Systematic Review for Multi-Disciplinary and Educational Research - a 'How to'

Among the many other things that keep my busy at Flinders, such as my role as an Associate Lecturer in Education and activism with the NTEU, I am also currently working towards completing a PhD in the Discipline of Public Health.

As my research question and project investigating the wellbeing of children as they transition to school effectively sits in the space between early childhood education and public health, I have had the task of trying to work in between these two disciplines and use methods and methodology that supports a multi-disciplinary research study.

In order to immerse myself in the literature pertaining to the health and wellbeing of young children across education and public health research, as well as Government reports and policy documents, I decided/was guided to embark on a systematic search and review of the literature - a strategy employed frequently in public health, but scarcely in education. As my background was in education, this process was new and challenging,  but at completion was extremely useful in guiding my proposed research study and in adding rigor to the literature review chapter of my thesis.

I had the opportunity to present the systematic search and review approach I adopted to a group of Post Graduate students and Faculty in the School of Education at Flinders last week in the weekly post-grad seminar. I received  very positive responses from colleagues and peers, as systematic reviews are rarely done in education, and this method was new and of great interest to those in attendance.

While all methodological approaches have their limitations and need to be carefully considered, my presentation attested that adding elements of systematic searching and/or review to educational research, or systematically documenting the procedures for the collection of literature used to design research studies can be an extremely effective tool for those of us engaged in educational research due to its ability to add rigor to our studies.

At the request of several colleagues and peers, I'm including a link to the power point presentation I presented outlining my systematic review in hopes that it helps to support others' work, or sparks interesting conversations about the use of this tool in education or for multi-disciplinary research.

Here it is: Systematic searching and systematic review: Adding rigour to your literature review