Conducting a Systematic Literature Review and Meta Analysis in Educational Research

Please note that this is a two day course that runs at multiple locations which are outlined below. By registering to attend, students are expected to attend both days.

7th May 10am – 4pm
Liberty Building, SR G.32, University Western Campus, Moorland Rd, Woodhouse, Leeds LS3 1DB – morning
Worsley SR 9.58b, Worsley Building, University of Leeds, Woodhouse, Leeds, LS2 9JT – afternoon

8th May 10am – 1pm
Charles Thackrah SR 3, Charles Thackrah Building, 90 Clarendon Rd, Woodhouse, Leeds LS2 9LB

This half-day workshop is organised by the Education, Childhood and Youth (ECY) Pathway and is open to all ESRC and non-ESRC funded PhD and MA Social Research students within the WRDTP’s seven partner universities. Whilst this workshop is aimed at ECY Pathway students, PGRs from all seven interdisciplinary Pathways are welcome to attend.

Conducting a systematic literature review can ensure your research questions are answering a gap in the literature, identify problems and limitations with existing research, places your research in a wider context, and synthesizes existing research to present over-arching conclusions to your readers.

This 1.5 day workshop will lead you through the process of completing a systematic literature review and meta-analysis. It will include search strategies, critically assessing research literature, multiple methods for analysing the literature, and helping you organize, synthesis and present literature.

By the end of the workshop students will be able to:

Articulate why a literature review/meta analysis would be beneficial to their research
Create a justifiable methodology for their literature searches and analysis
Be able to critically identify research suitable for their review
Be able to conduct a meta-analysis
Know the conventions of writing up a systematic literature review, meta analysis, and accompanying methodology

Pre-reading
Zawacki-Richter, O., Kerres, M., Bedenlier, S., Bond, M., & Buntins, K. (2020). Systematic Reviews in Educational Research: Methodology, Perspectives and Application. Springer Nature.

Michael Borenstein, Larry V. Hedges, Julian P. T. Higgins, Hannah R. Rothstein (2009). Introduction to Meta-analysis. Wiley.

Attendees will be required to bring a laptop and charging cable with them.

Attendees will be required to download R and R studio (both are free to download) and have access to MS Excel.

Dr Syafiq Mat Noor
Dr Syafiq Mat Noor, lecturer in Climate Change Education, has recently published a systematic literature review, a scoping review, and a narrative review. In the past, Syafiq was involved in a project synthesising literature reviews to find the effect of pedagogical practices in teaching science topics for primary and secondary schools. He has led multiple postgraduate courses on the use of systematic reviews.
Dr Ouhao Chen
Dr Ouhao Chen, associate professor in Psychology with Education, with experience of conducting meta-analyses and an expertise in the quantitative methods required to create conclusions from multiple sources.