Political Science Educator: volume 28, issue 2
By Cecilia McNair (cmcnair001@csbsju.edu) and Christi Siver (csiver@csbsju.edu)
SIVER: While my scholarly interests are primarily at the intersection of international security and human rights[1], as a professor at a small liberal arts college I focus a great deal on teaching. In my pedagogical scholarship, I’ve researched the general effectiveness of research methods courses in helping students develop meaningful .[2] However, one of the greater challenges in teaching political science is conveying the importance of the literature review and helping students use it to create practical research designs. While there are many helpful articles and book chapters describing the literature review to undergraduate students[3], there is a dearth of pedagogical research on how to best advise students during this early process. As part of a Summer Collaborative Grant through our Undergraduate Research office, I planned to work with a student over the summer, using a question based on the student’s interests, to guide her through the process of researching and writing a solid literature . In the Political Science department, we recently implemented a required sophomore-level methods course to help prepare students for their capstone, in which they complete a research project. Many students feel unprepared when they reach the capstone despite completing a variety of research assignments in their upper-division courses. My hope is to develop materials that I can share with colleagues to help reinforce these skills so they feel more confident heading into the capstone course.
MCNAIR: I always knew that I wanted to be a political science major. Politics have always interested me; I got involved in local senate and house races throughout high school and led our school government. Along with my personal interest, the major allows me to prepare for my goal of attending law school after I graduate. However, it wasn’t until I began taking political science classes that I realized what it meant to be a political scientist. I was good at the politics and government side, but completely unfamiliar with the science. My first year of college was exciting, as I learned about international relations, the court system, political discourse, and ways I could be involved on campus. When Dr. Siver encouraged me to apply for her Summer Collaborative Grant position and get a paid, full-time position to begin my own research over the summer, I jumped at the chance.
When we started meeting after my second semester in May, the first step was to decide what I was going to research. I had vague ideas, but I was a novice to research experience. I had no idea what a “researchable” question was, or how to start, or prior experience with a research methods class. Dr. Siver was extremely helpful with this process, having me brainstorm a long list of ideas and things I was interested in. Once we had the list, she talked me through each idea, seeing how specific we could make it, while being careful not to choose something too niche. Narrowing down my top choices, we finally landed on the question, “What creates educational disparities in K-12 schools?” I learned a lot in this process, such as what a good hypothesis is, how to identify dependent variables, and the correct phrasing for something to be researchable. What made me extremely excited to research this topic was the personal connection I had with the subject. I have always been interested in education, and my educational journey has taken me from a Montessori pre-school to a public small-town elementary school, an athletic movement-focused charter school in the city, a large, public city high school and finally, a private Catholic .
Once I had my research question ready and was excited to tackle it, I began the literature review. Before this summer, I had no idea what a literature review was or how to complete one, let alone begin it. Dr. Siver explained what high quality social science sources were, how I could utilize filters in the college’s library databases and what made a journal reputable. As I started looking for articles about my topic, I had to slow down and sort out the dependent and independent variables. This was the aspect of the literature review that I struggled with the most. I wrote out my research question to help keep my dependent variable straight and find articles that had work on potential independent variables, but sometimes I would get the two confused or become lost inside the articles. Other than writing out my question and frequently working through it, it was helpful to find a good article with Dr. Siver and reference it to potential articles I was discovering.
SIVER: One of the challenges that I suspect we as instructors do not think about enough is how to train students to read political science articles. There are a few excellent guides that have circulated over listservs[4], but ultimately what my students, and Cecilia, have showed me is that guided practice is helpful in developing confidence when reading scholarly work. Cecilia and I had a strong, well-structured article that we started from, and that article was a useful reference as we read additional articles. To practice this process, Cecilia completed article breakdown sheets, which had her identify the research question, literature review, dependent and independent variables, research methodology, data, and findings. As political science professors, we are well-served to take time at the introductory level to help students understand how to “read” in the discipline.
Talking with Cecilia about where she got stuck in the process was valuable. We met regularly and talked through the dependent and independent variables. I introduced her to a “literature review grid” (Siver – POLS223SP19-LiteratureReviewGrid) in which researchers use a spreadsheet to catalog their articles in the rows, while carefully noting the dependent and all independent variables tested.[5] I have used the literature review grid as an assignment in research classes for several years, but it often falters when students do not always ensure that they have the same dependent variable for all their sources. Cecilia and I ran into this issue as well, and it was very helpful to see how important it was to have repeated practice in identifying the variables. Once Cecilia had mastered the dependent variable, the rest of the grid started to make more sense as a tool for identifying potential themes in the independent .
MCNAIR: Once I had my literature ready, I prepared to read and catalogue the articles. It was at this point that my summer took a turn, and I ended up doing most of my reading on a fishing boat in Alaska. I left with an intimidating stack of long, scholarly articles on various topics connecting to my dependent variable to get through, and to accomplish that I had to improve my skimming skills. Before I left, Dr. Siver had stressed that it was important to get the key parts of the article, focusing on extracting the information I needed, and not to become intimidated by the graphs and data. What was helpful to me when reading was using different highlight colors to pick out my dependent and independent variables, the author’s methods, and the main analysis. Having a key made coming back to the articles much easier, and I only needed to skim through them again .
