what is a literacy research paper

University Library

• Research Guides

Literature and Literary Research

• Getting Started
• Finding Books and Articles
• Finding and Using Archival Sources
• Finding and Using Reference Sources
• Working Smarter

What's a good topic?

Choosing a topic can be one of the hardest parts of writing a paper. There are so many possible things to write about, and even if you have a general idea, it can be hard to know whether your topic is a good one. 

Writing a literature paper is different from writing many other kinds of papers. In literary analysis, it's not the ideas of other people that matter as much as your own interpretation of the texts you're reading. The bulk of your paper will be made up of your analysis of the text: the use of language, imagery, rhythm and repetition, word choice, the structure of the plot, or the representations of characters, emotions, events, or places. Your job is to analyze these elements of the text and through your analysis to assert an idea, or a claim, about the text, the author, or the context in which the text was written.

So what makes a good topic? A good topic is a theme that you think is represented in the text you're reading. But how do you get from a good topic to a good research question? 

What's a good research question?

Once you recognize a theme in a text or texts, your next step is to determine what you think the texts are saying about that theme. Read the text again, paying particular attention to your theme. What does your interpretation lead you think about the theme or idea? This is your claim, and your paper is structured around using analysis of the text or texts to support your claim. 

For example, you may be interested in looking at community or society in Thoreau's "Walden." You may have read the text and noticed a contradiction between Thoreau's claims of self-reliance and his interaction with society. You would then re-read the text, asking yourself as you read "What is the representation of society and Thoreau's relationship to it in 'Walden'?" After reading the text closely and paying special attention to these aspects of "Walden," you may be ready to make the claim that while Thoreau believed he was self-reliant, in truth he was still part of a network of people, and still part of his society and community. Or you may discover that your initial thought was wrong, and that Thoreau really did separate himself from his community in the way he wrote about. 

Types of Sources

There are a lot of different kinds of sources that you can use in your analysis. This guide will show you how to find and use these by type. 

Primary Sources  are the main pieces of evidence you will use to make your claim. The texts you are reading are a primary source; they are the most important primary source you're working with. Other examples are newspaper and magazine articles, diaries and letters, photographs, maps, and reviews written or created at the same time as your text. These sources can help you put your subject into context. 

Reference Sources  give you a broad overview of a person, place, event, or idea. They provide commonly known facts. Reference sources are not cited in your paper, but can be very useful for grounding you in your subject and ensuring that you have solid background information.  Literary biographies   are a form of reference material, and give you lots of information about authors, with an emphasis on how their lives are related to their writing. 

Secondary Sources  are also sometimes referred to as  criticism.  These are books and articles that scholars have written about a particular work of literature, movement, or author. Criticism can help you get a sense of the themes that other scholars read in a particular text. They may help inform your own understanding of a text, either because they reinforce your interpretation, or differ from it. Criticism is usually published in books or as articles in scholarly journals. 

So how do I use sources?

Primary sources are the evidence that we use to support our claims. They aren't the articles that other scholars and researchers have written, but original source material that we can use to better understand our topic. Primary sources in literary research include the text or texts that you're analyzing, but might also include additional material like letters written by the author, photographs, reviews written when the text was published, newspapers articles. Many different kinds of things can be used as primary sources, depending on your subject. 

For example, if you're studying Thoreau's relationships with others, you may want to find out more about Thoreau's role in his community by reading primary source material (letters that he wrote to friends and colleagues, newspaper articles about him or about his community) or by reading more about the context of his life in Massachusetts (the political and artistic movements of which he was part, the actual location of his cabin in relation to the town of Concord). These additional sources are used to support your interpretation of the text you're analyzing. 

You may want to use secondary sources to discuss other scholars' ideas and interpretations of the topic and text you're writing about, especially if you don't agree with their interpretations. Pay especially close attention to aspects of your topic that scholars don't agree about, and to different interpretations or ideas about a text. If there are major debates about the authors or texts you're studying, you'll want to reference them in the paper to help inform your reader and provide context to your own interpretation. 

• Next: Finding Books and Articles >>
• Last Updated: Feb 2, 2024 12:45 PM
• URL: https://libguides.sonoma.edu/literature

Literary Research: Introduction

• Introduction
• Using Gale Literature
• Using Oxford Reference Online Premium
• Using Biography - Gale in Context
• Using the Issues & Controversies Databases
• Where to find additional sources
• Research and Citation
• Online Student Guide This link opens in a new window

What is literary research?

So what does that mean?

• You are not reporting.
• You are not simply summarizing; although you may have to summarize a bit in order to make your point.
• You are saying something new about the work, expanding on what others have said...or you are saying something in a new or original way.
• You assert something ( make a claim about the work ...this is your thesis), and then support it with discussion using evidence from the work itself, evidence from other works, and/or evidence from "the conversation," i.e., what others have said. 
• You very likely will not find "the perfect source" that says everything you need it to say. You'll need to use information from different sources, possibly even from other disciplines (such as history, psychology, anthropology, etc.) along with with evidence from the work itself to make the points that flesh out and support your thesis. Click on the Finding Sources tab of this guide for a list of suggested databases!

Librarians Who Can Help

How to Start

There are many ways to get started on literary research:.

Your professor may have provided a list of topics from which to choose - these are usually a good option because there will definitely be something "there" when you get started. In other words, your professor likely would not have suggested a topic that leads to a dead end.  

