. URL, if no DOI available

 Ahmann, E. (2018). A descriptive review of ADHD coaching research: Implications for college students. J ournal of Postsecondary Education and Disability , 31(1), 17-39. https://www.ahead.org/professional-resources/publications/jped/archived-jped/jped-volume-31

Journal article with multiple authors

 Last name, Initials., & Last name, Initials. (Year). Article title, sentence style capitalization.  Journal title , volume(issue, if available), pages. URL, if no DOI available

Example: 

 McCauley, S. M., & Christiansen, M. H. (2019). Language learning as language use: A cross-linguistic model of child language development.  Psychological Review , 126(1), 1-51. https://doi.org/10.1037/rev0000126

When a source has twenty-two or more authors, include first twenty-one … last listed author.

Kalnay, E., Kanamitsu, M., Kitler, R., Collins, W., Deaven, D., Gandin, L., Iredell, M., Saha, S., White, G., Woolen, J., Zhu, Y., Chelliah, M., Ebisuzaki, W., Higgins, W., Janowiak, J., Mo, K. C., Ropelewski, C., Wang, J., Leetman, A., . . . Joseph, D. (1996). The NCEP/NCAR 40-year reanalysis project.  Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society , 77(3), 437-471. http://doi.org/fg6rf9

 Last name, Intials. (Year). Title , sentence style capitalization. Publisher's name. 

 Burgess, R. (2019). Rethinking global health: frameworks of power . Routledge. 

Books with multiple authors

 Last name, Initials, & Last name, Initials. (Year).  Title , sentence style capitalization (edition, if available). Publisher's name. 

 Christian, B., & Griffiths, T. (2016). Algorithms to live by: the computer science of human decisions . Henry Holt and Co.

Chapter in edited book

 Last name, Initials. (Year). Chapter title, sentence style capitalization. In Editor (eds.),  Title , sentence style capitalization (pages). Publisher's name. 

 Weinstock, R., Leong, G., & Silva, J. A. (2003). Defining forensic psychiatry: roles and responsibilities. In R. Rosner (Ed.),  Principles and practice of forensic psychiatry  (2nd ed., pp. 7-13). CRC Press. 

Conference Papers

If a conference paper has been published (for example, in a proceedings), the published form is usually either a chapter of an edited book or an article in a journal.

Papers published in conference proceedings, book

Last name, Initials. (Year). Title. In Editor (eds.),  Title of proceedings  (pages). Publisher's name. 

Cismas, S. C. (2010). Educating academic writing skills in engineering. In P. Dondon & O. Martin (Eds.),  Latest trends on engineering education  (pp. 225-247). WSEAS Press.

Papers published in conference proceedings, journal

Last name, Initials., & Last name, Initials. (Year). Article title, sentence style capitalization.  Journal title , volume(issue, if available), pages. URL, if no DOI available

Chaudhuri, S., & Biswas, A. (2017). External terms-of-trade and labor market imperfections in developing countries: Theory and evidence. Proceedings of the Academy of Economics and Economic Education, 20

The presentation delivered at a conference may only be available as an informally published work online, or may only have been delivered live and is not available in full. 

Paper or session presented at conference, not formally published

Last name, Initials, & Last name, Initials. (Year, Month Day).  Title [Paper or poster presentation], sentence style capitalization. Conference name, Location.

McDonald, E., Manessis, R., & Blanksby, T. (2019, July 7-10).  Peer mentoring in nursing - improving retention, enhancing education  [Poster presentation]. STARS 2019 Conference, Melbourne, Australia.  https://unistars.org/papers/STARS2019/P30-POSTER.pdf

Court Decisions

Name v. Name, Volume Source Page (Court Date)

Lessard v. Schmidt, 349 F. Supp. 1078 (E.D. Wis. 1972)

In-Text Citation 

To cite the reference in text, give the case name, in italics, and the year.

Name v. Name (Year) (Name v. Name, Year)

Lessard v. Schmidt (1972) (Lessard v. Schmidt, 1972)

Federal Statutes

​In APA Style, most legal materials are cited in the standard legal citation style used for legal references across all disciplines.

A statute is a law or act passed by a legislative body. As with court decisions, statutes exist on both the federal and state levels, such as an act by Congress or by a state government. 

Name of Act, Title Source § Section Number (Year). URL

Every Student Succeeds Act, 20 U.S.C. § 6301 (2015). https://www.congress.gov/114/plaws/publ95/PLAW-114publ95.pdf

In-Text Citation  The in-text citation format for a federal statute is similar to that for other APA Style references. Cite the name of the statute and the year.

Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 (2006) (Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993, 2006)

Government Reports

 Last name, Initials, & Last name, Initials. (Year).  Title , sentence style capitalization (Report number, if available). Publisher's name.URL. 

 National Cancer Institute. (2018).  Facing forward: life after cancer treatment  (NIH Publication No. 18-2424). U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, National Institutes of Health. https://www.cancer.gov/publications/patient-education/life-after-treatment.pdf

 Last name, Initials. (Year).  Title , sentence style capitalization. Journal name, volume, starting page. 

 Martin, L. H. (1991). Case worker liability for the negligent handling of child abuse reports . University of Cincinnati Law Review, 60, 191.

Newspaper Articles

 Last name, Initials, & Last name, Initials. (Year, month day). Title, sentence style capitalization. Newspaper name. URL

 Guariano, B. (2017), December 4). How will humanity react to alien life? Psychologists have some predictions. The Washington Post . https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2017/12/04/how-will-humanity-react-to-alien-life-psychologists-have-some-predictions

Last name, Initials. (Year, Month Day).  Title , sentence style capitalization [Webinar]. Organization name. URL

Anderson, K. (2018, January 23). Disease prevention basics  [Webinar]. Montana State University. https://www.montana.edu/webinar/disease-prevention-basics-anderson

 Author or organization name. (Date of publication, if available).  Webpage title . URL

 Center for Disease Control and Prevention. (2018, January 23).  People at high risk of developing flu-related complications . https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/disease/high_risk.htm

When no date is listed

 Author or organization name. (n.d.). Webpage title . URL

 National Nurses United. (n.d.). What employers should do to protect nurses from Zika . https://www.nationalnursesunited.org/pages/what-employers-should-do-to-protect-rns-from-zika

YouTube Video

Account name. (Date of publication).  Video name  [Video]. Webpage title. URL

Asian Boss. (2020, June 5). World’s leading vaccine expert fact-checks COVID-19 vaccine conspiracy: stay curious #22 [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQdLDMLrYIA

 (Asian Boss, 2020; Harvard University, 2019)

• YouTube Video References APA Examples

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• Purdue OWL Online Writing Lab: Professional, Technical Writing Source: Purdue University Writing and citation resources
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• Amherst College Online Resources for Writers Source: Amherst College Directory of web pages for explaining writing skills and practices.

