The final project culminates in a literature review paper, which aims at developing students’ independent research skills in a focal issue relevant to their teaching and/or research. Students will practice a variety of research skills: identifying a topic from the literature, searching for relevant primary research, summarizing, and evaluating research findings of individual studies, synthesizing results from multiple findings in order to render complex and nuanced answers to the research question(s) of interest.

The final project comprises 2 components, described below:

(1) Annotated Bibliography

Creating an annotated bibliography is an important research skill that will help students collect information about the
topic and engage critically with the readings. A well–written annotated bibliography also prepares students to write a
good literature review.

Students need to identify at least 6 journal articles, books or book chapters presenting original research findings
regarding the topic of the literature review. These sources must be primary research, i.e., the authors collected and
analyzed their own data. Meta–analysis, theoretical discussions, etc. are not to be annotated, even though they can be
used for the final literature review paper (component (3)).

For each entry, students should include: (i) introduction to the study, important theoretical frameworks if necessary (ii)
relevant methodology (iii) relevant findings (quantitative and/or qualitative) (iv) critique (e.g., how the study is
innovative, shortcomings in the methodology of data collection/analysis, where more information would be needed in
order to accurately interpret the findings).

(2) Literature Review

Students are to write a preliminary literature review based on all previous annotatio ns. The literature
review should be 8–12 pages, double–spaced, font 12pt, standard margin, and includes at least 8 references.
For format and style, follow APA Manual 7th ed.