It's possible, though, that none of the available choices appeal to you, and if your professor has said other topics are allowed (generally this would be with the condition of approval by him/her), consider pursuing the following strategies.  The upside here is that whenever possible, it's better, easier, and more fun to research something that truly interests or intrigues you .  To do research well, you have to spend a lot of time thinking, reading, and writing about the topic; most would agree that it's easier if it doesn't bore you to death. So, consider these options:

• Next: Finding Sources >>
• Last Updated: Mar 20, 2024 5:49 PM
• URL: https://guides.library.tulsacc.edu/LiteraryResearch

  Metro Campus Library : 918.595.7172 | Northeast Campus Library : 918.595.7501 |  Southeast Campus Library : 918.595.7701 | West Campus Library : 918.595.8010 --> email: Library Website Technical Help  | MyTCC |  © 2024 Tulsa Community College

• Open access
• Published: 15 March 2022

A review of academic literacy research development: from 2002 to 2019

• Dongying Li   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-6835-5129 1  

Asian-Pacific Journal of Second and Foreign Language Education volume  7 , Article number:  5 ( 2022 ) Cite this article

16k Accesses

13 Citations

4 Altmetric

Metrics details

Academic literacy as an embodiment of higher-order language and thinking skills within the academic community bears huge significance for language socialization, resource distribution and even power disposition within the larger sociocultural context. However, although the notion of academic literacy has been initiated for more than twenty years, there still lacks a clear definition and operationalization of the construct. The study conducted a systematic review of academic literacy research based on 94 systematically selected research papers on academic literacy from 2002 to 2019 from multiple databases. These papers were then coded respectively in terms of their research methods, types (interventionistic or descriptive), settings and research focus. Findings demonstrate (1) the multidimensionality of academic literacy construct; (2) a growing number of mixed methods interventionistic studies in recent years; and (3) a gradual expansion of academic literacy research in ESL and EFL settings. These findings can inform the design and implementation of future academic literacy research and practices.

Introduction

Academic literacy as an embodiment of higher order thinking and learning not only serves as a prerequisite for knowledge production and communication within the disciplines but also bears huge significance for individual language and cognitive development (Flowerdew, 2013 ; Moje, 2015 ). Recent researches on academic literacy gradually moved from regarding literacy as discrete, transferrable skills to literacy as a social practice, closely associated with disciplinary epistemology and identity (Gee, 2015 ). The view of literacy learning as both a textual and contextual practice is largely driven by the changing educational goal under the development of twenty-first century knowledge economy, which requires learners to be active co-constructors of knowledge rather than passive recipients (Gebhard, 2004 ). Academic literacy development in this sense is considered as a powerful tool for knowledge generation, communication and transformation.

However, up-till-now, there still seems to lack a clear definition and operationalization of the academic literacy construct that can guide effective pedagogy (Wingate, 2018 ). This can possibly lead to a peril of regarding academic literacy as an umbrella term, with few specifications on the potential of the construct to afford actual teaching and learning practices. In this sense, a systematic review in terms of how the construct was defined, operationalized and approached in actual research settings can embody huge potential in bridging the gap between theory and practice.

Based on these concerns, the study conducts a critical review of academic literacy research over the past twenty years in terms of the construct of the academic literacy, their methods, approaches, settings and keywords. A mixed methods approach is adopted to combine qualitative coding with quantitative analysis to investigate diachronic changes. Results of the study can enrich the understandings of the construct of academic literacy and its relations to actual pedagogical practices while shedding light on future directions of research.

Literature review

Academic literacy as a set of literacy skills specialized for content learning is closely associated with individual higher order thinking and advanced language skill development (Shanahan & Shanahan, 2008 ). Recent researches suggest that the development of the advanced literacy skills can only be achieved via students’ active engagement in authentic and purposeful disciplinary learning activities, imbued with meaning, value and emotions (Moje et al., 2008 ). Therefore, contrary to the ‘autonomous model’ of literacy development which views literacy as a set of discrete, transferrable reading and writing skills, academic literacy development is viewed as participation, socialization and transformation achieved via individual’s expanding involvement in authentic and meaningful disciplinary learning inquiries (Duff, 2010 ; Russell, 2009 ). Academic literacy development in this sense is viewed as a powerful mediation for individual socialization into the academic community, which is in turn closely related to issues of power disposition, resource distribution and social justice (Broom, 2004 ). In this sense, academic literacy development is by no means only a cognitive issue but situated social and cultural practices widely shaped by power, structure and ideology (Lillis & Scott, 2007 ; Wenger, 1998 ).

The view of literacy learning as a social practice is typically reflected in genre and the ‘academic literacies’ model. Genre, as a series of typified, recurring social actions serves as a powerful semiotic tool for individuals to act together meaningfully and purposefully (Fang & Coatoam, 2013 ). Academic literacy development in this sense is viewed as individual’s gradual appropriation of the shared cultural values and communicative repertoires within the disciplines. These routinized practices of knowing, doing and being not only serve to guarantee the hidden quality of disciplinary knowledge production but also entail a frame of action for academic community functioning (Fisher, 2019 ; Wenger, 1998 ). Therefore, academic literacy development empowers individual thinking and learning in pursuit of effective community practices.

Complementary to the genre approach, the ‘academic literacies’ model “views student writing and learning as issues at the level of epistemology and identities rather than skill or socialization” from the lens of critical literacy, power and ideology (Lea & Street, 1998 , p. 159). Drawing from ‘New Literacies’, the ‘academic literacies’ model approaches literacy development within the power of social discourse with the hope to open up possibilities for innovations and change (Lea & Street, 2006 ). Academic literacy development in this sense is regarded as a powerful tool for access, communication and identification within the academic community, and is therefore closely associated with issues of social justice and equality (Gee, 2015 ).