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Common Assignments: Literature Reviews

Basics of literature reviews.

A literature review is a written approach to examining published information on a particular topic or field. Authors use this review of literature to create a foundation and justification for their research or to demonstrate knowledge on the current state of a field. This review can take the form of a course assignment or a section of a longer capstone project. Read on for more information about writing a strong literature review!

Students often misinterpret the term "literature review" to mean merely a collection of source summaries, similar to annotations or article abstracts. Although summarizing is an element of a literature review, the purpose is to create a comprehensive representation of your understanding of a topic or area of research, such as what has already been done or what has been found. Then, also using these sources, you can demonstrate the need for future research, specifically, your future research.

There is usually no required format or template for a literature review. However, there are some actions to keep in mind when constructing a literature review:

• Include an introduction and conclusion . Even if the literature review will be part of a longer document, introductory and concluding paragraphs can act as bookends to your material. Provide background information for your reader, such as including references to the pioneers in the field in the beginning and offering closure in the end by discussing the implications of future research to the field.
• Avoid direct quotations . Just like in an annotated bibliography, you will want to paraphrase all of the material you present in a literature review. This assignment is a chance for you to demonstrate your knowledge on a topic, and putting ideas into your own words will ensure that you are interpreting the found material for your reader. Paraphrasing will also ensure your review of literature is in your authorial voice.
• Organize by topic or theme rather than by author. When compiling multiple sources, a tendency can be to summarize each source and then compare and contrast the sources at the end. Instead, organize your source information by your identified themes and patterns. This organization helps demonstrate your synthesis of the material and inhibits you from creating a series of book reports.
•  Use headings . APA encourages the use of headings within longer pieces of text to display a shift in topic and create a visual break for the reader. Headings in a literature review can also help you as the writer organize your material by theme and note any layers, or subtopics, within the field.
• Show relationships and consider the flow of ideas. A literature review can be lengthy and dense, so you will want to make your text appealing to your reader. Transitions and comparison terms will allow you to demonstrate where authors agree or disagree on a topic and highlight your interpretation of the literature.

Related Multimedia, Social Media, and Other Resources

Randolph, J. J. (2009). A guide to writing the dissertation literature review. Practical Assessment, Research and Evaluation , 14 (13), 1–13. https://scholarworks.umass.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1219&context=pare

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Ten Simple Rules for Writing a Literature Review

Marco pautasso.

1 Centre for Functional and Evolutionary Ecology (CEFE), CNRS, Montpellier, France

2 Centre for Biodiversity Synthesis and Analysis (CESAB), FRB, Aix-en-Provence, France

Literature reviews are in great demand in most scientific fields. Their need stems from the ever-increasing output of scientific publications [1] . For example, compared to 1991, in 2008 three, eight, and forty times more papers were indexed in Web of Science on malaria, obesity, and biodiversity, respectively [2] . Given such mountains of papers, scientists cannot be expected to examine in detail every single new paper relevant to their interests [3] . Thus, it is both advantageous and necessary to rely on regular summaries of the recent literature. Although recognition for scientists mainly comes from primary research, timely literature reviews can lead to new synthetic insights and are often widely read [4] . For such summaries to be useful, however, they need to be compiled in a professional way [5] .

When starting from scratch, reviewing the literature can require a titanic amount of work. That is why researchers who have spent their career working on a certain research issue are in a perfect position to review that literature. Some graduate schools are now offering courses in reviewing the literature, given that most research students start their project by producing an overview of what has already been done on their research issue [6] . However, it is likely that most scientists have not thought in detail about how to approach and carry out a literature review.

Reviewing the literature requires the ability to juggle multiple tasks, from finding and evaluating relevant material to synthesising information from various sources, from critical thinking to paraphrasing, evaluating, and citation skills [7] . In this contribution, I share ten simple rules I learned working on about 25 literature reviews as a PhD and postdoctoral student. Ideas and insights also come from discussions with coauthors and colleagues, as well as feedback from reviewers and editors.

Rule 1: Define a Topic and Audience

How to choose which topic to review? There are so many issues in contemporary science that you could spend a lifetime of attending conferences and reading the literature just pondering what to review. On the one hand, if you take several years to choose, several other people may have had the same idea in the meantime. On the other hand, only a well-considered topic is likely to lead to a brilliant literature review [8] . The topic must at least be:

• interesting to you (ideally, you should have come across a series of recent papers related to your line of work that call for a critical summary),
• an important aspect of the field (so that many readers will be interested in the review and there will be enough material to write it), and
• a well-defined issue (otherwise you could potentially include thousands of publications, which would make the review unhelpful).

Ideas for potential reviews may come from papers providing lists of key research questions to be answered [9] , but also from serendipitous moments during desultory reading and discussions. In addition to choosing your topic, you should also select a target audience. In many cases, the topic (e.g., web services in computational biology) will automatically define an audience (e.g., computational biologists), but that same topic may also be of interest to neighbouring fields (e.g., computer science, biology, etc.).

Rule 2: Search and Re-search the Literature

After having chosen your topic and audience, start by checking the literature and downloading relevant papers. Five pieces of advice here:

• keep track of the search items you use (so that your search can be replicated [10] ),
• keep a list of papers whose pdfs you cannot access immediately (so as to retrieve them later with alternative strategies),
• use a paper management system (e.g., Mendeley, Papers, Qiqqa, Sente),
• define early in the process some criteria for exclusion of irrelevant papers (these criteria can then be described in the review to help define its scope), and
• do not just look for research papers in the area you wish to review, but also seek previous reviews.

The chances are high that someone will already have published a literature review ( Figure 1 ), if not exactly on the issue you are planning to tackle, at least on a related topic. If there are already a few or several reviews of the literature on your issue, my advice is not to give up, but to carry on with your own literature review,

The bottom-right situation (many literature reviews but few research papers) is not just a theoretical situation; it applies, for example, to the study of the impacts of climate change on plant diseases, where there appear to be more literature reviews than research studies [33] .

• discussing in your review the approaches, limitations, and conclusions of past reviews,
• trying to find a new angle that has not been covered adequately in the previous reviews, and
• incorporating new material that has inevitably accumulated since their appearance.

When searching the literature for pertinent papers and reviews, the usual rules apply:

• be thorough,
• use different keywords and database sources (e.g., DBLP, Google Scholar, ISI Proceedings, JSTOR Search, Medline, Scopus, Web of Science), and
• look at who has cited past relevant papers and book chapters.

