Article Writing Question

The topic is the impact of transactional leadership on home-school communication in Chinese elementary schools.

You will complete a 4000 words literature review on a Leading Educational Change and Improvement  topic of your choice. With the assistance of your tutor, you will design a provisional title that best meets your needs and interests. You are advised to locate relevant educational leadership material (from journal articles and books/ book chapters, etc) and carry out a literature-based assignment based on a selected area of focus.

The purpose of this assignment is to demonstrate that you have grasped and understood an aspect of the EQ948 module and that you can engage material critically. Therefore, your choice of material should be related to the broad thematic areas covered in the module content. You achieve this by:

Identifying and area of the module that got you more interested in or an area that best meets your professional needs and that you want to learn more about (topic) (e.g instructional leadership or diversity and leadership). 

Designing a review question that defines what you would like to learn more on. This review question can be turned into a title for your assignment (title) (e.g Understanding the effect of  instructional leadership on student outcomes in Chinese secondary schools) 

Formulating sub-questions (2-3) that help you answer / address the main review question. 

• Selecting the literature you will review. This may or may not be an area related to your dissertation (If your degree is MA ELM, you are advised to select an area related to your dissertation). 
• Analysing the material that you have sourced (guided by your review question) from online academic sources 
• Synthesising this material into a coherently written review of the literature Assignment stages
• You are not expected to start on your assignment until at least after Week 8. This is to give you an opportunity to get full content of the module and make an informed choice. 
• Guidelines: 
• 1. Fill in an assignment proposal form and address the following:

Identify your topic and focus

Identify a clear set of guiding (research) questions

Provide an indicate bibliography of the sources to be consulted

• 2. Prepare a presentation based on your assignment ideas.
• 3. You will be given an opportunity to present your ideas and receive some feedback. After this you can start your full literature search.
• 4. You will be given an opportunity for a one-to-one tutorial with the tutor. These tutorials will be offered between Weeks 9-10.

5. You will have another opportunity to submit an assignment outline at a later stage (2-3 pages) for further feedback. This should be an overview of the whole assignment or a  section that you particularly need to be supported on. 

6. You will submit your assignment on Tabula on 6 February 2024

Assignment structure

This structure is for guidance only. If you can justify using a different structure, please do so, but make sure to discuss this with your tutor during the tutorial). The word counts are provided just 

for guidance. 

Title

Provide a descriptive title for your assignment.

Introduction (about 500 words c.10%) 

State the purpose of the assignment

State the rationale of the review (why you are doing it; why it is important and why now).

Set out your objectives or research questions clearly and in full sentences / statements. 

(you can use these RQs as themes to structure your assignment.

Include a paragraph on methodology (i.e how you sourced the literature)

Main body

• Provide a critical review of relevant literature (critique, compare and contrast writings/views). 
• Write thematically, not author-by-author, and present a range of alternative perspectives. Indicate where authors disagree and explain why this might be so. 
• You synthesise by integrating the findings of several papers. Do not simply summarize  one paper at a time, but synthesize the findings by determining where there is agreement among papers versus where there are contrasting findings, etc.

This section can be divided into several sub-headings

• Conclusion (500 words c.10%)

Provide a brief conclusion by summarising the key issues in your own words, linking to the purpose of your review. 

Summarise the main gaps and what needs to be done in future research to understand the topic. • Do not continue the discussion here

• Do not introduce new literature here

Reflect on the achievement of aims of the review (your assignment)

• References (not included in word count)
• You need to include a full list of the references cited in the assignment, in alphabetical order by surname, and including full details as per referencing convention (eg. Harvard style). 
• Where you refer to texts within your assignment, paraphrase and use the author-date system, e.g. (Bush, 2016). Where direct quotations are used they must be indicated with inverted commas and accompanied by a page number, e.g. “School principals can only influence student outcomes indirectly” (Leithwood, 2008, p. 123). Quotations that are longer than three lines must be indented in their own paragraphs with full reference as above. Although quotations are good to use, paraphrasing more demonstrates better understanding and facilitates better knowledge internalisation.

Use of newspaper articles/websites is permitted if used to show context or viewpoints, but not to substantiate scholarly arguments.