Scholarly Journal Article Critique (SJAC)

LDRS 802: HESA

Scholarly Journal Article Critique Guidelines (SJAC)

Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles/Book

You will be asked throughout your graduate degree to critically read, analyze, synthesize and reflect on a variety of readings ranging from classic and contemporary textbooks to peer-reviewed research articles, commercial books, editorials, essays, white papers, and practical how-to guides. The advice on critical reading included in this document should help you when reading any type of scholarly academic material but is particularly helpful when you have been asked to provide a critique of an article (or group of related articles) or a book.

Before beginning your SJAC, please read this document carefully. It provides excellent guidelines to follow when reading, analyzing, reflecting upon and writing your final paper. If you have any questions after thorough perusal, please ask.

Your job is to research a peer-reviewed article utilizing FHSU’s library databases on topics related to student affairs organizations in higher education. More detail will be given in the actual assignment link in Module 5.

Critical Reading Towards Critical Writing

Critical writing depends on critical reading. Most of the papers you write will involve reflection on written texts - the thinking and research that has already been done. In order to write your own analysis of this subject, you will need to do careful critical reading of sources and to use them critically to make your own argument. The judgments and interpretations you make of the texts you read are the first steps towards formulating your own approach.

To read critically is to make judgments about how a text is argued. This is a highly reflective skill requiring you to "stand back" and gain some distance from the text you are reading. (You might have to read a text through once to get a basic grasp of content before you launch into an intensive critical reading.) THE KEY IS THIS:

• don't read looking only or primarily for information

• do read looking for ways of thinking about the subject matter

When you are reading, highlighting, or taking notes, avoid extracting and compiling lists of evidence, lists of facts and examples. Avoid approaching a text by asking "What information can I get out of it?" Rather ask "How does this text work? How is it argued? How is the evidence (the facts, examples, etc.) used and interpreted? How does the text reach its conclusions?

1. First determine the central claims or purpose of the text (its thesis). A critical reading attempts to assess how these central claims are developed or argued. Begin to make some judgments about context . What audience is the text written for? Who is it in dialogue with? (This will probably be other scholars or authors with differing viewpoints.) In what historical context is it written? All these matters of context can contribute to your assessment of what is going on in a text.

1. Distinguish the kinds of reasoning the text employs. What concepts are defined and used? Does the text appeal to a theory or theories? Is any specific methodology laid out? If there is an appeal to a particular concept, theory, or method, how is that concept, theory, or method then used to organize and interpret the data? You might also examine how the text is organized: how has the author analyzed (broken down) the material? Be aware that different disciplines (i.e. history, sociology, philosophy, biology) will have different ways of arguing.

1. Examine the evidence (the supporting facts, examples, etc) the text employs. Supporting evidence is indispensable to an argument. Having worked through Steps 1-3, you are now in a position to grasp how the evidence is used to develop the argument and its controlling claims and concepts. Steps 1-3 allow you to see evidence in its context. Consider the kinds of evidence that are used. What counts as evidence in this argument? Is the evidence statistical? literary? historical? etc. From what sources is the evidence taken? Are these sources primary or secondary?

1. Critical reading may involve evaluation. Your reading of a text is already critical if it accounts for and makes a series of judgments about how a text is argued. However, some essays may also require you to assess the strengths and weaknesses of an argument. If the argument is strong, why? Could it be better or differently supported? Are there gaps, leaps, or inconsistencies in the argument? Is the method of analysis problematic? Could the evidence be interpreted differently? Are the conclusions warranted by the evidence presented? What are the unargued assumptions? Are they problematic? What might an opposing argument be?

• Critical reading occurs after some preliminary processes of reading. Begin by skimming research materials, especially introductions and conclusions, in order to strategically choose where to focus your critical efforts.