Rule 3: Take Notes While Reading

If you read the papers first, and only afterwards start writing the review, you will need a very good memory to remember who wrote what, and what your impressions and associations were while reading each single paper. My advice is, while reading, to start writing down interesting pieces of information, insights about how to organize the review, and thoughts on what to write. This way, by the time you have read the literature you selected, you will already have a rough draft of the review.

Of course, this draft will still need much rewriting, restructuring, and rethinking to obtain a text with a coherent argument [11] , but you will have avoided the danger posed by staring at a blank document. Be careful when taking notes to use quotation marks if you are provisionally copying verbatim from the literature. It is advisable then to reformulate such quotes with your own words in the final draft. It is important to be careful in noting the references already at this stage, so as to avoid misattributions. Using referencing software from the very beginning of your endeavour will save you time.

Rule 4: Choose the Type of Review You Wish to Write

After having taken notes while reading the literature, you will have a rough idea of the amount of material available for the review. This is probably a good time to decide whether to go for a mini- or a full review. Some journals are now favouring the publication of rather short reviews focusing on the last few years, with a limit on the number of words and citations. A mini-review is not necessarily a minor review: it may well attract more attention from busy readers, although it will inevitably simplify some issues and leave out some relevant material due to space limitations. A full review will have the advantage of more freedom to cover in detail the complexities of a particular scientific development, but may then be left in the pile of the very important papers “to be read” by readers with little time to spare for major monographs.

There is probably a continuum between mini- and full reviews. The same point applies to the dichotomy of descriptive vs. integrative reviews. While descriptive reviews focus on the methodology, findings, and interpretation of each reviewed study, integrative reviews attempt to find common ideas and concepts from the reviewed material [12] . A similar distinction exists between narrative and systematic reviews: while narrative reviews are qualitative, systematic reviews attempt to test a hypothesis based on the published evidence, which is gathered using a predefined protocol to reduce bias [13] , [14] . When systematic reviews analyse quantitative results in a quantitative way, they become meta-analyses. The choice between different review types will have to be made on a case-by-case basis, depending not just on the nature of the material found and the preferences of the target journal(s), but also on the time available to write the review and the number of coauthors [15] .

Rule 5: Keep the Review Focused, but Make It of Broad Interest

Whether your plan is to write a mini- or a full review, it is good advice to keep it focused 16 , 17 . Including material just for the sake of it can easily lead to reviews that are trying to do too many things at once. The need to keep a review focused can be problematic for interdisciplinary reviews, where the aim is to bridge the gap between fields [18] . If you are writing a review on, for example, how epidemiological approaches are used in modelling the spread of ideas, you may be inclined to include material from both parent fields, epidemiology and the study of cultural diffusion. This may be necessary to some extent, but in this case a focused review would only deal in detail with those studies at the interface between epidemiology and the spread of ideas.

While focus is an important feature of a successful review, this requirement has to be balanced with the need to make the review relevant to a broad audience. This square may be circled by discussing the wider implications of the reviewed topic for other disciplines.

Rule 6: Be Critical and Consistent

Reviewing the literature is not stamp collecting. A good review does not just summarize the literature, but discusses it critically, identifies methodological problems, and points out research gaps [19] . After having read a review of the literature, a reader should have a rough idea of:

• the major achievements in the reviewed field,
• the main areas of debate, and
• the outstanding research questions.

It is challenging to achieve a successful review on all these fronts. A solution can be to involve a set of complementary coauthors: some people are excellent at mapping what has been achieved, some others are very good at identifying dark clouds on the horizon, and some have instead a knack at predicting where solutions are going to come from. If your journal club has exactly this sort of team, then you should definitely write a review of the literature! In addition to critical thinking, a literature review needs consistency, for example in the choice of passive vs. active voice and present vs. past tense.

Rule 7: Find a Logical Structure

Like a well-baked cake, a good review has a number of telling features: it is worth the reader's time, timely, systematic, well written, focused, and critical. It also needs a good structure. With reviews, the usual subdivision of research papers into introduction, methods, results, and discussion does not work or is rarely used. However, a general introduction of the context and, toward the end, a recapitulation of the main points covered and take-home messages make sense also in the case of reviews. For systematic reviews, there is a trend towards including information about how the literature was searched (database, keywords, time limits) [20] .

How can you organize the flow of the main body of the review so that the reader will be drawn into and guided through it? It is generally helpful to draw a conceptual scheme of the review, e.g., with mind-mapping techniques. Such diagrams can help recognize a logical way to order and link the various sections of a review [21] . This is the case not just at the writing stage, but also for readers if the diagram is included in the review as a figure. A careful selection of diagrams and figures relevant to the reviewed topic can be very helpful to structure the text too [22] .

Rule 8: Make Use of Feedback

Reviews of the literature are normally peer-reviewed in the same way as research papers, and rightly so [23] . As a rule, incorporating feedback from reviewers greatly helps improve a review draft. Having read the review with a fresh mind, reviewers may spot inaccuracies, inconsistencies, and ambiguities that had not been noticed by the writers due to rereading the typescript too many times. It is however advisable to reread the draft one more time before submission, as a last-minute correction of typos, leaps, and muddled sentences may enable the reviewers to focus on providing advice on the content rather than the form.

Feedback is vital to writing a good review, and should be sought from a variety of colleagues, so as to obtain a diversity of views on the draft. This may lead in some cases to conflicting views on the merits of the paper, and on how to improve it, but such a situation is better than the absence of feedback. A diversity of feedback perspectives on a literature review can help identify where the consensus view stands in the landscape of the current scientific understanding of an issue [24] .

Rule 9: Include Your Own Relevant Research, but Be Objective

In many cases, reviewers of the literature will have published studies relevant to the review they are writing. This could create a conflict of interest: how can reviewers report objectively on their own work [25] ? Some scientists may be overly enthusiastic about what they have published, and thus risk giving too much importance to their own findings in the review. However, bias could also occur in the other direction: some scientists may be unduly dismissive of their own achievements, so that they will tend to downplay their contribution (if any) to a field when reviewing it.

In general, a review of the literature should neither be a public relations brochure nor an exercise in competitive self-denial. If a reviewer is up to the job of producing a well-organized and methodical review, which flows well and provides a service to the readership, then it should be possible to be objective in reviewing one's own relevant findings. In reviews written by multiple authors, this may be achieved by assigning the review of the results of a coauthor to different coauthors.

