ABSTRACT
Competently working with or ‘knowing’ the literature of a field is important for scholarship in all disciplines, although it manifests somewhat differently in different fields. All researchers and scholars work within particular traditions and build on, modify, or overturn that which has gone before. Learning the literature requires far more than simply reading widely, regurgitating key phrases and findings, and genuflecting to seminal researchers. It is integral to any scholarly investigation. For educational research, for example,
[T]o advance our collective understanding, a researcher or scholar needs to understand what has been done before, the strengths and weaknesses of existing studies, and what they might mean. A researcher cannot perform significant research without first understanding the literature in the field.
