Literature Reviewing as Pedagogy: Teaching and Learning Graduate Literacies

Constructing a literature review is common practice across all academic disciplines, integral to graduate studies in particular. Often construed merely as an academic exercise, the literature review is considered a writing task obligatory for more meaningful projects—the means to more important ends. I argue, however, that literature reviewing is a valuable project in itself. In this session, I present findings from my investigation of learners’ experiences with literature reviewing, with the objective of helping participants to conceptualize the literature review process as a complex pedagogical tool. Interpretive analyses of narrative data show that, by engaging with disciplinary literatures and the literature review process, graduate learners become familiar with reading, writing, information, and research literacies. Literature reviewing is a form of pedagogy through which students learn to read and write as scholars in their disciplines; develop techniques for managing large bodies of information and knowledge; and practice the skills and craft of disciplinary-specific research. As students engage more deeply in literature reviewing, they recognize its relevance to becoming researcher-scholars in their fields. Session participants will be given the opportunity to critique instructional examples and a literature review rubric and to discuss possible applications to their own practices