Three-Minute Paper: Criticality in STEM literature reviews

Presenter: Anna Murawska, University of Leeds (UK)

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“I have chosen Kwan et al. (2012) as, being a disciplinary outsider, I do not always know how to support students’ literature review writing; the paper also links to my scholarship interest in linguistic expressions of criticality in novice scientific writing. The authors look at what is being evaluated in STEM (specifically Information Systems) literature reviews, and provides a useful framework to analyse texts and support students’ writing. It also highlights intradisciplinary differences in critical writing that are research paradigm dependent – something we touched on in our previous discussions.

I hope to start a discussion about the usefulness of the model, and its representativeness of other STEM disciplines, but also more broadly, about colleagues’ attitudes and approaches to supporting students’ disciplinary critical writing.”

Kwan, B.S., Chan, H. and Lam, C., 2012. Evaluating prior scholarship in literature reviews of research articles: A comparative study of practices in two research paradigms. English for Specific Purposes. 31(3), pp.188-201. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.esp.2012.02.003