TMA 03
The word length of TMA 03 is 3000 words (excluding your title and list of references). Before starting work for this TMA, you should:
• remind yourself about word length in Section 5.2 of the Assessment Guide
• refer to the general guidance on assignments in the Assessment Guide
• pay particular attention to Section 5.7 on good academic practice in the Assessment Guide
• consider the assessment criteria that will be used for marking your assignment.
This assignment is based on EK313 Block 3.
Complete a literature review on a research topic of your choice relevant to early childhood or childhood or young people.
This assignment asks you to expand on the work you did in Unit 17 of the Study Guide in order to produce a small-scale literature review, which will help you to prepare for writing Part 1 of your EMA project. This says: ‘Your literature review should lead you to one or more reasonably well-defined research questions. You need to identify a question from your literature review, and consider whether it is descriptive or explanatory.’
To do this, you will need to look back over the module materials as well as find new material for yourself using the literature searching skills that you have brought to your studies and have developed from TMA 02 onwards.
Your literature review should include discussion of the main theoretical concepts underpinning your topic and critical examination of relevant evidence. The material that you review can be drawn from a range of sources, but you should make sure that at least some of these are recent (i.e. published within the past five years). You are required to review a minimum of six academic sources (excluding module materials and papers that you identified and included in TMAs 01 and 02). Selecting six sources may well be sufficient. Do not select and review more than six in the belief that this will enhance your literature review. The relevance of each of your sources is important.
note: website sources, such as Wikipedia or the websites of newspapers, magazines, charities or public bodies, do not count towards this six-source minimum. You can make reference to information you have found on these websites to give context to the issues you discuss, but it is important that you do not use this type of source as a substitute for the academic sources in your literature review. It is expected that you search for and critique articles in your topic area. Journal articles accessed online through the OU Library do not count as website sources, so all six sources could be electronic journal articles found in the OU Library.
For this TMA, you should choose a research topic area that is of interest to you and one that is relevant to early childhood/childhood/young people. Topics that focus primarily on young adults and adults are not relevant to the central themes of this module.
Before starting your review, it is important to point out that, in an assignment of this length, you are not expected to review every single piece of literature that exists on the topic. Even so, you should look for a wide range of sources to include in your assignment. A literature review is not a shopping list of articles that are in some way relevant to the topic; it is a systematic review of the literature available, chosen to develop a clear and logical argument about an issue. You must therefore be careful not to produce a list of every article you find, and instead concentrate on comparing, contrasting and analysing the articles you have selected to allow you to explore effectively a particular aspect of the topic you have chosen. You may find it helpful to re-visit some of the activities in Unit 17 of the Study Guide and familiarise yourself with the purposes of a literature review.
The purpose of a literature review is to summarise and synthesise existing knowledge about a particular topic. This entails identifying, describing and critiquing key theories, concepts and methods of investigation, and examining how these are related. Literature reviews are also used as a way of justifying a piece of research, which is an important part of your EMA.
Before starting work on this TMA you may find it useful to revisit the activities you carried out during Unit 17 and the tutorials in the Library resources section of the website.
Suitable resources
By entering keywords into the OU Library home page one-stop search facility, articles and information relating to your chosen topic area can be found. When the results of your search are displayed, it is possible to refine the results by using the left-hand column on the results page. Results can be refined in order to show journal articles only as well as information for a particular subject. Click on the link ‘peer-reviewed journals’ at the top of the list to see only academic articles.
The following databases, available via the Library home page, might also be useful:
• Academic Search Complete
• Sage Journals Online (access is via OpenAthens authentication: further information is available on the OU Library website)
• Taylor and Francis Online.
Choosing a topic
You will need to choose a particular topic and select from the literature based on that topic. Choose a topic in which you are interested and keep a tight control on that topic area. Bear in mind that you will need to adapt any of the terms you use in a keyword(s) search to the specific topic you are pursuing in this assignment in order to locate the appropriate literature. It is important to note that the appropriateness of the articles you choose will be a factor in determining your mark for this TMA. Think carefully about this when selecting the number of sources you will use in your TMA. The best way to demonstrate that you have chosen an appropriate article is to integrate that article into your argument and use the material from it to engage with the ideas in the module materials. It is important that your selected topic is relevant to the core themes of this module and span the 0–18 age range.
Suggested structure
Rather than simply summarising arguments that have gone before, a good literature review points out where there have been differences of opinion and who has influenced what, where and when. You need to have enough breadth of understanding to be able to critically evaluate what you are reading. In the literature review that you prepare, remember to concentrate on comparing and contrasting the papers you read and on critically evaluating them. Think about what surprises you, some of the points you would like to learn more about and where there are gaps in the research that you could pursue.
You will find it helpful to organise your literature review into sections. Begin with an introduction that describes your topic and sets the scene. End with a conclusion that both summarises the main points you have extracted from your critical evaluation and sets out your research question(s). There is no prescribed format for structuring the sections in between. The following structure and questions may help you to organise your material logically, so that readers can follow your argument.
Introduction
• What are the origins and definitions of this topic?
• How does this relate to my focus within the topic?
Questions that might inform section headings
• What are the major issues and debates?
• What are the main questions and ideas that have been researched to date?
• What are the key theoretical and conceptual ideas?
• How has the literature increased knowledge and understanding of the topic?
• What are the main sources that support my line of argument?
• What are the main sources that question my line of argument?
• Are there any areas that have not been explored previously in the literature?
Conclusion
• What are the key points?
References
Add a list of references, drawing on the Cite Them Right referencing system (as specified in Section 5.6 of the Assessment Guide). The title and list of references are not counted in the 3000 word length of this assignment.
Give your word count at the end of your essay, before the reference list.
Final reminder
Resist the temptation merely to produce a ‘shopping list’ of what has been written about your topic. You should provide a critical summary and assessment of the literature in your chosen field, which leads up to and justifies your research questions.