After reading through the twenty-some articles, I took the studied phenomena, independent variables, method, data, and findings for each article and entered them into a “literature review grid” Dr. Siver provided. This is where the highlighting was important, it made entering the data into the grid quick and easy. This gave me a visual of how articles I hadn’t completely connected could come together as one. After that, I began one of the final steps: filling out the literature review outline and draft. I was able to combine articles and similar independent variables, seeing when multiple articles mentioned the same idea. The draft gave a basic structure for each article, putting my notes in the grid into complete, comprehensive sentences. It was at this stage that I began getting excited. I was passionate about my dependent variable and thrilled to see my research all coming together. I also had a sense of validation when some factors that I felt were significant frequently appeared in the research and became a prominent part of my review. After making the draft, it was time to put everything I learned together in my final paper. I chose what I felt were five of the most significant independent variables and explained their importance.
SIVER: Although it can seem tedious to have so many steps in this process, working with Cecilia validated the usefulness of each of these steps, even if some need more reiteration than others. Given the importance of developing this skill, it seems useful to scaffold it extensively and provide templates that students could use when approaching similar assignments in the . Sarah Fisher and Florian Justwan demonstrate that breaking down tasks in a research methods class helped counter methods anxiety and made the material more enjoyable.[6] They build on the work of Rob Wass and Clinton Golding, who outline the benefits of scaffolding to help students develop their analytical and critical thinking skills.[7] In my courses, I plan to devote more time to going over the initial article breakdown sheets with students to ensure they can understand how to identify the different components of a research article, particularly since they can look different depending on the author or publication. I also will review carefully students’ literature review grids earlier in the process to ensure they are on the right track before they move to the literature review outline and draft.
MCNAIR: After completing the research process this summer, I am eager to take things to the next step and complete my own data and research to back up the variables I analyzed. Researching was a challenging but rewarding process that pushed me to change my thinking. I had to learn how to seek out variables from articles that were not always obvious, be alright with not entirely reading research articles, and push myself to synthesize new ideas. Doing this research has prepared me to produce higher quality literature reviews for my upper division political science classes, and most of all prepares me for a successful senior capstone. I will be familiar with the research process and the work it requires. I leave my research this summer excited to tackle more and improve my .
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Christi Siver is a professor of political science at the College of Saint Benedict and Saint John’s University. Cecilia McNair is a second-year student and political science major at the College of Saint Benedict and Saint John’s University.
[1] Christi Siver. 2018. Military Interventions, War Crimes, and Protecting Civilians, 1 online resource vols.Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&scope=site&db=nlebk&db=nlabk&AN=1782191.
[2] Christi Siver, Seth W. Greenfest, and G. Claire Haeg. 2016. “Are We Teaching Them Anything?: A Model for Measuring Methodology Skills in the Political Science Major.” Journal of Political Science Education 12(2): 186–99; Christi Siver and Claire Haeg. 2021. “Incorporating and Assessing Methods across the Political Science Curriculum.” In Teaching Research Methods in Political Science, ed. Jeffery Bernstein, 177-193. Edward Elgar Publishing, https://doi.org/10.4337/9781839101212.00022; Christi Siver. 2022. “Chapter 13: Its Actually Not in the Syllabus: Incorporating Ethics in Research Methods Courses.” In Teaching Undergraduate Political Methodology, Eds. Mitchell Brown, Shane Nordyke, and Cameron G. Thies. Cheltenham, 119-27. UK: Edward Elgar Publishing, https://doi.org/10.4337/9781800885479.00023.
[3] Jeffrey W. Knopf. 2016. “Doing a Literature Review.” PS: Political Science & Politics 39(1): 127–32, https://doi.org/10.1017/S1049096506060264; Sharon L. Spray and Laura Roselle. 2016. Research and Writing in International Relations, Second edition. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge.
[4] Frederique Laubepin. 2013. “How to Read (and Understand) a Social Science Journal Article.” Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research, https://www.icpsr.umich.edu/files/instructors/How_to_Read_a_Journal_Article.pdf.
[5] Peter Yacobucci. 2012. “Introducing the Literature Grid: Helping Undergraduates Consistently Produce Quality Literature Reviews.” American Political Science Association Teaching and Learning Conference, Washington, D.C.; Shane Nordyke and Peter Yacobucci. 2021. “Beyond the Annotated Bibliography: Improving Student Literature Reviews through Structured Heuristics.” In Teaching Research Methods in Political Science, 43–57, https://doi.org/10.4337/9781839101212.00012.
[6] Sarah Fisher and Florian Justwan. 2018. “Scaffolding Assignments and Activities for Undergraduate Research Methods.” Journal of Political Science Education 14(1): 63–71, https://doi.org/10.1080/15512169.2017.1367301.
[7] Rob Wass and Clinton Golding. 2014. “Sharpening a Tool for Teaching: The Zone of Proximal Development.” Teaching in Higher Education 19(6): 671–84, https://doi.org/10.1080/13562517.2014.901958.
Published since 2005, The Political Science Educator is the newsletter of the Political Science Education Section of the American Political Science Association. As part of APSA’s mission to support political science education across the discipline, APSA Educate has republished The Political Science Educator since 2021. Please visit APSA Educate’s Political Science Educator digital collection here.
Editors: Colin Brown (Northeastern University), Matt Evans (Northwest Arkansas Community College)
Submissions: editor.PSE.newsletter@gmail.com