Rule 10: Be Up-to-Date, but Do Not Forget Older Studies

Given the progressive acceleration in the publication of scientific papers, today's reviews of the literature need awareness not just of the overall direction and achievements of a field of inquiry, but also of the latest studies, so as not to become out-of-date before they have been published. Ideally, a literature review should not identify as a major research gap an issue that has just been addressed in a series of papers in press (the same applies, of course, to older, overlooked studies (“sleeping beauties” [26] )). This implies that literature reviewers would do well to keep an eye on electronic lists of papers in press, given that it can take months before these appear in scientific databases. Some reviews declare that they have scanned the literature up to a certain point in time, but given that peer review can be a rather lengthy process, a full search for newly appeared literature at the revision stage may be worthwhile. Assessing the contribution of papers that have just appeared is particularly challenging, because there is little perspective with which to gauge their significance and impact on further research and society.

Inevitably, new papers on the reviewed topic (including independently written literature reviews) will appear from all quarters after the review has been published, so that there may soon be the need for an updated review. But this is the nature of science [27] – [32] . I wish everybody good luck with writing a review of the literature.

Acknowledgments

Many thanks to M. Barbosa, K. Dehnen-Schmutz, T. Döring, D. Fontaneto, M. Garbelotto, O. Holdenrieder, M. Jeger, D. Lonsdale, A. MacLeod, P. Mills, M. Moslonka-Lefebvre, G. Stancanelli, P. Weisberg, and X. Xu for insights and discussions, and to P. Bourne, T. Matoni, and D. Smith for helpful comments on a previous draft.

Funding Statement

This work was funded by the French Foundation for Research on Biodiversity (FRB) through its Centre for Synthesis and Analysis of Biodiversity data (CESAB), as part of the NETSEED research project. The funders had no role in the preparation of the manuscript.

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A Systematic Literature Review of Strategies Implemented in Extended Education Settings to Address Children’s Mental Health and Wellbeing

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• Published: 14 July 2024

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• Sarah Murray 1 , 2 ,
• Sonja March   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-8425-7126 1 , 2 , 4 ,
• Yosheen Pillay 1 , 3 &
• Emma-Leigh Senyard 1 , 2  

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Mental health and wellbeing problems in middle childhood are increasing worldwide which needs more support than just clinical services. Early intervention has been explored in other settings, but not in extended education care settings such as outside school hours care (OSHC). A systematic literature review was undertaken to determine what interventions have been tested in extended education settings to address or promote emotional, behavioural, or social wellbeing in children, and to assess how effective they have been. A PRISMA guided search found seven peer reviewed articles from an initial pool of 458. Data from the articles were extracted and the mixed method appraisal tool (MMAT) was applied to assess methodological quality of the studies design, data collection, and analyses. The final selections were methodologically heterogeneous with an average MMAT quality rating of 71%. All but one of the interventions were delivered to children in small group settings and were a mix of activities. Studies that trained educators to deliver the interventions were limited and no data were collected for them. The two interventions that trained educators to deliver content to children were seen as promising. This review showed an overall paucity of research examining interventions delivered in extended education settings to improve children’s wellbeing. Given variations in extended education services and the absence of formal qualifications required for educators, further research is needed to understand what interventions may be effective and what role educators could play in such interventions or in supporting children’s wellbeing in extended education.

This review protocol was prospectively registered with PROSPERO . Registration ID: CRD42023485541 on 03/12/2023.

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Introduction

Outside school hours care (OSHC) services are the fastest growing childcare services in Australia (Cartmel, 2019 ; Social Research Centre, 2022 ), providing care to primary school-aged children before and after school, and during school holidays. OSHC is also known by other names internationally, such as school-aged care (SAC) (Department of Education Employment and Workplace Relations, 2011 ), School-Aged Educare (Klerfelt & Haglund, 2014 ), Extended Education (Bae, 2019 ), or outside school time (OST) (Malone, 2017 ). In some countries, including Australia these services are typically run by organisations external to the school, but occur on school grounds. Considering the wide naming variations, the international research community has broadly adopted the term ‘extended education’ to define the interdisciplinary field of research (Bae, 2019 ) and this term will be used hereafter. This term refers to settings that (a) include intentionally organised activities, learning, and/or developmental programs, (b) incorporate teaching, learning, and/or development that occurs between adult professionals and young people, (c) occurs outside of school time, such as before and after school, and on school holidays, (d) mostly occurs in a school setting, and is voluntary to attend (Bae & Kanefuji, 2018 ).

For example, USA-based extended education services are typically seen as places for enrichment with specialised offerings for children (e.g., technology, academic, or art clubs) (Minney et al., 2019 ) or free play opportunities that allow social-emotional skill development (Noam & Triggs, 2018 ). In Nordic and Central European countries such as Sweden, Iceland and Germany, after school care is integrated into formal education so that children attend all day schools that cater for learning in formal and informal settings (e.g. Fischer et al., 2014 ). These settings, researchers believe, contribute to children’s learning and wellbeing as well as to their formal education and potentially, to society as a whole (Klerfelt & Stecher, 2018 ).

Variations also exist in international social, political, historical and educational needs of extended education that determine how it is offered in each country (Bae, 2019 ). Researchers in this field highlight the importance of learning that does not occur in the formal educational space of school (Stecher, 2019 ) and where childhood development and social-emotional learning is valued (Bae, 2019 ; White et al., 2022 ). A growing body of evidence shows the social-emotional benefits to children who attend extended education (Durlak & Weissberg, 2007 ) and that building these skills contribute to long-term academic and life success (Noam & Triggs, 2018 ). It is therefore important that educators in extended education settings are equipped to support children’s mental health and wellbeing development.

Worldwide, millions of children attend extended education services, often spending more time with extended education educators than with a classroom teacher. In Australia, nearly half a million children (25% of the 5–11 year old population) attend extended education (Social Research Centre, 2022 ) while in the US 35% of all children aged 6–13 years attend these services (Administration for Children and Families (DHHS) Office of Child Care, 2022a , 2022b ). Attendance rates in Europe are similar, with 35% of 6–11 year olds attending extended education services in 29 EU countries and up to 65% of children in some Nordic countries such as Denmark, Slovenia, and Sweden (OECD Family Database, 2022 ). Despite this, there has been little national or international research interest in the time children spend in extended education.

In Australia, extended education services (OSHC) promote play and leisure for the children in their care, and the pedagogical framework that guides OSHC—My Time, Our Place Framework for School-Age Care in Australia 2.0 (MTOP)—emphasises the importance of children’s development of agency, wellbeing, and social and emotional skills (Australian Government Department of Education (ADGE), 2023 ). This emphasis on wellbeing is seen internationally as well. For example, the US’ adoption of the Whole School, Whole Community, Whole Child (WSCC) model recognises the social and emotional climate in extended education as an important factor for children to grow up safe, healthy, engaged, challenged, and supported (ASCD & Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2014 ). Some European countries have also enshrined social, emotional, and wellbeing development in policy, such as Scotland’s national approach—Getting it Right for Every Child—which underpins and supports all adults who work with children (including in extended education) to be able to recognise and respond to children’s wellbeing (The Scottish Government, 2019 ).