The notion of genre and ‘academic literacies’ share multiple resemblances with English for Academic Purposes (EAP), which according to Charles ( 2013 , p. 137) ‘is concerned with researching and teaching the English needed by those who use the language to perform academic tasks’. As can be seen, both approaches regard literacy learning as highly purposeful and contextual, driven by the practical need to ‘foregrounding the tacit nature of academic conventions’ (Lillis & Tuck, 2016 , p. 36). However, while EAP is more text-driven, ‘academic literacies’ are more practice-oriented (Lillis & Tuck, 2016 ). That is rather than focusing on the ‘normative’ descriptions of the academic discourse, the ‘academic literacies’ model lays more emphasis on learner agency, personal experiences and sociocultural diversity, regarded as a valuable source for individual learning and the transformation of community practices (Lillis & Tuck, 2016 ). This view of literacy learning as meaningful social participation and transformation is now gradually adopted in the approach of critical EAP (Charles, 2013 ).

In sum, all these approaches regard academic literacy development as multi-dimensional, encompassing both linguistic, cognitive and sociocultural practices (Cumming, 2013 ). However, up-till-now, there still seems to lack a clear definition and operationalization of the academic literacy construct that can guide concrete pedagogies. Short and Fitzsimmons ( 2007 , p. 2) provided a tentative definition of academic literacy from the following aspects:

Includes reading, writing, and oral discourse for school Varies from subject to subject Requires knowledge of multiple genres of text, purposes for text use, and text media Is influenced by students’ literacies in contexts outside of school Is influenced by students’ personal, social, and cultural experiences.

This definition has specified the main features of academic literacy as both a cognitive and sociocultural construct; however, more elaborations may be needed to further operationalize the construct in real educational and research settings. Drawing from this, Allison and Harklau ( 2010 ) and Fang ( 2012 ) specified three general approaches to academic literacy research, namely: the language, cognitive (disciplinary) and the sociocultural approach, which will be further elaborated in the following.

The language-based approach is mainly text-driven and lays special emphasis on the acquisition of language structures, skills and functions characteristic of content learning (Allison & Harklau, 2010 , p. 134; Uccelli et al., 2014 ), and highlights explicit instruction on academic language features and discourse structures (Hyland, 2008 ). This notion is widely influenced by Systemic Functional Linguistics which specifies the intricate connections between text and context, or linguistic choices and text meaning-making potential under specific communicative intentions and purposes (Halliday, 2000 ). This approach often highlights explicit consciousness-raising activities in text deconstruction as embodied in the genre pedagogy, facilitated by corpus-linguistic research tools to unveil structures and patterns of academic language use (Charles, 2013 ).

One typical example is data driven learning (DDL) or ‘any use of a language corpus by second or foreign language learners’ (Anthony, 2017 , p. 163). This approach encourages ‘inductive, self-directed’ language learning under the guidance of the teacher to examine and explore language use in real academic settings. These inquiry-based learning processes not only make language learning meaningful and purposeful but also help form more strategic and autonomous learners (Anthony, 2017 ).

In sum, the language approach intends to unveil the linguistic and rhetorical structure of academic discourse to make it accessible and available for reflection. However, academic literacy development entails more than the acquisition of academic language skills but also the use of academic language as tool for content learning and scientific reasoning (Bailey et al., 2007 ), which is closely connected to individual cognitive development, knowledge construction and communication within the disciplines (Fang, 2012 ).

Therefore, the cognitive or disciplinary-based approach views academic literacy development as higher order thinking and learning in academic socialization in pursuit of deep, contextualized meaning (Granville & Dison, 2005 ). This notion highlights the cognitive functions of academic literacy as deeply related to disciplinary epistemologies and identities, widely shaped by disciplinary-specific ways of knowing, doing and thinking (Moje, 2015 ). Just as mentioned by Shanahan ( 2012 , p. 70), ‘approaching a text with a particular point of view affects how individuals read and learn from texts’, academic literacy development is an integrated language and cognitive endeavor.

One typical example in this approach is the Cognitive Academic Language Learning Approach (CALLA) initiated by Chamot and O’Malley ( 1987 ), proposing the development of a curriculum that integrates mainstream content subject learning, academic language development and learning strategy instruction. This approach embeds language learning within an authentic, purposeful content learning environment, facilitated by strategy training. Another example is the Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol (SIOP model) developed by Echevarría et al. ( 2013 ). Sheltered instruction, according to Short et al. ( 2011 , p. 364) refers to ‘a subject class such as mathematics, science, or history taught through English wherein many or all of the students are second language learners’. This approach integrates language and content learning and highlights language learning for subject matter learning purposes (Allison & Harklau, 2010 ). To make it more specifically, the SIOP model promotes the use of instructional scaffolding to make content comprehensible while advancing students’ skills in a new language (Echevarría et al., 2013 , p. 18). Over the decade, this notion integrating language and cognitive development within the disciplines has gradually gained its prominence in bilingual and multilingual education (Goldenberg, 2010 ).

Complementary to the language and cognitive approach, the sociocultural approach contends literacy learning as a social issue, widely shaped by power, structure and ideology (Gee, 2015 ; Lea & Street, 2006 ). This approach highlights the role of learner agency and identity in transforming individual/community learning practices (Lillis & Scott, 2007 ). Academic literacy in this sense is viewed as a sociocultural construct imbued with meaning, value and emotions as a gateway for social access, power distribution and meaning reconstruction (Moje et al., 2008 ).

