According to the chapter in Amy Best's book about youth and research, putting oneself in a 'least-adult' type of position while conducting research, yields better and more in-depth results. The chapter was written from the point of view of an ethnographic researcher who places herself in a kindergarten and first grade school setting over two semesters in a foreign school. She describes her experiences as a least-adult, and how she felt she accomplished this role. Her descriptions reminded me of my years spent as a camp counselor. As a pre-teen and teenager, I spent many summers working in summer camps with young girls of varying ages. I hoped to make their summers fun and exciting, without too much structure and stress. As a kid I personally felt that sometimes camp could be almost as rigid as school, and wanted to avoid that issue. Reading about the concept of a least-adult brings me back to those times because in essence, I tried very hard to put myself in that position. However, since I was the older counselor or perhaps even only counselor at times, I didn't have the luxury of maintaining that status consistently. Therefore, although in some instances I successfully integrated as more of a peer among the campers, for the most part they viewed me as a someone who was on a higher rung hierarchically.
One point that I thought was extremely insightful in the Amy Best book, was the fact that children are their own gatekeepers on a certain level. This concept made me smile. As a mother of three kids, I can certainly see how this is true. To a certain extent, this is true for every person - young and old. Everyone has the ability to be their own gatekeepers, children notwithstanding. I suppose that their young age throws off the average adult in thinking that they might have this potential, however, it's truly not surprising. Even my little three year old makes decisions to include me or not when playing.
There was a recent discussion in reference to narrowing or broadening the topic for our literature reviews. I found myself empathizing with the dilemma, because when writing papers, I find that there are always more resources and great information to make the research even more complete. However, Joanne mentioned that there is a point that one has to decide to just stop. For my 200 class I wrote a comprehensive paper on Jewish libraries during the Holocaust, and the relating censorship and book burning by the Nazi's. The amount of knowledge that I could have included in that paper never ended. However, I had a certain word requirement and knew that if I became too broad in my topic and information, I would lose my audience. Keeping that in mind will certainly help me write the literature review correctly.
I went through the King Library's literature review slide presentation, something I found extremely helpful. One aspect that I'm somewhat embarrassed to admit, is the fact that I didn't realize that writing this type of literature review is in actuality different than the literature review one finds in a research article. Some great ideas that were covered are as follows: Be sure that the paper synthesizes key theories and results. Describe, evaluate, and critique many resources. Discuss how the topic has evolved and made a difference. The presentation also reminded me of an important writing point - that my paper should contain an introduction, a body, and a conclusion. When I was in high school, we learned how to write a "five paragraph thesis", which essentially taught us how to set up these three aspects of a paper. I'm constantly utilizing this concept when writing papers.
The introduction should include some important points. 1)Provide context and reason for reviewing the literature chosen. 2) Find these points: overall trends? conflicting theories? gaps in the research? new perspectives? a single problem? 3) State the reason for reviewing the literature, and explain the criteria used in analyzing the literature and explain how the facts have been organized. In other words, describe the scope chosen - why certain ideas have or haven't been included. The body should be organized; and I've chosen to organize thematically. Lastly, the conclusion should summarize important parts, discuss any flaws or gaps, and present insight into the overall topic. These guidelines will prove extremely useful when organizing my paper.
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