00:00: There are two complementary aspects to developing critical thinking skills as a researcher. The first is critical reading and the second is critical writing. As I alluded to in a previous unit, if you want to learn to write critically as a researcher, you need to begin by learning to read critically.
00:32: In other words, critical reading informs critical writing. Critical reading entails the evaluation of specific arguments or articles based on their respective merits. And critical writing involves the skillful weaving together of a broad range of arguments to arrive at your own informed position on a given topic.
00:59: So, in the first instance, you are reading individual texts and engaging with them critically, asking questions in your mind, making informed judgments regarding the weight you should assign to different bits of secondary information, and then the result emerges in the way that you pull those different strands of thought together critically.
01:30: One interesting term or phrase that we use widely in academia, and one that often generates benusement among those outside of academia, is the phrase, “according to XYZ, so and so happened.” It may sound commonplace to jaded ears like ours, but it is actually a powerful distancing tool that you can use in academic writing.
02:02: It means that you are repeating the assumption or finding or conclusion that XYZ stated in their published article, but you are not necessarily committing yourself to their point of view. You have effectively distanced yourself from their position by invoking that seemingly simple caveat, “according to.”
02:31: Meaning, I was not the one who made this claim, this is the person who made it. In this way, it is possible to construct a whole argument using different sources without implicating yourself in the argument, so to speak. This, in itself, is a hedging technique. Again, you do this not because you fundamentally disagree with what this author has said, but because you really are trying to be scientific and non-emotive in the way that you are letting the writing and the argument speak for itself.
03:12: And then another reader can come to their own conclusions based on their individual reading of the text. Scare quotes, which I have been using quite a bit here, are another simple but effective hedging tool that allows you to cite the claims of other writers while distancing yourself from them, as in the following statement from a paper that I co-authored with colleagues.
03:41:: “However,” it goes, “by the 1980s and 1990s, the standard model of power sector reform was established as a global blueprint, in keeping with the neoliberal economic orthodoxy of the time.”
03:59: The scare quotes around the phrase “standard model” indicate our skepticism of the idea that any model, let alone the one referred to in the quote, can be said to be “standard,” regardless of contextual specificities. And we have done this without necessarily negating the position of those who subscribe to the notion that such a model indeed exists.
04:31: This aspect of reading secondary research – that is, already published research – critically, is really important for conducting impactful literature reviews, whatever discipline or academic tradition you belong to. With secondary research, you need to read and interpret information widely, but also wisely.
05:03: Reading wisely means that you learn to ask the right questions of the literature; questions that border on the following. One, relevance: how and where does the present inquiry fit into the broader field of study that you are engaged in? Two, clarity.
05:31: Is the premise of the inquiry your research questions, your research purpose – is that premise clearly stated? Three, coherence: is the narrative structured in a logical and consistent manner? Four, conceptualisation – or conception, if you will: how suitable are the theoretical frameworks and/or concepts that you have applied?
06:09: Five, rigour: are the methodological decisions in the paper, are they systematically reported and justified? Six, reliability: how well do the findings and conclusions stated in the paper follow from the data that was gathered?
06:33: Seven, validity: is there an indication of how the findings compare with the findings from previous studies? Eight, objectivity: are the omissions and limitations of the study acknowledged? And nine, originality: does the study make a clear, novel contribution to the field of study?
07:05: Regarding reliability, for instance: if your N, that is, your sample size, was 20 people, and then at the end, your conclusion section – in your conclusion section – you make it sound like your sample was 2 million people. Now, those conclusions don’t follow from the sample size that you used.
07:28: I, as a critical thinker and writer – I would challenge those conclusions, and I would perhaps give them less weight than another study, where the conclusions are more commensurate with the methods that were used. Students sometimes ask whether reputable academic journals publish literature reviews. My response is that reading and writing critically is what makes the difference between a literature review piece that is accepted for publication by a reputable journal and one that is not.
08:12: If you read through the literature with the questions that we just discussed in mind – asking how relevant the study is, how suitable the frameworks applied are, how rigorous the methods employed are, you have the building blocks required to construct a critical argument of your own.
08:44: But, if you submit a purely or mostly descriptive review for publication, without offering the reader any new insights, your manuscript is less likely to make the cut than one that is written from a critical perspective, and which consequently yields new insights that constitute an addition to the canon of existing knowledge on a given subject.
09:18: Yes, you can – and perhaps you should – generate new insights in a review piece where you are juxtaposing original insights from different sources and analysing them critically.
09:37: From that then emerges a new set of questions or insights that others perhaps have not been able to elicit. So, in sum: it is not only possible, but it is also desirable to publish critical literature review pieces that do not draw on any primary research conducted by the author, but are impactful nonetheless.