However, despite the various approaches to academic literacy teaching and learning, up-till-now, there still seems to be a paucity of research that can integrate these dimensions into effective intervention and research practices. Current researches on academic literacy development either take an interventionistic or descriptive approach. The former usually takes place within a concrete educational setting under the intention to uncover effective community teaching and learning practices (Engestrom, 1999 ). The later, on the contrary, often takes a more naturalistic or ethnographic approach with the hope to provide an in-depth account of individual/community learning practices (Lillis & Scott, 2007 ). These descriptions are often aligned to larger sociocultural contexts and the transformative role of learner agency in collective, object-oriented activities (Engeström, 1987 ; Wenger, 1998 ).

These different approaches to academic literacy development are influenced by the varying epistemological stances of the researcher and specific research purposes. However, all these approaches have pointed to a common conception of academic literacy as a multidimensional construct, widely shaped by the sociocultural and historical contexts. This complex and dynamic nature of literacy learning not only enables the constant innovation and expansion of academic literacy construct but also opens up the possibilities to challenge the preconceived notions of relevant research and pedagogical practices.

Based on these concerns, the study intends to conduct a critical review of the twenty years’ development of academic literacy research in terms of their definition of the academic literacy construct, research approaches, methodologies, settings and keywords with the hope to uncover possible developmental trends in interaction. Critical reflections are drawn from this systematic review to shed light on possible future research directions.

Through this review, we intended the address the following three research questions:

What is the construct of academic literacy in different approaches of academic literacy research?

What are the possible patterns of change in term of academic literacy research methods, approaches and settings over the past twenty years?

What are the main focuses of research within each approach of academic literacy development?

Methodology

The study adopts mixed methods to provide a systematic review of academic literacy research over the past twenty years. The rationale for choosing a mixed method is to integrate qualitative text analysis on the features of academic literacy research with quantitative corpus analysis applied on the initial coding results to unveil possible developmental trends.

Inclusion criteria

To locate academic literacy studies over the past twenty years, the researcher conducted a keyword search of ‘academic literacy’ within a wide range of databases within the realm of linguistic and education. For quality control, only peer-reviewed articles from the Social Sciences Citation Index (Web of Science) were selected. This initial selection criteria yielded 127 papers containing a keyword of ‘academic literacy’ from a range of high-quality journals in linguistics and education from a series of databases, including: Social Science Premium Collection, ERIC (U.S. Dept. of Education), ERIC (ProQuest), Taylor & Francis Online—Journals, Linguistics and Language Behavior Abstracts, Informa—Taylor & Francis (CrossRef), Arts & Humanities Citation Index (Web of Science), ScienceDirect Journals (Elsevier), ScienceDirect (Elsevier B.V.), Elsevier (CrossRef), ProQuest Education Journals, Sage Journals (Sage Publications), International Bibliography of the Social Sciences, JSTOR Archival Journals, Wiley Online Library etc. Among these results, papers from Journal of Second Language Writing, Language and Education, English for Specific Purposes, Teaching in Higher Education, Journal of English for Academic Purposes and Higher Education Research & Development are among the most frequent.

Based on these initial results, the study conducted a second-round detailed sample selection. The researcher manually excluded the irrelevant papers which are either review articles, papers written in languages other than English or not directly related to literacy learning in educational settings. After the second round of data selection, a final database of 94 high-quality papers on academic literacy research within the time span between 2002 and 2019 were generated. However, considering the time of observation in this study, only researches conducted before October 2019 were included, which leads to a slight decrease in the total number of researches accounted in that year.

Coding procedure

Coding of the study was conducted from multiple perspectives. Firstly, the study specified three different approaches to academic literacy study based on their different understandings and conceptualizations of the construct (Allison & Harklau, 2010 ). Based on this initial classification, the study then conducted a new round of coding on the definitions of academic literacy, research methods, settings within each approach to look for possible interactions. Finally, a quantitative keywords frequency analysis was conducted in respective approaches to reveal the possible similarities and differences in their research focus. Specific coding criteria are specified as the following.

Firstly, drawing from Allison and Harklau ( 2010 ), the study classified all the researches in the database into three broad categories: language, disciplinary and sociocultural. While the language approach mainly focuses on the development of general or disciplinary-specific academic language features (Hyland, 2008 ), the disciplinary approach views academic literacy development as deeply embedded in the inquiry of disciplinary-specific values, cultures and epistemologies and can only be achieved via individual’s active engagement in disciplinary learning and inquiry practices (Moje, 2015 ). The sociocultural approach, largely influenced by the ‘academic literacies’ model (Lea & Street, 1998 ) contends that academic literacy development entails more than individual socialization into the academic community but is also closely related to issues as power, identity and epistemology (Gee, 2015 ; Lillis, 2008 ).

Based on this initial coding, the study then identified the research methods in all studies within each approach as either quantitative, qualitative or mixed method. Drawing from Creswell ( 2014 ), quantitative research is defined as ‘an approach for testing objective theories by examining the relationship among variables’ (p. 3) and is often quantified or numbered using specific statistical procedures. The use of this approach in academic literacy studies are often closely associated with corpus-driven text analysis, developmental studies, academic language assessment or large-scale intervention studies. This approach is particularly useful in unveiling the possible developmental effects of effective interventions but may fall short to account for the process of development which are often highly idiosyncratic and contextual. The use of qualitative methods can to some extent address this concern, as they often intend to explore deep contextualized meanings that individuals or groups ascribe to a social problem (Creswell, 2014 ). Drawing from the notion of literacy learning as a social practice, qualitative methods and especially linguistic ethnographies are highly encouraged in early academic literacy studies for their potential to provide detailed descriptions of a phenomenon through prolonged engagement (Lillis, 2008 ). In complementary, the use of mixed methods integrates both quantitative and qualitative data to ‘provide a more complete understanding of a research problem than either approach alone’ (Creswell, 2014 , p. 3). This approach embodies huge potentialities in academic literacy research as it can align teaching and learning processes with possible developmental outcomes, which not only preserves the contextualized and practice-oriented nature of academic literacy research but also makes their results generalizable.

