Do Literature Review Skills Transfer from One Course to Another?

Abstract

Creating literature reviews encompasses skills that are central to psychology students' academic and professional lives, yet writing them consistently challenges students. Research shows that instruction leads to improvement in students' literature reviews within courses (Boscolo, Arfé, & Quarisa, 2007;Granello, 2001), but little work examines how such instruction carries over to other courses. Our study addresses this by comparing literature reviews from two required courses. Students are taught to write reviews in a psychology writing course (PSYC 205), and without additional instruction, students again write reviews in a Statistics and Research Methods course (PSYC 305). Do the skills transfer? A sample of PSYC 305 reviews (n = 17) was drawn and their PSYC 205 literature reviews obtained. All reviews were graded using the same rubric. A within-subjects comparison showed that students' PSYC 305 reviews were significantly improved. For a second between-subjects comparison, these PSYC 305 reviews were compared to the 305 reviews of students who did not have PSYC 205. The reviews of those who had PSYC 205 were significantly better than the reviews of those who did not. These combined results suggest that we can teach transferable literature review skills, and, given their importance, we suggest that psychology programmes should.

Measurement of Natural Capital in academic journals

“…This literature review consists of combining both summary and synthesis, often within trying to identify specific conceptual categories. [23][24][25] Natural Capital (NC) and its economic foundation NC, as a research field, brings two main approaches: (i) the conservationist, nature is something that must last over time and therefore must be preserved, 26,27 and (ii) the approach the restoration of renewable natural resources, which treats the NC as an asset that generates "dividends" or "interest" for the use of services and goods captured from ecosystems. [28][29][30][31][32] Even so, there is a need to improve the information on natural resources used to analyze national wealth and its subsequent measurement.…”

Explicit Writing Instruction in Synthesis: Combining In-Class Discussion and an Online Tutorial

“…Much of the scholarship about improving student writing takes a case-study approach (Cumming et al, 2016), which is of limited value to the scholar or teacher looking to improve student writing. Often, case studies are either insufficiently described (e.g., Chandler & Dedman, 2012;Cook & Murowchick, 2014) or are so course-specific that they offer little assistance to instructors seeking to implement a simple, generic intervention in their class (e.g., Adams, 2011;Borg & Deane, 2011). Studies that take an experimental approach are likely to appeal to and benefit teachers looking for evidence-based instruction practices, but there are relatively few of these available.…”

“…Psychology instructors often include a writing assignment in their courses that requires students to evaluate and integrate evidence from multiple sources (Ishak & Salter, 2017) as a way of addressing these objectives. Although writing from multiple sources targets important foundational skills for psychology students, this type of writing is difficult to learn (Boscolo et al, 2007;Cook & Murowchick, 2014;Goddard, 2003;Granello, 2001;Hayes-Bohanan & Spievak, 2008;Itagaki, 2013;Maher et al, 2014;Rosenblatt, 2010;Tapp, 2015).…”