“I Have Ten Peer Reviewed Articles. Now What?” How Political Science Research Methods Textbooks Teach Students About Scholarly Context

Abstract

This article examines the treatment of one aspect of information literacy—establishing and understanding the scholarly context of research—in political science research methods textbooks. This important information literacy skill speaks to the ability of students to synthesize and engage with information. We analyzed how the most commonly assigned research methods textbooks addressed how to understand and use scholarly research and how these discussions compare to national standards and performance indicators for information literacy. We find that there are substantial discussions of how to establish and understand the scholarly context, at least in some of the textbooks. These discussions tend to focus on teaching students how to write a literature review for their research projects, stressing the importance, one hand, of reading and understanding the scholarly literature, and, on the other, understanding the key debates and concepts in the literature. Only a handful of textbooks provide concrete advice to undergraduates about how to go about this process. We conclude with some suggestions about how instructors and librarians can work to do more to integrate the lessons from these textbooks into assignments and also course and curriculum design.