Literature Review

To prepare a literature review, you need to think objectively like a scientist and create subjectively like an artist. As a scientist, you will follow specific guidelines for evaluating original research studies. As an artist, your medium will be a large body of literature with which you will first identify knowledge gaps and then make interpretive decisions about what research to include and how best to synthesize and emphasize information to convey a particular story.

Selecting a Topic

Before conducting your search of the literature, you need a preliminary research topic. Through an interactive coaching process using Appreciative Inquiry techniques, Dr. Debra Fisher will come alongside with guidance and encouragement as you consider the numerous factors that influence this preliminary topic selection, including degree program requirements, your personal interests and spheres of influence, and the state of the literature. With Dr. Fisher at your side, this process elicits excitement about the possibilities rather than fear and frustration. She will also advise on practical approaches for quickly identifying various theoretical streams of the literature so you can make informed choices while adjusting the scope of your topic as needed. Most importantly, you will benefit from Dr. Fisher's innate transdisciplinary conceptual abilities and honed reasoning skills during focused brainstorming sessions. The goal of transdisciplinary research is to move beyond the silo mentality of individual scholarly disciplines to attain the highest levels of intellectual integration across multiple knowledge fields.

Conducting the Search

The search of the literature is an iterative process characterized by complexity and emergence. Drawing from complexity science, Dr. Debra Fisher supports you through the comprehensive literature review by (1) utilizing a task-specific coaching approach designed to help you master digital search tools/techniques and (2) functioning as a mentor who shares wisdom and insights that help you develop cognitive capacity and manage cognitive load while adopting an interdisciplinary stance as a researcher. The neuroscience fields have revealed much about how the brain functions and technology has enabled us to think and function more like interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary knowledge generators and less like discipline-specific knowledge consumers. Working with Dr. Fisher, you will enjoy learning new ways of thinking about your research topic while creating straightforward pathways for locating and connecting the literature using specific search techniques and tools. You will also learn how to search with specific research methodologies in mind because important distinctions should be considered between qualitative and quantitative orientations.

Evaluating and Interpreting

Evaluating and interpreting the literature requires more than a list of characteristics denoting good research, although this list is important. Most universities require that 85%-90% of the literature cited in your dissertation has been published in peer-reviewed journals within the five years prior to the completion of your study. The advent of the Internet and proliferation of digital publication options has dramatically increased the speed at which knowledge is being generated and disseminated. As such, cognitive skills are required not only to quickly evaluate the quality of studies conducted and reported in academic journals, but also to interpret the application of the study findings and author conclusions to your dissertation research. In short, you are interested in evaluating for quality and interpreting for application. Dr. Debra Fisher can help you become adept at simultaneously evaluating and interpreting journal articles so has to increase the efficient and effective use of your time while avoiding disorienting tumbles down proverbial rabbit holes.

Organizing and Synthesizing

Dr. Debra Fisher will impart proven and simple techniques for organizing the literature search process so you stay on the right track without unnecessarily (and unintentionally) losing your perspective and doubling back through the proverbial thick-wooded forest. Following Dr. Fisher's guidance, you will put in place a functional organizational system that will support your efforts through the synthesizing and later planning and writing up of your literature review. Additionally, you will benefit from her task-specific coaching and cognitive-supporting mentoring while synthesizing your collection of literature to consider similarities/differences and provide possible explanations for contradictions. Your synthesis should show possible ways that evidence gathered across numerous studies fits together to form tentative conclusions and inform a discussion of implications for your proposed study as well as recommendations for future research. A well-synthesized literature review is critical for the writing of chapter one (introduction) and chapter five (discussion, conclusions, recommendations) of your dissertation.

Planning and Writing

Having already put in place an organizational system and completed a preliminary synthesis of the accumulated literature, your will be ready to design your chapter plan and begin writing the research story about your topic. Dr. Debra Fisher will provide expert advise and coach you through the process of designing a plan that includes all the standard content requirements of a literature review as well as the specific requirements of your degree-granting institution. The plan will include an initial topic outline, which is useful not only for organizing your thoughts but also as a means of getting prompt feedback and guidance from your dissertation chair. It is important to remember that your chair is the "chief championing officer" whose responsibility is to guide and advocate for you every step along the way. After several iterations, your content will be outlined and prepared (as a result of your earlier organization and preliminary synthesis) in such a way to avoid unintentional plagiarism while writing your literature review chapter. Once you begin writing your chapter, Dr. Fisher's dual role becomes that of a writing productivity coach and developmental editor to ensure that the first chapter draft you submit to your chair and committee is polished and ready for their review and helpful feedback.