Despite the focus on wellbeing in frameworks that govern the implementation of extended education services internationally, little is known in the academic literature about how these educators support the development of children’s social and emotional skills in their day-to-day work, and what interventions have been implemented in extended education services to promote wellbeing or positive mental health. Further, researchers in the emerging field of extended education encourage interdisciplinary studies to better understand children’s outcomes in these settings (Bae, 2019 ; Stecher, 2019 ).

Mental Health in Middle Childhood

The World Health Organization ( 2022 ) defines mental health as a state of wellbeing that allows people to cope with stress, learn and work well, reach their capabilities, and contribute to their community. For children especially, a key component of mental health and wellbeing is social and emotional competence (Australian Institute of Health & Welfare, 2020 ). One in seven Australian children aged 4 to 17 years live with a mental health disorder and mental illness is the largest cause of disability and health burden in this age group (Australian Institute of Health & Welfare, 2020 ). This finding is also echoed in international literature, with a worldwide prevalence of mental health disorders in children of 13.4% (Polanczyk et al., 2015 ). The most common mental health diagnoses in this age group include attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), anxiety, depression, and conduct disorders (Lawrence et al., 2015 ). While these data are the most recent prevalence statistics, international literature indicates higher rates of depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress symptoms experienced by children during the COVID-19 pandemic (Marques de Miranda et al., 2020 ) and US paediatricians and mental health experts predict long-term impacts on children’s mental health, especially for those already experiencing difficulties (Rider et al., 2021 ). Considering mental health difficulties in this age group are high and are likely increasing, it is important to understand the impacts this may have.

Children who experience poor mental health also show problems in social, behavioural, and emotional skills, and poor wellbeing. For example, children who may be struggling with their mental health (whether diagnosed or undiagnosed) can show a lack of social awareness and reciprocity, difficulties managing their emotions (e.g., outbursts of anger, expressing fear in non-threatening situations) and a range of behaviours that are either confrontational (violent and aggressive) or avoidant (e.g., not engaging in exploratory play) depending on the mental health problem (American Psychiatric Association, 2013 ). Such behaviours will potentially present and interfere with functioning in daily settings such as school and extended education, with educators required to identify and manage such behaviours as well as promote positive mental health amongst all children. It is therefore important for educators in extended education settings to have a good understanding of typical childhood development and mental health, to understand how mental health might impact daily behaviours, functioning and interpersonal relationships and to know how to support children.

Wellbeing in Care Settings

Despite the large number of children enrolled in extended education internationally and the high prevalence of social, emotional, and behavioural difficulties in this age group, educators responsible for these children are not required to hold qualifications or formal training in child development, wellbeing, or mental health in Australia. Other countries qualifications requirements vary. Further, there are a lack of formal training programs developed specifically for Australian extended education settings (Cartmel & Brannelly, 2016 ; Cartmel et al., 2020 ), specifically those that train educators in how to recognise and support children with mental health difficulties. Thus, there is a need for research to identify solutions to improve educator capacity to manage children’s wellbeing and promote positive mental health in extended education.

The objective of this systematic literature review (SLR) is to determine what strategies and interventions have been tested in extended education settings to address or promote emotional, behavioural, or social wellbeing in children, and to assess how effective those strategies or interventions have been. Given this is an international issue and similar problems are evident worldwide, this SLR was conducted on international literature.

A Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA; (Page et al., 2021 ) protocol was developed to guide the review and to maintain transparency. To address the objectives, several inclusion criteria were considered to ensure a relevant selection of studies were included. First, the studies must have been conducted in an extended education setting or with extended education staff to bring about change in extended education. Second, the studies must have introduced strategies or interventions designed to address or promote psychological constructs, including emotional, social, or behavioural wellbeing or development within a cohort of primary school-aged children (4–12 years). Studies were included if the tested strategies aimed to train or educate children in behavioural, social, or emotional wellbeing, or train educators in how to address or support the social, emotional, developmental, or behavioural wellbeing of children. Therefore, the population of interest was children and educators who work at extended education services. No restrictions were placed on gender, and studies from any country in the world were included if the article was accessible in English. Additionally, the studies must have examined the outcomes of the strategies, program, or intervention; specifically, the study must have included a measure of efficacy to show whether the program was effective. These outcomes could be educator-focused (e.g., educator levels of mental health and wellbeing literacy, self-efficacy and/or confidence), or child-/caregiver-focused (e.g., child or caregiver satisfaction with the intervention, changes in child wellbeing). This review included studies that measured qualitative or quantitative outcomes. Studies were excluded if they related only to primary school settings (without extended education context), those that focused on extended education itself as an intervention (i.e., the overall benefits to children attending extended education), and participants who were outside of the age range (i.e., under 4 years or over 12 years old).

Search Strategy

The search string and strategy was determined in consultation with a Research Librarian. An electronic search was conducted in December 2023 with the following databases: EbscoHost Megafile, Scopus, SAGE Journals, Taylor & Francis, Web of Science, and Wiley Online Library. In September 2023 Australian and international extended education researchers were consulted at an extended education conference for additional relevant academic research to extended education and for clarification of search terms. Reference lists were hand searched to ensure inclusion of relevant studies.

The search terms were selected to include the four key constructs: after school care and names it is known by (“Outside Hours School” OR “After School Care” OR “After School Recreation” OR “School Age Care” OR “Out of School Hours” OR “School-Age Educare” OR “Extended Education”), mental health (“wellbeing” OR “well-being” OR “well being” OR “mental health” OR emotion* OR socio-emotional OR social OR behavioural OR develop*), the addition of an intervention (assess* OR strategies OR treatment OR program OR support OR education OR intervention), and the relevant age group of children (child* OR “primary school” OR “elementary school” OR “middle childhood”). After an initial search returned more than 50,000 articles, the search was narrowed to title and abstracts as they were determined to show the relevant results.

Data Extraction

Two main reviewers firstly agreed on the clarity of terminology and the data to be collected before extraction. The reviewers assessed the relevancy of studies against the inclusion criteria independently at each phase of the literature search and agreed on results before moving to the next phase. A third reviewer was available to resolve any disagreements.

The following data were extracted from each of the included studies using an Excel data extraction template: title, author/s, publication year, country, study design, sample size, participant information, age range, participant gender, intervention name and description, delivery mode, location, target population, target skill/s, duration, frequency, who delivered the intervention and how, outcome measure, type of analysis, results of the study, limitations, and author notes (recommendations, comments, or concerns).