• When highlighting a text or taking notes from it, teach yourself to highlight argument: those places in a text where an author explains her analytical moves, the concepts she uses, how she uses them, how she arrives at conclusions. Don't let yourself foreground and isolate facts and examples, no matter how interesting they may be. First, look for the large patterns that give purpose, order, and meaning to those examples. The opening sentences of paragraphs can be important to this task.

• When you begin to think about how you might use a portion of a text in the argument you are forging in your own paper, try to remain aware of how this portion fits into the whole argument from which it is taken. Paying attention to context is a fundamental critical move.

• When you quote directly from a source, use the quotation critically. This means that you should not substitute the quotation for your own articulation of a point. Rather, introduce the quotation by laying out the judgments you are making about it, and the reasons why you are using it. Often a quotation is followed by some further analysis.

Scholarly Reviews – Format Guidelines

All papers should start with an Introduction to the main ideas/theories presented in the book/article. Then you should present the author’s Thesis (approximately 1-2 paragraphs for a book review; a bit shorter for an article review). Then you should move on to summarize the author’s Main Points (approximately 2-3 pages for a book review, at least 1 for an article review), after which you will provide a Critical Assessment (this is the bulk of the paper, where some outside research is required, and should be approximately 5-6 pages for a book review; 2-3 pages for an article review) and Reflection. Included at the end should be a bibliography of all sources including any outside research conducted for the Critical Assessment portion. Try for at least 3 additional sources for a Book Review (at least 1 for an article review), which can be scholarly journal articles, scholarly essays, or books.

An article review should be 5-6 pages; a book review should be at least 10-12 pages.

Following are some general guidelines and questions to answer when writing the paper and the general sections in which you should likely answer them. I am looking for flowing, college level prose, however. In other words, the answers to these questions should be woven into your paper as opposed to simply being answered in numerical order. You will be provided with an example paper that critiques an article rather than a book, but should nonetheless give you a bit of an idea.

The Scholarly Journal Article Critique or Book Review:
General Guidelines

An analytic or critical review of a book or article is not primarily a summary; rather, it comments on and evaluates the work in the light of specific issues and theoretical concerns in a course. The book review is concerned with an author’s treatment of a particular overall topic, in this case leadership. Keep questions like the following in mind as you read your article/book, make notes, and then write the review according to the format guidelines provided.

Introduction

1. What is the specific topic of the book or article? What overall purpose does it seem to have? For what readership is it written? (The preface, acknowledgements, bibliography and index can be helpful in answering these questions. Don't overlook facts about the author's background and the circumstances of the book's creation and publication.)

Thesis

1. Does the author state an explicit thesis? Does he or she noticeably have an axe to grind? What are the theoretical assumptions? Are they discussed explicitly? (Again, look for statements in the preface, etc. and follow them up in the rest of the work.)

Main Points

1. Summarize the main points the author makes. What kinds of material does the work present (e.g. primary documents or secondary material, literary analysis, personal observation, quantitative data, biographical or historical accounts)?

2. How is this material used to demonstrate and argue the thesis? (As well as indicating the overall structure of the work, your review could quote or summarize specific passages to show the characteristics of the author's presentation, including writing style and tone.)

Critical Assessment

1. What exactly does the work contribute to the overall topic of your course? What general problems and concepts in your discipline and course does it engage with?

2. Are there alternative ways of arguing from the same material? Does the author show awareness of them? In what respects does the author agree or disagree?

3. What theoretical issues and topics for further discussion does the work raise? (Here is where some outside research comes in to play)

4. What does other literature say about some of the same topics the author presents? Is the author thorough in his or her presentation of alternative points of view? Is he or she familiar with other literature? (Perhaps more outside research here)

Reflection

1. What are your own reactions and considered opinions regarding the work? Some reviews summarize the content and then evaluate it; others integrate these functions, commenting on the book/article and using summary only to give examples. You should do the latter.

2. Is there anything of value to be learned in a practical sense from reading this article/book? How, specifically, can you integrate the topics covered in the article/book with your own professional and personal life? Are there particular behaviors, attitudes, etc you will change as a result of this reading.