Discussion 1: Share an Annotation
For your upcoming assignment due in Unit 6, you will be creating a literature review on multicultural issues related to curriculum, instruction, and assessment. This discussion will provide you with an opportunity to create an annotation for one of the empirical articles you located on this topic. See this unit's Discussion and Assignment Preparation study activity for how to identify an empirical article. After you locate an empirical article on your topic, do the following:
• Write the reference for the article. Be sure to use APA style for the reference.
• Write a 150-200 word annotation. In it, include the purpose of the study, data collection and analysis overview, and a summary of the findings. Identify any limitations of the study.
• Below your annotation, describe why you selected this article and how the findings from it could be applied in your own educational set.
Discussion 2: Literature Review
Overview
For the past couple of units, you have been focusing on the skills of locating, reading, and interpreting scholarly literature. To demonstrate the skills you have developed, for this assignment you will create a literature review addressing how multiculturalism affects curriculum, instruction, and assessment.
As a scholar, you are developing and demonstrating a number of academic skills by completing both parts of this assignment. Creating annotations of articles (Part 1) shows your ability to focus on the main components of an article and to think critically about empirical studies. Creating an integrated discussion of the literature that you read (Part 2) shows that you are able to think in a "big picture" way; synthesizing what you read into main ideas in order to draw conclusions and make recommendations demonstrates higher-order thinking skills. You will apply such skills as a master's-level educator.
Assignment Instructions
1. Locate 4-5 articles, at least 3 of which have not been provided as readings in this course, on the topic of multiculturalism and how cultural issues impact curriculum, instruction, and assessment. Be sure to include both empirical articles and other types of articles about which you learned in the Unit 5 studies. Use current articles those that have been published within the last five years.
2. Complete Part 1: Draft an annotation for each article. Annotations are short summaries that encompass the main information from the article. For empirical articles, you should include the purpose of the study, data collection and analysis details, and the findings. Then, identify any limitations of the study. For other types of articles, include the author's main premises: describe the main ideas that the author discussed.
3. Complete Part 2: Provide a 2-3 page summary in which you synthesize the research. This should be an integrated discussion of the literature you read; it should not read like a list of article summaries. When you synthesize the literature you read, you combine the different articles into a wholeâ€"an integrated discussion of the literature, not a list of article summaries. Usually, the articles you select on a topic can cluster around a theme. (In this case, the theme might be one particular issue related to multicultural issues related to curriculum, instruction, and assessment.) Link the article summaries together in a connected way.
In writing a synthesized summary:
• DO: Identify the theme/issue and discuss it, using citations from the articles. In your discussion, draw overall conclusions based on the literature you read, make recommendations for teaching practice, and connect the practice in your own setting to the research.
• DO NOT: Write a list of the main points of the articles as your summary. It should NOT read: this author said…this author said…this author said.