ABSTRACT
This chapter offers recommendations to increase the precision, clarity, efficiency, enjoyment, and impact of students literature review. It provides suggestions for how to write the literature review and other sections of students’ dissertation. “Parsimony” in the literature review means that students should review and integrate all articles that are relevant to their dissertation and omit those that are not. Parsimony will not be accomplished simply with good intentions or through will power—it requires repeated effort from students, involving self-monitoring and frequent self-evaluation to determine if they are achieving what they need to achieve. After having tracked down and read the relevant articles and chapters, students probably have developed a sense of what the key journals are for publications on the topic. Attending to one’s own learning process is not something that comes naturally to most people but by doing these students can actually motivate them to keep going.
