Using the outline created in Week 7, you will use scaffolding for developing your literature review. To conduct a literature review, you need to critically analyze your Doctoral Project or Dissertation-in-Practice topic from a scientific and objective perspective. You need to clearly identify the strengths and weaknesses of multiple perspectives and synthesize the existing literature into a cohesive view of the existing situation. In a doctoral project, the literature review involves more than describing or reporting on each topic. Instead, you will focus on developing a balanced, integrative, and critical review of the body of scholarly, professional, or industry literature, academic and industry, as it relates to the identified problem, while ensuring all perspectives are included.
Rather than choosing resources that only support your identified problem or your assertions about the problem (which is convergence), you must also address those resources that present different points of view about the problem (this is divergence). Addressing divergent viewpoints is sometimes referred to as refuting an argument or assertion because you explain why the viewpoint is inaccurate, invalid, unreliable, or irrelevant to the problem. In creating your literature review, you want to present a holistic view of the literature with both convergent and divergent resources.