My AP Researchers are moving fast this year–they’re on a wild roller coaster barreling towards the Research Proposal Loop-de-Loop and it’s probably fair to say a few of them are already wishing they hadn’t had that third corn dog before they hopped on the ride. It’s okay though; they’ll all end up on solid ground by the end of December, lunches presumably intact.
In the meantime, they’re hard at work on their lit reviews, a writing process rife with pitfalls regarding how young researchers consider existing research. First and foremost, they struggle a lot with the idea of synthesizing ideas at this scale. My students have a particularly daunting task given the volume of their work (they’ve each read at least 10-12 peer-reviewed studies at this point), but the challenge, I think, is not unique to my course.
How do you reduce the content of a sprawling, multi-sectional research paper into a core set of new/novel ideas and then coordinate what it has taught you with a whole OTHER new/novel set of ideas from another study? This year, I decided to help them streamline their thinking before and during the writing process.
Clarifying New Knowledge
To get to synthesis, my students have to identify relationships between sources. Do they agree? Are they fighting each other? Are they “stacking” or “interlocking” to create a new, stronger conclusion in the research field?
But to get to THAT point, they have to make sure they understand each individual source first.
In order to help simplify this thinking, I ask them to consider why each study mattered to the bigger picture. For AP Research this means considering how it helps them to better understand the cutting edge of the research field they want to work in; what does it do to clarify for them what is and isn’t known in a particular area?
For a different sort of researcher though, this consideration might be more about how the core of the study helps deepen a student’s personal perspective: What did this study help you to understand better about teen mental health? How did this change your awareness of the factors that contribute to athletic performance?
Once they can state such concepts clearly for a given piece, I like to challenge them with some detail-oriented questions. Annotated bibliographies can do some of this legwork for you, but I think a direct conversation with the student accomplishes a couple of important things.
- First, it lets you ask pointed followup questions. The biggest issue I see is students who have not read the research carefully (or have but have not understood it well). My personal rule is, if I can make you suy “ummm” within two questions, you probably need to read more carefully.
- Second, it lets you direct their thinking towards things they might have missed or not considered as important–for example, my students need to be on the lookout for methodologies they could use as models, so I like to ask about how the study was structured.
Synthesizing Relationships with Clip Art
Once they’re on firm ground with their knowledge of individual articles and their value, we have to start considering those interactions–how do they synthesize into new knowledge? In order to simplify relationships, I give my kids some clip art options–you could get more playful and make your own memes or whatever you like (this would be right up my alley but my kids are so stressed right now that too much joking doesn’t always land well!). I like to keep it simple: boxing gloves for disagreement, a jigsaw puzzle for articles that form a new conclusion when their ideas are combined, a handshake for articles that agree with one another.
The goal here is simple: Know the relationship you’re attempting to synthesize before you try to write about it. Kids tend to get wrapped up in picking the best quote or explaining limitations or one of the other finer points on the rubric of a good lit review (It’s complicated! They’re worriers!) and what gets lost is the most fundamental job they have: explain the relationship between the studies they’re considering.
So I generate a model slide like the one below, and then I ask my students to build one of their own with just a few of their sources and talk me or a classmate through it. Once they’ve completed this work, they’re ready to start figuring out those other details. It does matter what evidence they pull from each source, but if they are already crystal clear about how the two sources are in conversation, they’re more likely to select smart quotes (or other evidence) to insert into that “dialogue.”
The drafting process is still challenging, and my students will spend days on end peer editing and revising to make sure their final lit review is nuanced and establishes a clear view of the field of knowledge they plan to research themselves. But the whole process is made a little easier by this visualization process. Anytime the work gets convoluted and multi-layered, I love having my students take a step back and try to visualize.
How do you get your researchers thinking about complexity? Let us know in the comments or reach out to me on Twitter (X) at @ZigThinks!
moving writers 