RESEARCH IN TEACHER EDUCATION 1

LECTURE 4 (March 11, 2024)

Literature Review
• selected relevant variables are fully examined through a thorough review of related literature
• forms the basis for the investigative process as it provides the researcher with the opportunity to look into the pool
of knowledge available to him/her
• provides much of the theoretical reference point or basis for undertaking a proposed study
• It is the systematic study of all existing works that are relevant to the research work. It is concerned with locating,
reading, evaluating and citing reports of related research (Nkpa, 1997).
• It is the careful and systematic identification and or location, documentation, analysis and reporting of information
which are relevant, related and useful to the present study (Ali, 1996).
• It means making an extensive searching, reading and assessment of all available materials written and related to
the problem of investigation.

Purposes of Literature Review

• uncover, discover
and evaluate
information;
• establish new
relationships by
analyzing and
synthesizing
established
evidence or
discovering new
ones;
• replace an existing
concept or
completely create a
new concept in an
attempt to translate
them into practical
use;
• verify existing concepts by re-examining the premises on which the concepts were created; and,
• develop skills in locating needed materials in a timely manner

Steps in Conducting Literature Review

• There are five interrelated steps (not necessary following a linear path).
1. Identify key terms to use in your search for literature
2. Locate literature about a topic by consulting several types of materials and databases
3. Critically evaluate and select the literature for your review.
▪ Refereed journal → Non-refereed journal → Books → Conference papers → Dissertations and
theses → Non-reviewed articles posted on websites
4. Organize the literature you have selected by abstracting or taking notes on the literature
▪ Traditional or thematical
▪ Related literature (conceptual literature) clarifies the different variables being studied. It is based
on read articles from different published reference books, textbooks, manuals and other materials
▪ Related studies (research literatures) include previous studies that involved similar variables with
the present study from theses, dissertations or research journal articles. These are usually used to
support or dissent the findings of the study.
5. Write a literature review that reports summaries of the literature
▪ Parts:
o introduction or prefatory paragraph (presenting the list of topics to which the RLS are
classified),
o the body of the review (consisting of the discussion of the RLS)
o conclusion (summarizing and synthesizing the RLS)
▪ You are free to fuse your opinions with the author’s ideas
▪ Avoid presenting ideas in serial abstracts (dump or stringing method)
1|Research in Teacher Education (BEEd 3B) Utanes, N. C.
 ▪ Presentation of the articles must be coupled with analytical, argumentative and critical review to
increase the enthusiasm of people reading your work.

Theoretical Framework
• provides general representation of relationships between things in a given phenomenon
• lies on much broader scale of resolution
• dwells on time-tested theories that embody the findings of numerous investigations on how phenomena occur.

Conceptual Framework
• researcher’s idea on how the research problem will have to be explored
• embodies the specific direction by which the research will have to be undertaken
• Statistically speaking, it describes the relationship between specific variables identified in the study
• outlines the input, process and output of the whole investigation
• research paradigm
o Input-Process-Output model
o IV-DV Model (independent to dependent variables)

Citations
• The American Psychological Association (APA) is a popular style commonly used by researchers in documentation
or reference citation
• author-date method of parenthetical documentation or in-text citation
• Paraphrased
o Utanes (2019)
o … Utanes (2019) …
o … (Utanes, 2019).
• Put both names if 2 authors
• Put “lead author + et al.” for 3 or more authors
• On the literature cited (reference) page, all works cited in the texts or consulted should be shown arranged in
alphabetical order by author. When there are multiple works by the same author, list them by date, the most recent
last.
• The following information must be presented, in order of how they are properly arranged in the list of references.
o Author (Surname and initial of author/s)
o Date of completion/publication (Enclose in parenthesis)
o Title of article (Sentence caps or all words are lower case except for the first word, after a colon and proper
nouns)
o Title of book and edition number (Written the same as an article)
o Title of journal and volume number and pages
o Degree earned and name and address of school graduated
o Place of publication and Name of Publisher
o Digital Object Identifier (DOI) number
o Website where the literature was retrieved and date of retrieval
• Examples
Ali, A. (1996). Fundamentals of Research in Education. Awka, Nigeria: Meks Publishers.
Almeida, A., Gaerlan, A. & Manly, N. (2016). Research fundamental: from concept to output. QC: Adriana
Publishing Co., Inc.
American Psychological Association. (2010). Publication manual of the American Psychological
Association (6th ed.). Washington, DC: Author.

--end of Lecture 4—
NcU

2|Research in Teacher Education (BEEd 3B) Utanes, N. C.