Secondly, the study classified all the researches into two types: interventionistic and descriptive. The former entails an intentional pedagogical intervention with an aim to improve individual and community learning practices. The latter, however, tends to adopt a more naturalistic approach under an intention to unveil the complex and dynamic interactions between academic literacy development and the wider sociocultural context. These two approaches complement each other in academic literacy researches in real educational settings, serving distinct purposes.

Thirdly, for a closer inspection of the context of research, the study specifies three general research settings: English as a native language (ENL), English as a second language (ESL) and English as a foreign language (EFL) (Kirkpatrick, 2007 ). According to Kirkpatrick ( 2007 , p. 27), ‘ENL is spoken in countries where English is the primary language of the great majority of the population’ where ‘English is spoken and used as a native language’. ESL in contrast, ‘is spoken in countries where English is an important and usually official language, but not the main language of the country’ (Kirkpatrick, 2007 , p. 27). These are also countries that are previously colonized by the English-speaking countries, often with a diverse linguistic landscape and complicated language policies (Broom, 2004 ). Therefore, language choices in these countries are often closely connected to issues as power, identity and justice. Academic literacy development in this respect serves both to guarantee social resource distribution and to empower individuals to change. Finally, ‘EFL occurs in countries where English is not actually used or spoken very much in the normal course of daily life’ (Kirkpatrick, 2007 , p. 27). Within these settings, for example in China, English language education used to serve only for its own purposes (Wen, 2019 ). However, dramatic changes have been going on these days in pursuit of a language-content integrated curriculum to achieve advanced literacy and cognitive skills development. (Zhang & Li, 2019 ; Zhang & Sun, 2014 ).

Finally, the study conducted detailed keywords analysis in terms of their frequency within each approach (language, disciplinary and sociocultural). Based on these, the researcher then merged the raw frequencies of similar constructs for example: testing and assessment, teaching and pedagogy to get a better representation of the results. This analysis reveals the focus of research within each approach and helps promote further operationalization of the academic literacy construct.

The coding was conducted by two independent coders, with coder one in charge of the coding of all data, and coder two responsible for 30% of the coding of the total data. Coder one, also the main researcher trained coder two in terms of the coding procedures in detail with ample practices until the threshold of intercoder reliability was reached. Coder two then coded the remaining 30% of the data independently with an interrater reliability of over 80%. The coding was done on an excel worksheet which makes data access and retrieval readily available. The statistical software R was used for keywords frequency analysis.

Data analyses in the study mainly involve three parts: (1) specifying the construct and operationalization of the academic literacy research; (2) investigating the dynamic interactions among research approaches, methods and settings; (3) identifying the focus of research within each approach through keywords analysis. The following parts deal with these questions respectively.

Definition and operationalization of the academic literacy construct

The study extracted all the explicit definitions of academic literacy within each approach (language, disciplinary and sociocultural) and conducted detailed thematic analysis recategorizing them into different themes (see Table 1 ).

Table 1 shows that the definitions of academic literacy vary with respect to the different conceptualizations and epistemologies of academic literacy development within each approach. For instance, the language-based approach mainly defines academic literacy from two aspects: (1) language use in academic settings; and (2) language competence required for academic study (Baumann & Graves, 2010 ; Sebolai, 2016 ). The former takes a relatively narrow view of academic literacy development as learners’ gradual appropriation of the linguistic and rhetorical features of the academic discourse (Schleppegrell, 2013 ; Uccelli et al., 2014 ). The latter in complementary specifies academic literacy development for content learning purposes, entailing the kind of competence students need to possess for academic study (Kabelo & Sebolai, 2016 ). Academic language learning in this sense does not serve for its own sake but is considered as a tool for content learning and cognitive development. Overall, the language-based approach to academic literacy development lays much emphasis on the acquisition of academic language features which serves as a prerequisite for learners to examine and explore the meaning-making potential of the academic language (Schleppegrell, 2013 ).

The disciplinary-based approach on the other hand focuses on an integrated development of advanced language and cognitive skills within the disciplines, with language learning closely intertwined with the appropriation of disciplinary-specific values, cultures and practices. In this sense, academic literacy development is viewed as a dynamic process of higher-order language socialization in pursuit of deep, collaborative contextual meaning (Lea & Street, 2006 ). During this process, academic literacy development goes hand in hand with cognitive development and knowledge production within the disciplines, along with learners’ gradually expanding involvement with the disciplinary-specific ways of doing knowing and thinking (Granville & Dison, 2005 ). Other researches within this approach regard academic literacy development as more than language socialization but widely shaped and constrained by issues of power, epistemology and identity (Lea & Street, 1998 ). This definition is also widely used in the sociocultural approach, regarding academic literacy development as a sociocultural enterprise, widely related to the identification, reification and transformation of the social practices (Wenger, 1998 ).

The sociocultural approach also known as the ‘academic literacies’ model views literacy learning at the level of power struggle, structure reconstruction and social justice (Gee, 2015 ). Academic literacy development in this sense is not only a shared repertoire for individual access to social communities but also a tool for emancipation and transformation, which is object-oriented, practice-driven and value-laden (Lillis & Scott, 2007 ).

Academic literacy research approaches, methods and settings

The study also analyzed changes in the approaches, methods and settings of academic literacy research over the past twenty years. Table 2 and Fig.  1 in the following present the number of quantitative, qualitative and mixed-methods studies within the language-based, disciplinary-based and sociocultural approach respectively.

