Getting to grips with the literature on your topic is one of the earliest stages of the dissertation. Among other things, the existing scholarship helps you explore different perspectives, interpret your findings, build your own argument and position yourself in a debate. Immersing yourself in the literature is a great way to get to know the subject, but it can also be overwhelming \u2013 you can become so swamping with what everyone else has ever said on the topic that there\u2019s no room for you to know what you think!<\/p>\n
The danger here\u00a0is that you can become too descriptive. In losing your own unique perspective, the literature review can just become a collage of what other people have said. You end up just describing what your reader can go read for themselves if they want, and not adding much of yourself. It\u2019s your dissertation and yours is the voice we\u2019re interested in, so avoid it becoming a catalogue of \u2018Scholar X says this, Scholar Y says that\u2019, and foreground your own views!<\/p>\n
In this post, we\u2019ll look at how you can read with an active and critical eye, questioning what you read so that you don\u2019t lose sight of your own agenda. We\u2019ll look at three things to bear in mind about critical reading:<\/p>\n
1\/ In the first place, critical reading means taking a journal article or book etc and asking specific questions about it on its own to evaluate its validity. This is tricky \u2013 you have to have a good understanding of things like research methodology to answer questions like \u2018was the sample size large enough?\u2019 or \u2018was the use of this theory appropriate?\u2019 It\u2019s important to remember that while you need to critique each source you\u2019re using to test its quality, you\u2019re not necessarily looking to find fault with it<\/a>. Agreeing with it is as critical a standpoint as disagreeing. And it’s not black and white- you might be less convinced by one aspect, but still find valuable elements elsewhere.<\/p>\n 2\/ Of course, you can only read one thing at a time. However, what you\u2019re also doing is contributing each thing you read to your own mental map of the literature. If you read each source in isolation, without thinking about how it relates to everything else you\u2019ve read, it will again lead you to very descriptive writing, which doesn\u2019t build an argument or position you in a debate, but instead just catalogues each text in turn. Think about how each text relates to others \u2013 Can you see scholars who disagree with each other, or take up positions which are mutually exclusive? Can you see clusters of scholars who agree with each other- a school of thought? Can you track the development of an idea over time, seeing how it\u2019s been refined or adapted for other contexts? Can you see scholars approaching the same topic from different perspectives, perhaps different subject backgrounds? Are these approaches complementary?<\/p>\n 3\/ Finally, you need to remember your own agenda. Academic writing is by nature very persuasive. It\u2019s easy to get sucked into the agenda of the scholar writing a particular article or book \u2013 for them, this is the most important thing you can read on the topic. Of course it is \u2013 to them! But they\u2019re not writing to help you solve your dissertation question, they\u2019ve got their own agenda which may or may not be useful to you. So try to keep in mind your own research aim when reading \u2013 yes, the information may well be interesting, but is it relevant or useful to you? This is no reflection on the research itself \u2013 it may be the best journal article in the world on that topic, but if it doesn\u2019t help you further your research goals, then it\u2019s not relevant!<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/span>Your note-taking strategies can also help to support this kind of critical reading. Instead of copying down or highlighting what the text says (it\u2019ll still be there, so there is often little need to \u2018capture\u2019 the text in this way!) think about how you can use your notes to respond to the text in the three ways described above, whether it\u2019s annotating your response in the margin, devising a system of note-taking that provides you space to look at all three aspects, or even the folders or categories (keywords and tags) that you\u2019re saving the information in!<\/span><\/p>\n We\u2019ve developed a resource that might help you think of the kinds of question you might ask in all three categories, which you can download here: Three Domains of Critical Reading <\/a><\/span><\/p>\n Posted by Helen<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Getting to grips with the literature on your topic is one of the earliest stages of the dissertation. Among other things, the existing scholarship helps you explore different perspectives, interpret your findings, build your own argument and position yourself in … Continue reading