1. Tools for Learning
Searching Literature
Paula Nottingham updated 22/2/13
Jim Dine, 1962, MoMa

2. Searching Literature
Part of the professional inquiry involves learning the
skills to investigate topics that you are interested in for
your inquiry.
For this module you are choosing three pieces of
literature and analysing them for there content.
You are also trying out the four practitioner inquiry
tools: observations, surveys, interviews and focus
groups

3. What is a review of literature?
“The selection of available documents (both published
and unpublished) on the topic, which contain
information, ideas, data and evidence written from a
particular standpoint to fulfil certain aims or express
certain views on the nature of the topic and how it is to
be investigated, and the effective evaluation of these
documents in relation to the research being proposed”
(p.13).
Hart, C. (1998) Doing a Literature Review, London:
Sage Publications.

4. Reviewing Literature – making choices
Searching for work-place, community of practice or disciplinary
content about your topic – what is the inquiry about?
Thinking about the levels of criticality of these sources ex.
academic research or professional sources – where is the
knowledge coming from?
Seeing what concepts or theories (abstract ideas) relate to your
practice as a creative professional (theorising your experience
in the workplace)
Ideas can come from those introduced as samples in the module e.g.
professional practice (Eraut), Communities of Practice (Wenger),
Experiential Learning (Kolb) OR theories that you learned within the
discipline (dance, acting , graphic design). It is your job to relate this
literature of theory and practice to what you do.

5. Data Sources
Thinking about the topic and searching for sources to
find out about it:
What are data sources?
What am I interested in? Where is it ‘located’ and therefore
from which potential sources can I generate knowledge
of it? What do I expect these sources to be able tell me?
(Mason, 2002)
Large scale studies, mapping documents from the industry or
government sources, policy documents in education, people,
organisations, texts, events – think about issues of access

6. Reading Literature for content
Use critical thinking when reading literature
“Critical thinking calls for a persistent effort to examine any belief
or supposed form of knowledge in the light of the evidence that
supports it and the further conclusions to which it tends” (Glaser
1941, found in Fisher 2001)
You will be looking for academic arguments that recognise the
various points of view. You can then develop your interpretation of
what is happening that is ‘backed up’ by these experts or
professionals in the field – it is discovering the ‘why’ questions as
well as developing your knowledge and understanding
Activity: capturing the author’s position (Cottrell, Critical Thinking
Skills, 2005)
Read Passage 3.4 see if you can ‘get’ the argument…

7. Passage 3.4 (Cottrell, 2005)
It was initially believed that young children could not understand
other people’s points of view or undertake tasks such as counting
and measuring until they were as least seven years of age.
However, it seems the problem does not lie in children’s capacity to
do these things so much as in their understanding of what is being
asked and why. If there is no obvious purpose, or they do not
understand the language used, children find tasks difficult.
Even young children can perform tasks formerly considered too
advanced for them, as long as these are set up in ways that make
sense to them. Problems that involve teddies or drinks, for
example, may be meaningful to a very young child, whereas tasks
with counters and beakers are not.

8. Good Academic Practice: Effective Writing
The use of citation for words and images – any ideas that are
quoted or paraphrased – you must reference these in a
Bibliography, review university guidelines on copyright – use
Harvard referencing – WORDS and PICTURES
Keeping annotations of literature throughout the process is
helpful (writing/drafting notes while reading to refer to later) for
evaluating the literature – you may want to type these out on the
computer so they will be easier to use later on in your inquiry
Making notes throughout the process about key academic
arguments in your sector, discipline, field (e.g. the debate about
the use of phonics in learning to read)

9. Sticking to your topic search
Watch out not to wander too far away from your
topic – try to focus on the articles that have the
most relevance.
Try to be more specific in your search terms –
then you will find full-text articles you can
download.
You may find you cannot download some articles
because the university library does not have these
electronic sources, make a note of the citation and
see if you can get it somewhere else or find
something similar that you can use.

10. Searching on Google – gives you some interesting ‘big picture’ ideas but can
include lots of unwanted commercial and erroneous sources

11. Google Scholar limits the search to more academic or professional sources. It
sometimes leads your to publisher’s websites that want tot sell you articles.
Copy the name of the journal or book and see if it is available at the Middlesex
library wither in book or journal form.... These are free to use as a student.

12. Visually scan what is on offer from the google search BUT go past the first page
because Google decides for you and you want to decide on the choices yourself
choose a likely source.

13. Make a decision about how this will give you information about your topic.

14. Download the source and read it. Many of these articles will talk about
research or studies that people have done about their topics… so you need
to make some judgments about how this relates to what you are doing.

15. You can access the Middlesex University resources online using your IT user
number and password from the MyUnihub site.

16. You can go to My Library and use Summon or the Library Subject Guides to help
your search.

17. On Summon you can tick boxes about the type of literature…

18. Boolean Operators
Google and Google Scholar do not use these added words for
searches – but they are sometimes used within databases and can cut
down search time using electronic searches with databases.
Basic search techniques (Middlesex Website)
* or ? allows you to shorten a word but pick up it’s variant endings in a
search e.g. account* will pick up account, accountant and accounting
AND, NOT and OR join or exclude keywords
“phrase” – putting a phrase in speech marks means that it will be
searched in exactly the way that it is entered
(bracketed keywords) allow you to perform quite sophisticated levels of
searches