Methods approach interaction in academic literacy studies

Table 2 and Fig.  1 show that the research methods chosen tend to vary with the approaches. To begin with, the number of qualitative studies generally surpassed the quantitative ones in both the disciplinary and the sociocultural approach, especially in the latter where qualitative studies dominated. However, their numbers tended to decrease in the past five years giving way to the rising mixed method researches. This was particularly evident in the growing number of mixed-methods language and disciplinary studies observed after 2015, which can also be an indication of the emergence of more robust designs in relevant educational researches. Finally, while the sociocultural approach was mainly featured by qualitative research, research methods in the language approach were more evenly distributed, which can possibly be accounted by its relatively longer research tradition and more well-established research practices.

In addition, the study also specified changes in the number of descriptive and intervention studies each year (see Table 2 , Fig.  2 ). Results showed that: (1) generally there were more qualitative researches in both the intervention and descriptive approach compared to the quantitative ones, although their numbers decreased in the past five years, especially in terms of the number of qualitative intervention studies; (2) a growing number of mixed-methods intervention studies were perceived in recent years. The findings echoed Scammacca et al.’s ( 2016 ) a century progress of reading intervention studies, indicating the emergence of more ‘standard, structured and standardized group interventions’ with ‘more robust design’ compared to the previous ‘individualized intervention case studies’ (p. 780). This developmental trend can indicate a possible methodological shift towards more large-scale intervention studies in the future based on recursive and reflective pedagogical practices. For more detailed descriptions of the methods-approach interaction, the study further investigated changes in the number of descriptive and intervention studies within each approach (see Table 3 , Fig.  3 ).

Diachronic changes in academic literacy research methods

Methods-approach interaction in academic literacy studies

Table 3 suggests that while the sociocultural approach tended to be more descriptive, the language and disciplinary approaches were more likely to interventionist. Another developmental trend was a dramatic decrease in descriptive language studies after 2015, giving way to an evident increase in intervention studies. This phenomenon entails an intricate connection among academic literacy development, education and pedagogy, indicating that language socialization does not come naturally, and well-designed, explicit pedagogical interventions are often in need.

Furthermore, the study tracked diachronic changes in the settings of academic literacy research. Results show that among the 94 selected academic literacy researches, 81 take place in a higher education context, accounting for about 86% of the total. Only 10 out of the 13 remaining researches take place in secondary school settings and 3 in elementary school settings. These results suggest that up-till-now, discussions on academic literacy development are mainly restricted to higher education settings, closely linked to the learning of advanced language and thinking skills. However, future researches may also need to attend to academic literacy development in secondary or primary school settings, especially in face of the growing disciplinary learning demands for adolescents (Dyhaylongsod et al., 2015 ).

Finally, the study recorded the specific countries where academic literacy studies take place, among which South Africa stands as the highest with 22 studies amounting to 20.95% of the total, followed by the United States (17.14%), United Kingdom (12.38%), Australia (11.43%) and China (9.64%). These results suggest that academic literacy research most often take place in ENL or ESL settings with relatively long traditions of literacy teaching and learning, and prominent demands for academic literacy development within subject areas. In the meantime, the study attributes the high number of academic literacy research in the South African context to its complex linguistic realities and historical legacies, where literacy development is closely associated with issues of power, identity and equality (Broom, 2004 ; Lea & Street, 2006 ). Based on this, the study specified the approaches of academic literacy research within the ENL, ESL and EFL settings respectively (see Table 4 , Fig.  4 ).

Academic literacy research settings

Table 4 shows that while the ENL settings dominated most of the academic literacy researches, relevant studies in ESL and EFL settings gradually increased in recent years, indicating an expanding influence of the academic literacy construct in different educational settings. Another pattern was the observation of more balanced research approaches or more evenly distributed language, disciplinary and sociocultural researches in all three settings. This phenomenon suggests that there seems to be an increasing flexibility in academic literacy research in recent years under the intention to address specific contextual issues. All these developmental trends reinforce the notion of academic literacy as a multi-dimensional construct (Cumming, 2013 ).

Focus of academic literacy research

To investigate the focus of academic literacy research within each approach, the study conducted detailed keywords analysis in all studies (see Fig.  5 ). Results show that academic literacy development is a situated educational practice, closely linked to issues as content learning, teacher education, assessment and pedagogy. Another feature that stands out is the frequent appearance of ‘writing’ and its related practices, such as: academic writing, student writing etc. This phenomenon suggests that compared to reading, writing seems to share a greater emphasis in academic literacy research. This can possibly be accounted by the intricate connections among writing, language and content learning and the gradual shift of focus from learning to write to writing to learn in higher education settings (Prain & Hand, 2016 ).

Keywords analysis of academic literacy research

From Fig.  5 , it can be seen that different approaches share common and distinct research focuses. For instance, the disciplinary approach is mainly featured by content learning and the development of subject-matter knowledge and skills, with a close relation to situated educational practices as genre and pedagogy, disciplinary-specific teaching and learning, reading interventions and teacher education. The language approach on the other hand tends to be more text-oriented, focusing on the development of advanced cognitive and academic language skills, widely influenced by the notions of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) and genre pedagogy. In addition, assessment and testing are also a key issue in the language-based approach, indicating that language testing practices today are still largely text-oriented, focusing on the acquisition of specific academic language skills. Finally, keywords analysis results in the sociocultural approach revealed its deeply held assumptions of academic literacy development as a situated, complex sociocultural practice. One emerging feature is its growing attention to multilingualism, multiculturalism and international students. In an era of rapid globalization and academic exchange, academic literacy development has gradually become a global issue as is manifested in a rapid expansion of international students in ENL countries (Caplan & Stevens, 2017 ). These students, however, often face double barriers in language and content learning, especially in terms of advanced literacy skills development required for content learning and inquiry (Okuda & Anderson, 2018 ). In this sense, more attentions are needed for the implementation and innovation of effective community learning practices.