Due to the variation in study design and constructs targeted in each of the included studies, a meta-analysis was not deemed to be appropriate. Instead, a narrative synthesis was completed to provide a fusion of findings, explore relationships between the studies, assess robustness of the studies, and to group the findings by characteristics.

Quality Evaluation

The mixed-methods appraisal tool (MMAT; Hong et al., 2018 ) was used to critically evaluate the quality of each study due to the variations in quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods research designs of each. The MMAT was originally published in 2009 (Pluye et al., 2009 ) and has since been refined in 2011 (Pace et al., 2011 ) and in 2018 (Hong et al., 2018 ). Each version of the MMAT has undergone validity testing for interrater reliability, efficacy, and content validity, with the most recent showing excellent interrater agreement ( d  = 0.87–1.0) on the items (Hong et al., 2019 ).

The MMAT allows concurrent appraisal of the methodological quality of five research methods: qualitative, randomised control trial, non-randomised studies, quantitative, and mixed method studies. The first part is a screening checklist that asks, ‘are there clear research questions?’ and ‘do the collected data allow to address the research questions?’ The second part outlines five criteria assessing each of the five methodologies with responses of ‘Yes’, ‘No’, or ‘Can’t tell’.

As in the data extraction stage, two reviewers independently applied the MMAT criteria to each of the selected studies before discussing findings. A third reviewer was available to resolve any disagreements. The authors of the MMAT advise that sensitive analysis of the MMAT should take precedence over a simple tally; however, also recognise that reporting the results without a descriptive scoring system may be problematic (Hong et al., 2018 ). For this reason, an overall percentage score of each studies’ methodological quality will be offered along with a narrative analysis.

Results of the search and screening process are presented in Fig.  1 . The initial search returned 395 records. After duplicate records were removed, 218 records underwent title and abstract screening, with 185 records excluded at this stage for not meeting the full inclusion criteria. Articles were sought for full-text retrieval for further screening, and out of 33 full-text articles, 7 were selected for the final sample. Articles were most commonly excluded when the study investigated the extended education service as an intervention and there were no interventions introduced with the included outcomes. Due to naming conventions within Australia and internationally, four articles were excluded that did not conduct research in an extended education environment, typically because of the search string “out of school hours”. The PRISMA protocol flow chart is shown in Fig.  1 and details exclusion reasons at each step.

PRISMA flow diagram

The seven included studies that comprise this review indicate the dearth of academic interest in children’s mental health and wellbeing outcomes in extended education settings and how educators understand and support these. Academic interest in this topic began less than 15 years ago (Bazyk & Bazyk, 2009 ), and half of the included studies occurred only in the past 5 years (Fettig et al., 2018 ; Minney et al., 2019 ; Siddiqui et al., 2019 ). A total of 1798 participants took part in the seven studies, although 1231 of these were from the one study (Siddiqui et al., 2019 ). Of the total participants, only 32 were adults (educators and volunteers; Milton et al., 2023 ) of the remaining, all were children and 967 of them participated in the interventions (the remainder were in control groups). This shows there were very few data gathered about educators, even in the three studies where the educators assisted in delivered the intervention to the children. Table 1 details the author, year, intervention cohort, intervention description, and intervention details and delivery for each of the included studies.

The methods and outcomes of each of the studies is examined in more detail in Table  2 . With respect to the skills targeted in each intervention, most aimed to improve social-emotional skills (Bazyk & Bazyk, 2009 ; Fettig et al., 2018 ; Gooding, 2010 ; Minney et al., 2019 ), while the remaining three studies targeted a mixture of emotional, social, wellbeing, individual and community building skills (e.g., identifying masked feelings, teamwork, self-esteem, connect communities, etc.) (Kumschick et al., 2014 ; Siddiqui et al., 2019 ). The target population in each study was always children, however, some studies specified groups. For example, Bazyk and Bazyk’s ( 2009 ) study only included low socioeconomic African American children, Fettig et al. ( 2018 ) only included children at risk of emotional and behavioural problems, and Siddiqui et al. ( 2019 ) only offered the intervention to year 5 students.

Of the seven studies reported in this review, one employed qualitative methodology (Bazyk & Bazyk, 2009 ), three implemented non-randomised control trials (Kumschick et al., 2014 ; Minney et al., 2019 ; Siddiqui et al., 2019 ), one randomised control trial (Gooding, 2010 ), and two were mixed method studies (Fettig et al., 2018 ). Analyses varied in every study as shown in Table  2 .

Summary of Interventions

Only seven social and emotional or mental health interventions in extended education settings were found in the academic literature, highlighting the paucity of research. Of these, only three focused on creating extended education-specific interventions and delivered training to extended education educators themselves to support children’s social-emotional skills (Milton et al., 2023 ; Minney et al., 2019 ; Siddiqui et al., 2019 ). Reading stories with explicit SEL content was explored in two interventions which also focused on improving language and vocabulary through games, activities, and play (Fettig et al., 2018 ; Kumschick et al., 2014 ). While positive attainment of most of these skills was found, Fettig et al.’s ( 2018 ) participant population only included four children and Kumschick et al ( 2014 ) found no significant improvement in one SEL skill (recognition of masked feelings) and no between group differences when presented with a new book, indicating the measured improvements did not carry over to a new book.

Recognising a disparity in developmental outcomes for children in low socio-economic areas and a need for structured leisure activities outside of school time, Bazyk and Bazyk ( 2009 ), in the earliest example of introduced intervention, sought to improve low-income children’s social-emotional competencies through structured small group emotional and craft activities. While their content analysis of participant interviews showed themes indicating the groups were fun and children learned healthy ways to express feelings, there were no comparison groups or direct measurement of the stated skill improvements.

With a particular focus on disaffected youth and those who might be disadvantaged, Siddiqui et al ( 2019 ) evaluated the outcomes of the CU program, specifically focusing on cognitive and non-cognitive (i.e., SEL) skills building. Disadvantaged students showed greater attainment in non-cognitive skills of teamwork and social responsibility in this study. However, effect sizes for other non-cognitive and cognitive skills were small for all participants. Further, due to the variability of offerings for this intervention across multiple schools there was no further detail about which activities in particular showed greater skill attainment.

Gooding ( 2010 ) developed a CBT music therapy intervention delivered to small groups within extended education settings as well as schools and youth centres as part of a doctoral thesis. The aim was to improve children’s peer relation and self-management skills; however, while the children in this study showed improvements in these skills, so too did the control group, indicating the results may have been due to other factors such as child development more broadly.

