MSHAL Literature Review: Step 5: How to Organize the Review

You can organize your literature review in many different ways

• different theoretical approaches
• specific concepts or issues
• different methodologies
• level of support to your theory

Example:

Background

• History of standardized tests
• Different types of standardized tests
• Rationale of standardized tests
• Role of high stakes tests
• Standardized tests and the law

Standardized Tests in Practice

• Testing at elementary school
• Testing at secondary school
• Statistics

Critics and Proponents of Standardized Tests

• Testing of students with disabilities
• Testing of minority students
• Testing of students from different social backgrounds
• Gender differences in testing
• Case for bias
• Case against bias
• Teachers’ perspectives
• School administrators’ perspectives
• Students’ perspectives

When categorizing your articles, you may consider:

• the methodology;
• the quality of the findings or conclusions;
• the documents major strengths and weaknesses
• what beliefs are expressed?
• is there an ideological stance?
• is the article comprehensive or narrow?
• are the results generalizable?

If there are similar studies you may want to discuss the most important ones and write that the results were confirmed in other studies.