Data analysis results in the study reveal that: (1) academic literacy development is a multidimensional construct (Cumming, 2013 ); (2) there is a growing number of mixed-methods intervention studies in recent years especially within the language approach; (3) a gradual expansion of academic literacy research in ESL and EFL settings is perceived with increasing attention to international and multilingual students. The following parts of the discussion and conclusion will provide detailed analyses on these aspects.

Definition and keywords analysis of the academic literacy studies reveal that academic literacy is a multidimensional construct, embodying both textual and contextual practices and bears huge significance for individual language and cognitive development. Drawing from this, future researches may need to cross the boundaries to integrate the language, disciplinary and sociocultural aspects of academic literacy development within a holistic view of literacy teaching and learning. In this respect, academic literacy development can widely draw from various research domains as language acquisition, language socialization, genre and pedagogy and critical literacy (Duff, 2010 ; Gee, 2015 ; Hyland, 2008 ; Lea & Street, 2006 ; Russell, 2009 ). Future researches may need to pay more attention to these multiple aspects which closely intertwine and mutually shape one another to serve for the innovation and design of effective practices.

Data analysis in the study also demonstrated the intricate connections between literacy learning and pedagogical interventions. The development of academic literacy does not come naturally, but often calls for explicit instruction and interventions to address situated learning needs (Shanahan, 2012 ). It is hoped that in the future larger-scale interventions with more rigorous designs are necessary in pursuit of more effective pedagogical practices (Scammacca et al., 2016 ). This assumption, however, are not in contradiction to the dynamic and contextual nature of academic literacy development, as more sophisticated designs can generally provide more detailed account of the practice-driven and contextualized learning processes which are often cyclical and recursive in nature.

Lastly, results of the study revealed a growing trend of academic literacy research in EFL settings especially with respect to English language learners and international students. Compared to the ENL and ESL settings, academic literacy research in EFL settings, although a relatively recent issue, embodies huge potentialities. Drawn by the demand to promote higher-order thinking and learning and the need to innovate traditional form-focused, skilled-based EFL pedagogy, the notion of academic literacy development as a disciplinary-based, socioculturally constructed, dynamic academic socialization process offers a sensible option for pedagogical innovation and curriculum development in these contexts. In this sense, the notion of academic literacy as a multidimensional construct has provided a possible solution to the long-standing problems concerning the efficacy the efficiency of EFL education, the alignment of language and content learning as well as the challenges in curriculum design and material development in EFL settings (Wen, 2019 ).

Conclusion and implication

Results of the study suggest a relatively straight-forward agenda for the development of effective academic literacy pedagogies. Firstly, the study revealed an intricate connection between academic literacy development and disciplinary-specific knowledge construction and inquiry activities. Academic literacy development is by no means only a textual issue, but agentive scaffolded learning activities that are meaningful, purposeful and authentic. Literacy activities such as reading and writing in this sense are often object-oriented to serve for real knowledge production and communicative needs. Therefore, effective academic literacy instruction often aligns language development with content learning within meaningful disciplinary and social inquiries.

Secondly, in an era of rapid globalization and communication, the development of academic literacy often takes a critical role in resource distribution and power reconstruction. This has also led to an increasing attention to academic literacy development of international students in multilingual contexts, who often face multiple challenges in learning disciplinary literacy. However, contrary to the traditional ‘deficit model’ seeking for a remediation for their relatively ‘disadvantaged’ language background, the notion of academic literacy highlighted the role of teacher and learner agency in the development of new pedagogical practices. These innovative approaches often acknowledge and build on students’ diverse language and cultural backgrounds to make literacy learning a cognitively meaningful and culturally valuable practice.

The study can shed light on future research from both an empirical and pedagogical perspective. From an empirical perspective, future research may need to pay more attention to the multidimensionality of the construct of academic literacy. As revealed in the current study, academic literacy development embodies multiple dimensions as language learning, cognitive development and social transformation. Future research may need to transcend the epistemological boundaries to seek for a more integrated definition of academic literacy in which language, cognitive and social development mutually transform one another. From a pedagogical perspective, an activity-based, integrated pedagogy should be proposed in academic literacy development. In the case, students generally use language to engage in authentic communication and practices relating not only to the advancement of disciplinary knowledge but also for the betterment of society. As it is through these practices that students’ engagement in complex meaning making and higher order thinking are ensured, and the internalization of language knowledge and transformation of social practices gradually occur.

The study also bears some limitations. Although it seeks to provide a comprehensive overview of the general trend, method and focus of academic literacy research for nearly two decades, it does not go deeper into specific studies of their findings and implications. Future studies can possibly narrow down their scope of investigation to delve deeper and provide a more thorough analysis of specific research findings.

Availability of data and materials

The studies reviewed can be referred from the reference citations in the supplementary materials.

Abbreviations

Cognitive Academic Language Learning Approach

Data driven learning

English for Academic Purposes

English as a native language

English as a second language

Systemic Functional Linguistics

Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol

Allison, H., & Harklau, L. (2010). Teaching academic literacies in secondary school. In G. Li & P. A. Edwards (Eds.), Best practices in ELL instruction. The Guilford Press.

Google Scholar  

Anthony, L. (2017). Introducing corpora and corpus tools into the technical writing classroom through Data-Driven Learning (DDL). In J. Flowerdew & T. Costley (Eds.), Discipline-specific writing: Theory into practice. Routledge.

