Teaching Matters

Opening the black box of the PhD literature review: an advice-approach comparison

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Teaching Matters | Presentation Details |

Title

Opening the black box of the PhD literature review: an advice-approach comparison


Author(s)

Ms Rebekah Burgess, Ms Natasha Chassagne, Mr Michael Guerzoni, Ms Ruby Grant, Ms Gina Zappia, Mr Peter Wells, Ms Kesherie Gurung


Presentation Goals

We invite the audience to hear a comparison between the established practices of literature reviewing and the varied approaches to conducting reviews taken by PhD candidates. Our focus will be on the structural features of these processes, and how they may depart from established and ‘textbook’ approaches – such as the use of software management strategies, and the often hidden collaborative, and peer-resource nature of PhD-in-progress.


Subtheme

Student Blends


Presentation Type

Spotlight on Practice


Keywords

collaboration, literature review, peer review, peer support, peer learning,


Room

Social Sciences 210


Time

12.45-13.45


Abstract

This paper compares trusted traditions in literature review with the actual practices of postgraduate research students. While a set of established norms around 'how to conduct literature review' do exist, the mechanics of this process are glossed over in existing guidelines. Despite funding contraction, or perhaps because of it, a small peer-based seminar series within a rural School of Social Sciences began to share strategies for surviving research higher degrees. One of our seminars involved peer-teaching around literature review techniques. PhD candidates discussed the iterative processes they undertook to review literature, with an emphasis on strategy. This included electronic data collection and management tactics, strategies to determine, find and catalogue 'key' authors, and our diverse record-keeping and distillation habits such as writing up. We were also interested to find out how these students interpreted and implemented reviews. Our focus is what they actually did and how other people, including peers, assisted. We encouraged open discussion about flawed methods – with surprising departures from established ways of working – and unexpected success from these methods. We later requested these strategies as written pieces including collaborative work (around 600 words). In this presentation, we share themes arising from a preliminary analysis of a small sample of these strategies and compare them to the established and popular practices espoused in texts, scholarly articles and blogs. These constructions and practices may have explanatory power of pedagogical value.

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