Literature Review

Element · All elements
Evidence · no claims cited

Description

Literature review is the element in which learners gather, evaluate, and synthesize existing sources on a topic in order to understand the current state of knowledge or argument. It is useful when research requires situating a new question within prior work.

Design Implications

Context

Requirements

• A focused question or topic
• Access to relevant sources

Constraints

• Learners may summarize sources without synthesizing relationships among them

Target Learning Goals

• Build research judgment, synthesis, and understanding of existing knowledge.

Affordances

• Evaluating Sources
• Epistemic Cognition

Claims

Related Elements

• Research
• Information Literacy
• Resource Evaluation

Patterns That Use This Element

• Research-Based Learning

Examples

• Learners compare sources to identify major positions, gaps, or recurring findings.

Key Sources

• Hart, C. (2018). Doing a literature review (2nd ed.). Sage.

Page metadata

Field	Value
type	element
id	literature-review
title	Literature Review
description	Literature review is the element in which learners gather, evaluate, and synthesize existing sources on a topic in order to understand the current state of knowledge or argument.
status	review
canonical	True
generated	by codex/unspecified on 2026-04-08
trust	unverified — no one has confirmed this page's content

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