As the previous page describes, all sources -- popular, practitioner, and scholarly -- may be useful, depending on your purpose for using the resource.
Scholarly sources may be the most difficult to read, but they also are the most nuanced and rigorous texts, as they demonstrate experts' perspectives. They can push your teaching practice, and can provide compelling justification for what you teach and how you teach.
The following two slides list several different types of scholarly sources and how curriculum designers might use them. As with source format and audience, knowing the type of scholarly article you are looking for can help you find appropriate articles. For example, if you want a review, consider using the search terms "meta-analysis", "systematic review", or "literature review".
| Description | When is this useful? | Example | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Original Empirical Research | These articles describe original empirical research, which may be qualitative or quantitative. The sample size may vary, from a single classroom to thousands of classrooms over multiple years. These articles typically contain the following sections: introduction, methods, results, and discussion. |
Original empirical research may provide justification for what you're teaching and how you're teaching, though it depends on how well-validated the research study is. A seminal research study may be very useful to cite; a new research study with a small sample size by an unknown scholar may be less compelling unless it is combined with other research studies that show similar results. In fact, while original research is incredibly important, on its own, any given research study generally does not mean much: you must read multiple research articles to see the broader conversations and trends in the field and to see whether a given research study is well-validated and frequently cited. Reading original research is therefore most helpful to experts in the field, who are already aware of the context. However, the "literature review" portion of research studies can sometimes be useful to non-expert readers, as it contextualizes the research within the broader conversation (see "reviews" below). |
"Development and Validation of the Short Grit Scale" by Angela Duckworth provides compelling evidence that the grit is useful for predicting success across contexts. The article can be cited as evidence for the importance of teaching grit. |
| Case Studies | Case studies are a subset of original research that report on a single classroom, teacher, or school. |
Individual case studies generally have too small of a sample size to provide a compelling justification for a teaching strategy on their own. However, given that they often provide more details about what an individual teacher did, they can be more readable than larger research studies. They can therefore be useful for finding practical examples for implementing an idea or technique. |
Reading the article "Teaching Social Studies for Newcomer English Language Learners: Toward Culturally Relevant Pedagogy" can give you a picture of what culturally relevant pedagogy could look like in a social studies classroom. |
| Theory | These articles discuss abstract ideas and principles. They often provide a framework that helps to explain, predict, and understand phenomena. | Theory and frameworks provide conceptual tools that help to organize our understanding of a topic. Therefore, it can be immensely helpful to present theory to faculty and graduate students (either in summarized or original form), so that they can better contextualize and reflect on what they are learning. Theory and frameworks should be balanced with more practical tools that help the learner to apply what they have learned. | In the seminal article "Toward a Theory of Culturally Relevant Pedagogy," Gloria Ladson-Billings defines culturally relevant pedagogy. A curriculum designer may want to provide graduate students with an overview of this theory before diving into practical strategies for culturally responsive teaching. |
| Commentary | Some articles provide perspectives, opinions, or commentaries on a given topic. Some commentaries may not be peer-reviewed, even if other articles in the journal are. | Commentary articles are useful for showing what scholars think about a given topic. These are often more readable than original research and theory, but are often still scholarly and rigorous. Reading a few different commentaries on a topic can expose you to multiple perspectives on the topic. | In "'There's Still That Window That's Open': The Problem with 'Grit'", Noah Asher Golden does not propose a new theory, but instead "challenges the education reform movement's fascination with 'grit'." Graduate students could read this article alongside a video of Angela Duckworth about the power of grit, and then discuss the implications for how they teach character. |
| Review | These articles provide a comprehensive summary of research on a certain topic, and often give a perspective of the state of the field and where it is heading. | Review articles are useful for giving you a general overview of the topic: what conversations are happening between scholars in the field, and what research studies have been conducted thus far. They are very useful in providing justification for what you teach and how you teach, as they can summarize several research articles that provide evidence for the efficacy of a technique. | "The Theory and Practice of Culturally Relevant Education: A Synthesis of Research Across Content Areas" summarizes research connecting culturally relevant education to positive student outcomes. Reading this will give you an excellent overview of the scholarly conversations around the topic up until 2016. |
There are different kinds of scholarly articles with different sections. Below are a list of the common sections you will encounter.
| Article Section | Purpose |
|---|---|
| Title | Gives a snapshot look at the article content. Sometimes a one sentence summary of the article. |
| Abstract | A summary of the article including what was done, why and how it was done, and the results or outcome. |
| Introduction | This establishes the purpose of the article while giving an overview of what was done. |
| Literature Review | If present, this section establishes previous theories and studies that the author(s) used to ground their current work. This section can be especially useful when you want to find additional relevant articles, authors, or theories. |
| Methods | Here the authors explain how they conducted their study. |
| Results | Depending on the type of study and methods this section will present the data collected. |
| Discussion | Here the authors will analyze and interpret their results. In many cases this is the most important section for understanding the article and its potential meaning. |
| Conclusion | This section will summarize the overall findings and implications of the article. This is another valuable section for understanding an article. |
| Works Cited | Don't skip over this section! Here you can find additional sources that might be very useful to you. You can also get a quick sense of the general age of the research that went into the article, but don't assume age alone is an indicator of value. Sometimes older articles (known as seminal works) are extremely important to a field. At the same time, some fields of study (such as neuroscience) are constantly evolving and a lack of recent research may suggest a possible gap. |
When it comes to reading scholarly articles, either those assigned for a course or when doing research, it can often feel overwhelming. The language of articles is often dense, the research may be presented in statistical format, and the length can stretch past 10, 20, or more pages. Fortunately, there are strategies we can employ to grasp the main points of an article while maximizing our time. The more often you practice these strategies and engage with scholarly articles the fast you will become at learning new knowledge.
Below are a series of strategies and resources that will help you engage with scholarly articles, but first we will highlight the basics of the strategy.
Below are some strategies for reading scholarly articles depending on why you are reading. Most importantly take notes to help you remember the key points and ideas.
| Purpose | Strategy |
|---|---|
| Reading assigned articles for class | First keep in mind any discussion questions or key points that have been highlighted. Then read these sections to get an understanding of the article: Title, Abstract, Introduction, Discussion, and Conclusion. Next use any discussion questions or key points to guide a deeper reading of the article. |
| Evaluating articles for research | If you are evaluating articles for your own research you want to be aggressive so you don't waste time reading an entire article that may not be useful. Use your research question as your guide. Use the Title as the initial indicator of potential value. If the article seems interesting or useful read the Abstract. If the article still seems valuable read the Discussion and Conclusion. If the article seems relevant to your research question and topic then save it for a deep read later. |
A transcript for the video above can be found here.