EDUC 721 Literature Review Assignment Instructions Building from your Thesis and Research Proposal assignments, write a Literature Review paper on a topic within the field of exceptionality in educati

EDUC 721

Literature Review Assignment Instructions

Building from your Thesis and Research Proposal assignments, write a Literature Review paper on a topic within the field of exceptionality in education. You must use 15–20 scholarly sources (outside of course texts). The body of the review must be 10–15 pages long. Adhere to current APA formatting guidelines and use the Writing Guide provided below for guidance when writing the title, abstract, and reference pages as well as the body of the paper.

There is a Draft link for you to submit your paper and check your plagiarism score before final submission. Be aware that I will be able to see where your plagiarism score comes from. If your score comes from references and quotes then this isn’t an issue.

Writing Guide for Literature Review

I.      Prewriting involves the preparation and arrangement of your ideas before writing them in a paper. Use whatever techniques work for you (e.g. free-writing, brainstorming, listing, outlining, questioning, clustering). Your research and documentation are accomplished during the prewriting stage.

A.   Sources

1.     Generate material from outside sources. You must use 15–20 outside sources for your literature review. These sources MUST be scholarly.

2.     Peer-reviewed sources are preferred (journals and books published at university presses). You can find such sources through Liberty University’s Online Library research portal. The research portal ERIC is one of the most frequently used databases for researching education topics.

3.     Because this research assignment has many possible facets you can explore, you may have the following reasons for using non-peer-reviewed sources:

a.     Online databases of historical texts/documents (where the sponsoring organization, editorial board, and information about the original printed source are clearly identified)

b.     Professional organizations (usually ending in a .org suffix)

c.     Government agencies (ending in a .gov suffix)

d.     Websites with the “.edu” extension are not necessarily reliable ones as many different people have access to posting articles on such sites. Additionally, faculty material published on such sites has not been subject to the rigorous review process required by print publications.

B.    Research

a.     Go through your sources and take notes on information relevant to your topic.

b.     Once you have discovered your purpose for writing, it will direct the rest of your note-taking.

c.     Document! When you are getting ideas from outside sources, you must make special efforts to record all bibliographical information. Make note of the page numbers of the quotations you retrieve. Doing this at the prewriting stage will save you time.

II.    Thesis Statement: For this assignment, you will have already written your thesis statement.

III.  Outline and write your literature review. The way you synthesize and arrange material is unique to you. Your personal interpretations and ideas can be incorporated. Look for gaps in your sources; there may be a point that is not stressed or an obvious conclusion that is overlooked. Dispute with your sources. You are not to accept anything as fact as you are open to exploring all possibilities as a non-biased researcher. Remember to stay aligned with your Research Proposal as well as the guidelines provided by the Writing the Winning Thesis or Dissertation textbook.

IV. Revise, Edit, and Proofread

A.  Check your thesis statement. Does it clearly articulate all the points you have covered in your review? Are any points mentioned that are not covered in your review?

B.  Check your body paragraphs against your thesis (10–15-page review). Are they related to your thesis? Are they analytical?

C.  Check the details of your body paragraphs. Do you have enough support for your topic sentence? Are all the details in each body paragraph directly related to their respective topic sentence? Are the points you are making arranged in such a way that your reader can clearly follow your line of thinking? Do you have too much outside support (so much so that it overwhelms your voice)?

D.  Read your paper carefully (out loud is suggested).

E.   Check your compliance with current APA format. Review in-text documentation and the reference page (using the most current APA manual). Check for any missing citations and correct them if necessary.

V.   Submit the final draft of your paper by the deadline stated.