The seven selected studies all trialled small group interventions designed to improve various social, emotional, and wellbeing skills of children already attending extended education settings. Four of the six interventions (Bazyk & Bazyk, 2009 ; Fettig et al., 2018 ; Gooding, 2010 ; Kumschick et al., 2014 ) in this review ran group sessions with the children that required a commitment of between 45 min and an hour and a half a week, for between 5 and 26 weeks. The children assigned to control in these studies participated in usual extended education activities. The intervention delivered by Siddiqui et al. ( 2019 ) is difficult to comment on due to the variations in the ways each school could offer the intervention. Minney et al ( 2019 ) and Milton et al. ( 2023 ) are the only interventions that trained the extended education educators themselves and offered all children in each of the extended education sites the opportunity to participate.

The researchers in the selected studies all highlighted extended education as an ideal environment to offer the designed interventions due to meeting inherent social, behavioural, and developmental needs. However, for most of these studies the extended education environment was not the focus of the intervention. Only Minney et al. ( 2019 ) and Milton et al. ( 2023 ) developed an extended education-specific intervention that was designed for adults to support all children who attend extended education.

Quality Appraisal

The methodological quality of each included study was critically appraised using the MMAT, with the results displayed in Table  3 . All but one study (Siddiqui et al., 2019 ) adhered to a high-quality methodological approach for their methodology type. While the authors of the MMAT do not recommend simply providing an overall score as it can mask problematic aspects of the study (Hong et al., 2018 ), a percentage rating is graphically depicted below. Four of the studies were rated at 80% or higher and were either randomised or non-randomised control trials. Interestingly, the only qualitative study was rated the highest in terms of methodological quality. The methodological quality of the studies averaged a rating of 71%.

This systematic literature review set out to examine the international literature to understand what, if any, interventions had been applied in extended education settings to improve children’s behavioural, social, and/or emotional wellbeing through either child or educator-focused training. A structured search and data collection following the PRISMA protocol found only seven international studies met the inclusion criteria. These seven studies provided a mixture of methodologies which consisted of varying designs and outcomes. This review highlights the lack of clarity in regard to which interventions are known to promote social, emotional, behavioural skills or mental health in extended education contexts. There was evidence to support programs designed specifically for extended education when services and educators are involved in intervention delivery. While the interventions varied significantly between studies, the cohort target, outcomes, and purpose of each intervention showed considerable homogeneity across studies in this review.

Strength of Evidence for Interventions

While the quality of these studies was generally rated highly as appraised by the MMAT (Hong et al., 2018 ), the overall strength of evidence was relatively weak, due to the lack of studies overall, and the lack of Clinical trials conducted. For the interventions that showed positive effects, only Level 2.c evidence (quasi-experimental prospectively controlled study designs) was provided for the CU program (Siddiqui et al., 2019 ), reading groups with feelings board game (Kumschick et al., 2014 ), and for the whole service small groups intervention delivered by educators (Minney et al., 2019 ). Level 3.e evidence (observational study without a control group design) was provided for occupational therapy groups (Bazyk & Bazyk, 2009 ), CP3 program (Milton et al., 2023 ), and the dialogic story reading intervention (Fettig et al., 2018 ). This systematic review has therefore indicated a gap in the literature for high-quality, evidence driven interventions and Clinical trials.

Based on the evidence to date, no interventions have been identified to specifically develop children’s behavioural wellbeing or mental health in extended education contexts. All interventions focused on SEL competencies and results of this review show that the educator delivered small group intervention which targeted self-management and social awareness skills was most effective (Minney et al., 2019 ). This study also demonstrated the highest level of evidence for this review (The Joanna Briggs Institute, 2014 ) and a high-quality MMAT rating (Hong et al., 2018 ). Table 4 provides comparisons of the methodological quality and level of evidence for each intervention, as well as how well the outcomes were achieved and ranks them in order of efficacy.

The only other intervention with positive outcomes, but lower strength of overall evidence was the dialogic reading intervention (Kumschick et al., 2014 ). CP3 (Milton et al., 2023 ), SFSR (Fettig et al., 2018 ), and CU (Siddiqui et al., 2019 ) provided limited overall evidence; however, it should be noted that CP3 was only in the evaluation phase of research and the outcomes have not yet been explicitly tested. The remaining two interventions were considered as providing limited evidence despite high-quality methodological designs as they either did not show positive effects in social competence or social skills (Gooding, 2010 ) or did not provide evidence of increased skills (Bazyk & Bazyk, 2009 ).

There appears to be an almost complete absence of research examining interventions delivered to or by educators with the results of this review showing all interventions delivered in extended education settings were designed to be delivered only to children. In all but three interventions (Minney et al., 2019 ; Siddiqui et al., 2019 ), educators did not deliver the interventions and did not receive support either during or after the research. For the studies that did include educators delivering the interventions, only Milton et al. ( 2023 ) collected some baseline details; however, none sought information regarding their ability or effectiveness in supporting children’s social, behavioural, or emotional wellbeing. In the limited research that exists, only two interventions Milton et al. ( 2023 ) and Minney et al. ( 2019 ) attempted to upskill educators in their ability to manage children’s social-emotional, behavioural, or mental health knowledge. Thus, future research would benefit from focusing on this specific area.

The recent MTOP update explicitly discusses the mental health of children and increases the provision for educators to provide for the wellbeing of children in their care (Department of Education for the Ministerial Council, 2022 ). ‘Outcome 3: Children and young people have a strong sense of wellbeing’ now highlights educators’ unique position to support children’s mental health and wellbeing through attuned care and by creating child safe cultures and environments appropriate to their development and needs (Department of Education for the Ministerial Council, 2022 ). It will be important that extended education services and educators can demonstrate adherence to these updates.

Extended Education as an Intervention

Although this review found only seven studies examining interventions implemented in extended education settings, there has been international interest in the social and emotional outcomes associated with extended education attendance in general. The consensus of this mostly US-based quantitative literature shows many positive SEL outcomes from attending extended education (e.g., Durlak et al., 2010 ); however, extended education takes many forms internationally. For example, a meta-analysis of services that offer activities after school in the US found that the 52 included extended education programs showed a significant positive effect on children’s feelings, behaviour, and attitudes to school (Durlak et al., 2010 ) As this analysis investigated studies of all after school activities, many of the included interventions were not conducted in a typical extended education setting (e.g., drug prevention program, Little League, etc.) or evaluated extended education as the intervention and therefore did not meet the inclusion criteria of our study, but provides positive support for wellbeing promotion in these settings. Highlighting the difficulties conducting research in this area, Durlak et al. ( 2010 ) discussed the lack of equivalence between services, making it difficult to make meaningful comparisons. Further, considering only one of the seven studies used qualitative methodology (Bazyk & Bazyk, 2009 ), this should be a focus in future research.

