Literature review

To facilitate and stimulate that students are making sense together on how a sustainable Texel could perform, reviews of existing literature will be shared and its lessons to be applied on the Texel case. The literature review is meant to enlarge your knowledge of the topic of the week and the practice and share critical appraisal.

(about 1500-2000 words, group work)

A literature review discusses academic literature in the weekly subject area. A literature review should go beyond just a simple summary of the scientific articles. Of course to discuss, it should recap the reasoning, important information and conclusions of the articles. But for synthesis and debate it is a re-structuring of insights from the articles. It might give a new interpretation to existing literature, combining insights from various perspectives, trace new or pertinent issues. The weekly lit review should conclude on topics that should be discussed in the team with regard with the Texel case.

A literature review should:

- be organized around and related directly to the topic of the week and applicable to the Texel research question;

- synthesize lessons from literature into a summary of what is and is not a relevant topic to debate further on with regard to the Texel case;

- identify areas of controversy in the literature or between literature and practice;

- formulate issues that need further debate with your co-researchers

Tips for doing a lit review:

The main readers of the lit review are your co-researchers in the Texel case. Take into account its interdisciplinary and international character.
Find a few more articles than just required reading on the topic of the week. You may want to introduce your co-researchers to literature and insights (one of) you’re already familiar with from your MSc program or else.
Use proper referencing; prevent plagiarism.
Start the lit review with a research question that you derived from the required reading. Conclude the lit review with answering that research question and apply conclusions to the Texel case.
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