General Tips and Advice On Planning/Writing Critical Review

I am now over half way through my first draft of my Critical Review. Therefore, I thought it might be useful to share some advice with you all on things that I have found helpful.

Firstly, due to the nature of my job as a Teaching Assistant in a school I have been extremely fortunate to have had two weeks off. This time I have completely dedicated (almost) to the collaboration and analysis of all my data as well as beginning to write up my Critical Review. I would highly recommend that if you can get some time off then go for it. I've found it more beneficial to have the day to focus my brain solely on my inquiry, rather than when I get home from work when my brain is in other places.

I've tried to structure my days like any other working day, by starting and finishing at a similar time to when I'm at work and also taking breaks of similar time frames. This method has really worked for me and has helped me focus for long periods of time. I have forced myself to work at the table rather than on the sofa to help my brain and body differentiate between 'work' time and 'relaxation' time. I often find that when I try to do work on the sofa it is much less productive.

My next tip would to be to organise all your references first. It took me about three days but it's been so much easier to write up with them all in order. I had already made pages and pages of written notes and page numbers, so I chose to type all of these out into a document. I  organised the different sources into the themes within my inquiry and then typed out the quotes that I had picked out initially. I then highlighted them different colours depending on what section of my review I planned to use them in. Like I said, it took me a good few hours but it made better sense in my head when it came to using them and writing. It will also be much more time efficient when it comes to my bibliography and I already have the information of each source already typed up and properly referenced.

I made an initial plan using the Module 3 Handbook to help with my subheadings and what information was needed where. I typed notes into these categories to remind me what points I wanted to cover in each segment. I then began to write my first draft! When it came to my literature review, I sectioned it into the topics of literature I would be discussing. I then copied the references I wanted to quote or paraphrase into each section. This really helped me structure the debates within each topic and helped me remember to use everything relevant that I had found.

With my interview analysis, I had already transcribed my interviews into documents. As I'm using thematic coding, I used different colours for different themes/sub-themes to highlight relevant quotes. I then put these into a table that made it easier to get a collective thought for each theme/question.

Due to this planning and preparation, I am happy to say I am 4500 words through my critical review and confident that I will have finished this draft by the end of the week. This will allow a fair amount of time to check it over, receive feedback and tweak as well as allowing for more time to plan my artefact and presentation.

I hope this has helped anyone who's struggling and not sure where to go next with the progression in their inquiry.