Limitations

This study was limited by the lack of peer reviewed literature examining introduced social-emotional and mental health support in extended education settings. Until recently, this has not been considered in the literature and highlights a gap in the research. Research in Australia has been particularly lacking; however, it is positive to see work is beginning in the area. Second, the heterogeneity of included interventions prevented meaningful overall data comparisons or conclusions. This again highlights the importance of research to provide aggregated data that will support effective mental health interventions in extended education. Third, only peer reviewed research was included in the search criteria and does not account for any informal interventions introduced in extended education or any unpublished research in progress. Finally, although extended education researchers in Australia were consulted for alternative terms for extended education or conceptions of mental health and wellbeing, there may be search terms that have been unintentionally overlooked.

Recommendations and Conclusion

This is the first systematic review to investigate interventions to improve social, emotional, and/or behavioural wellbeing in extended education settings. Children were the target cohort of all the seven interventions, with the studies highlighting various ways to increase social and emotional skills, but not behaviour skills or mental health directly. While training educators in the delivery of social and emotional content showed promise in teaching children self-management and social awareness skills, none of the studies examined educators’ capability and self-efficacy to deliver any such interventions in extended education. Given the dearth of studies identified, future research should focus on conducting high-quality trials of various interventions to improve SEL and mental health in extended education contexts. Future research should also consider educators’ knowledge of, capability, and confidence to support children’s mental health and wellbeing in these settings. Research should include qualitative data (such as interviews or open ended questions) to ensure educator and mental health expert input to developing strategic supports and interventions. There is an urgent need for more research into strategies and interventions to promote positive emotional and behavioural development and mental health within school-aged children via extended education contexts.

Data Availability

The data that supports the findings of this study are available on the Harvard Dataverse website: https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/6W79DK .

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Acknowledgements

I, Sarah Murray, as the lead author and manuscript guarantor, affirm the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the systematic review being reported. Further, no important details have been omitted, and any discrepancies from the review as planned have been explained.

Open Access funding enabled and organized by CAUL and its Member Institutions. This review was conducted as part of the first authors PhD project for which the University of Southern Queensland has awarded a Research Training Program stipend.

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Study conception, material preparation, data collection, data extraction, analysis, and drafting of the manuscript were performed by Sarah Murray. Study conception and design, critical revisions, and contributions to drafting were performed by Sonja March and Yosheen Pillay. Data extraction and review was performed by Emma-Leigh Senyard.

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Murray, S., March, S., Pillay, Y. et al. A Systematic Literature Review of Strategies Implemented in Extended Education Settings to Address Children’s Mental Health and Wellbeing. Clin Child Fam Psychol Rev (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10567-024-00494-3

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But since learning that Munro declined to leave her husband after he had sexually assaulted and harassed her daughter, Lecker now wonders how to teach her work, or if he should even try.

“I had decided to teach a graduate course on Munro in the winter of 2025,” Lecker says. “Now I have serious questions whether I feel ethically capable of offering that course.”

Andrea Robin Skinner, daughter of Munro and James Munro, wrote in the Toronto Star earlier this month that she had been assaulted at age 9 by Munro’s second husband, Gerard Fremlin. She alleged that he continued to harass and abuse her for the next few years, losing interest when she reached her teens. In her 20s, she told her mother about Fremlin’s abuse. But Munro, after briefly leaving Fremlin, returned and remained with him until his death in 2013. She would explain to Skinner that she “loved him too much” to remain apart.

When Munro died in May at age 92, she was celebrated worldwide for narratives which documented rare insight into her characters’ secrets, motivations, passions and cruelties, especially those of girls and women. Admirers cited her not just as a literary inspiration, but as a kind of moral guide, sometimes described as “Saint Alice.” A New York Times essay that ran shortly after her death, by Canadian author Sheila Heti, was titled “I Don’t Write Like Alice Munro, But I Want to Live Like Her.”

“No one knows the compromises another makes, especially when that person is as private as she was and transforms her trials into fiction,” Heti wrote. “Yet whatever the truth of her daily existence, she still shines as a symbol of artistic purity.”

Educators in Canada and beyond are now rethinking her life and work. At Western University in London, Ontario, Munro’s alma mater, the school has posted a statement on its website saying that it was “taking time to carefully consider the impact” of the revelations. Since 2018, Western University has offered an Alice Munro Chair in Creativity, with a mission to “Lead the creative culture of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities, serving as a mentor and a model.” That chair, held for the past academic year by Heti, will be left unfilled as “we carefully consider Munro’s legacy and her ties to Western,” according to the school.

Requests with Heti’s agent and publicists for comment were not immediately answered.

For the fall semester at Harvard University, authors and faculty members Laura van den Berg and Neel Mukherjee will be co-teaching “Reading for Fiction Writers,” a review of literary works ranging from the science fiction of Octavia Butler to the “realist” fiction of Munro. Van den Berg, a prize-winning writer whose books include the story collection “The Isle of Youth” and the novel “State of Paradise,” says that Munro’s failure to support Skinner has forced her to rethink her approach to the class.

“I’ll never read Munro the same away again, and won’t be teaching her the same way,” she says. “To me, what was so painful about what Andrea Skinner has been through is the silence. And feeling that she could break her silence after her mother was gone. To me, to just stand in front a group of students and read the lecture I had originally prepared would feel like a second silencing.”

A former student of Lecker’s, Kellie Elrick, says she is still figuring out how Munro should be taught and how to think of her work. Munro’s stories have enriched her life, she says, and she doesn’t regret reading them. Elrick, entering her fourth year at McGill, sees parallel narratives, “difficult to reconcile,” of “Munro the writer” and “Munro the mother.”

“I think that it’s perhaps both productive and dangerous to read an author’s work biographically,” she added. “It may allow us (the readers) to think we may understand things, but there are things we can never truly know about the lives and intentions of writers.”

One of the Munro stories that van den Berg and Mukherjee plan to teach is “Friend of My Youth,” narrated by a woman long estranged from her mother, whose “ideas were in line with some progressive notions of her times, and mine echoed the notions that were favored in mine.” Mukherjee, a Booker Prize finalist in 2014 for the novel “The Lives of Others,” is unsure about how, or whether, to work in the recent news about Munro when teaching ”Friend of My Youth,” which the author had dedicated to her own mother.

He believes in separating the “art from the artist, that we all have done bad things.” He considers himself “very conflicted,” sharing van den Berg’s horror that Munro chose her husband over her daughter, but also finding that her work may have gained “richer depth, now that we know something in her life that she may have been trying to come to terms with.”

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