The Evolution of a Bibliography

I’ve been reading and writing for the upcoming annotated bibliography for the 6511 Self Directed Learning course. It’s a labour that is revealing my passion for all things media, digital, literacy, and teacher education. It’s a process of teasing through the threads and abstracts to select just the right articles, chapters, and books that meaningfully add to the topic. Narrowing down the focus for the bibliography certainly helps winnow out those research pieces that are interesting but don’t add specifically to the key terms or framework selected. I started with a framing statement that was less than clear in its intent. Once I rewrote the opening statement, it was much easier to cull through the reference listing to cut out or maintain a presence for items that best tell the story. Once I’ve completed reading and writing about the remaining items identified for this bibliography, I will post it here, as well as submit for review to my supervisor.

So the evolution of this annotated bibliography is now in it’s fourth iteration, after two weeks of active revisions, with a version control helping keep the process in check, in case I need to return to the initial versions to see what I’ve misses or what I was thinking as I worked through the process. The first version contained 30 references, now reduced to 22, with many of the original collection being replaced by others that more meaningfully reflect the topic under investigation.

My first introduction reflects my quasi-thinking about the focus for the bibliography:

“Yada yada yada intro to annotated bibliography topic and purpose – definitions of literacies with a closer examination of critical literacy, media literacy or media information literacy (MIL), digital literacy, as the strategically connect to teacher education, preservice teacher education, and teacher educators’ understanding of these forms of literacy as integrated or infused into OEPr.”

My current version, after many edits:

“This annotated bibliography includes relevant articles and books providing definitions of media and digital literacies (Gee, 2015; Hoechsmann & Poyntz, 2012; Hobbs, 2017; Luke, 2012; Stordy, 2015) that are applicable to teaching and learning in preservice teacher education. References were selected when key words and abstracts included words such as media literacy, digital literacy, media information literacy, and information communication literacy. Further, search terms included preservice teacher education, preservice teachers, teacher education, and faculties of education. Since the field of study is subject to rapid change, the search parameters were for 2010 – present, with seminal works by key authors being considered where these works added pivotal information. Periodicals with a focus on media or digital literacies, teacher education, and teaching with technology, media, or information literacies were reviewed for recent publications. Starting from the most recent, using key word searches, full database searches were conducted in EBSCO, ERIC, ProQuest, and Google Scholar. Several interesting and interrelated articles were excluded when the keywords or abstracts did not fit the established parameters for media literacy and/or digital literacy in preservice teacher education. Each selected reference is described, followed by an analysis of how this research connects to current explorations or work in teaching and learning in preservice teacher education.”

So the evolution of the annotated bibliography is leaving behind a range of articles that are somewhat relevant and somehow connected, but may be a better fit in the upcoming literature review that I will write in the coming months.

Image attribution: Photo by Hans-Peter Gauster on Unsplash