Childhood and youth studies: Critically assessing the literature

You will be able to:

• design and perform a structured search for scientific literature in relevant scientific databases
• research, critically evaluate, and present relevant scientific literature
• conduct and present a literature review

Students who are admitted to study programmes at UiO must each semester register which courses and exams they wish to sign up for in Studentweb.

If you are not already enrolled as a student at UiO, please see our information about admission requirements and procedures.

This course is primarily for students enrolled in the Masters in Education’s specialisation ‘Education and Social Change: Childhood and Youth studies.

Other Master students at UiO, as well as eligible exchange students, who are interested in taking this course can be admitted if there are available places.

Only students who have been admitted to this course may attend the lectures, seminars and examinations.

Ranking:

All students enrolled in the specialisation have equal access to the course.

Other applicants may be considered based on capacity. If there are available places, exchange students will be prioritized before master students on other programmes.

Capacity: maximum 30 students

The course is primarily seminar-based where students are expected to find scientific literature of relevance for the topic of their thesis, critically analyze it and develop a literature review for presentation at the seminar.

Compulsory components:

Obligatory assignment: A paper of 400-800 words summarising your written notes from the course and the tasks and individual work conducted during the course. The summary of your notes should contain a brief description of the particular topic of your planned review (e.g., as part of your overall thesis review) and your planned search strategies and/or searches (e.g., databases, search strings, journals for hand searching, etc.).

There is a mandatory 80% attendance requirement for this course. If you do not fulfil the mandatory attendance requirement, you must complete an additional assignment prior to passing the course. The requirement for the additional assignment is at the discretion of the lecturer.

All the coursework and related activities are taking place at the University of Oslo Blindern campus.

Access to teaching:

A student who has completed compulsory instruction and coursework and has had these approved, is not entitled to repeat that instruction and coursework. A student who has been admitted to a course, but who has not completed compulsory instruction and coursework or had these approved, is entitled to repeat that instruction and coursework, depending on available capacity.

The final exam will be a written assignment in the form of a structured literature review (4000-6000 words) on your chosen topic.

This literature review should include a well-reasoned purpose, aim or research question specifically for the review, and a structured account of the search strategies, searched databases, outcomes of searches, inclusion and exclusion criteria that you have used in the process.

You must have completed the attendance requirements for this course prior to taking the final examination.

• If you fail the exam you are allowed to re-sit the exam during the same semester.
• If you are ill during the exam period or have valid absence from the assignment you are allowed to re-sit the exam within the same semester.
• If you wish to retake the exam in order to improve the grade, you may do so during the next offering of the course. You have the opportunity to retake the exam without retaking the compulsory components unless there are changes to the requirements in the course in the semester that you register for retake.

Grades are awarded on a pass/fail scale. Read more about the grading system.

Two examiners will evaluate the exam.