Bailey, A. L., Butler, F. A., Stevens, R., & Lord, C. (2007). Further specifying the language demands of school. In A. L. Bailey (Ed.), The language demands of school: Putting academic English to the test. Yale University Press.

Basturkmen, H. (2017). Developing writing courses for specific academic purposes. In J. Flowerdew & T. Costley (Eds.), Discipline-specific writing: Theory into practice. Routledge.

Baumann, J. F., & Graves, M. F. (2010). What is academic vocabulary? Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 54 (1), 4–12.

Article   Google Scholar  

Bigelow, M., & Vinogradov, P. (2011). Teaching adult second language learners who are emergent readers. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 31 , 120–136.

Broom, Y. (2004). Reading English in multilingual South African primary schools. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 7 (6), 506–528.

Caplan, N. A., & Stevens, S. G. (2017). “Step out of the cycle”: Needs, challenges, and successes of international undergraduates at a U.S. University. English for Specific Purposes, 46 , 15–28.

Chamot, A. U., & O’Malley, J. M. (1987). The cognitive academic language learning approach: A bridge to the mainstream. TESOL Quarterly, 21 (2), 227–249.

Charles, M. (2013). English for academic purposes. In B. Paltridge & S. Starfield (Eds.), The handbook of English for specific purposes (pp. 137–155). Wiley-Blackwell.

Creswell, J. W. (2014). Research design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches . Sage.

Cumming, A. (2013). Multiple dimensions of academic language and literacy development. Language Learning, 63 (1), 130–152.

Duff, P. A. (2010). Language socialization into academic discourse communities. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 30 , 169–192.

Dyhaylongsod, L., Snow, C. E., Selman, R. L., & Donovan, M. S. (2015). Toward disciplinary literacy: Dilemmas and challenges in designing history curriculum to support middle school students. Harvard Educational Review, 85 (4), 587–608.

Echevarria, J., Vogt, M., & Short, D. J. (2013). Making content comprehensible for English learners: The SIOP model . Pearson Education.

Engeström, Y. (1987). Learning by expanding: An activity-theoretical approach to developmental research . Cambridge University Press.

Engestrom, Y. (1999). Activity theory and individual and social transformation. In R.M.R.-L.P. Yrjo Engestrom (Ed.), Perspectives on activity theory. Cambridge University Press.

Chapter   Google Scholar  

Fang, Z. (2012). Approaches to developing content area literacies: A synthesis and a critique. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 56 (2), 103–108.

Fang, Z., & Coatoam, S. (2013). Disciplinary literacy: What you want to know about it. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 56 (8), 627–632.

Fisher, R. (2019). Reconciling disciplinary literacy perspectives with genre-oriented Activity Theory: Toward a fuller synthesis of traditions. Reading Research Quarterly, 54 (2), 237–251.

Flowerdew, J. (2013). Introduction: Approaches to the analysis of academic discourse in English. In J. Flowerdew (Ed.), Academic discourse. Routledge.

Gebhard, M. (2004). Fast capitalism, school reform, and second language literacy practices. The Modern Language Journal, 88 (2), 245–265.

Gee, J. P. (2015). Literacy and education . Routledge.

Goldenberg, C. (2010). Improving achievement for English learners: Conclusions from recent reviews and emerging research. In G. Li & P. A. Edwards (Eds.), Best practices in ELL instruction (pp. 15–44). The Guilford Press.

Granville, S., & Dison, L. (2005). Thinking about thinking: Integrating self-reflection into an academic literacy course. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 4 , 99–118.

Halliday, M. A. K. (2000). An introduction to functional grammar . Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press.

Hyland, K. (2008). Genre and academic writing in the disciplines. Language Teaching, 41 (4), 543–562.

Kirkpatrick, A. (2007). World Englishes: Implications for international communication and English language teaching . Cambridge University Press.

Lea, M. R., & Street, B. V. (1998). Student writing in higher education: An academic literacies approach. Studies in Higher Education, 23 (2), 157–172.

Lea, M. R., & Street, B. V. (2006). The “Academic Literacies” model: Theory and applications. Theory into Practice, 45 (4), 368–377.

Lillis, T. (2008). Ethnography as method, methodology, and “deep theorizing” closing the gap between text and context in academic writing research. Written Communication , 25 (3), 353–388.

Lillis, T., & Scott, M. (2007). Defining academic literacies research: Issues of epistemology, ideology and strategy. Journal of Applied Linguistics, 4 (1), 5–32.

Lillis, T., & Tuck, J. (2016). Academic literacies: A critical lens on writing and reading in the academy. In K. Hyland & P. Shaw (Eds.), The Routledge handbook of English for academic purposes (pp. 30–44). Routledge.

Lillis, T., & Turner, J. (2001). Student writing in higher education: Contemporary confusion, traditional concerns. Teaching in Higher Education , 6 (1), 57–68.

Moje, E. B. (2015). Doing and teaching adolescent literacy with adolescent learners: A social and cultural enterprise. Harvard Educational Review, 85 (2), 254–278.

Moje, E. B., Overby, M., Tysvaer, N., & Morris, K. (2008). The complex world of adolescent literacy: Myths, motivations, and mysteries. Harvard Educational Review, 78 (1), 107–154.

Okuda, T., & Anderson, T. (2018). Second language graduate students’ experiences at the writing center: A language socialization perspective. TESOL Quarterly, 52 (2), 391–413.

Prain, V., & Hand, B. (2016). Coming to know more through and from writing. Educational Researcher, 45 (7), 430–434.

Russell, D. R. (2009). Texts in contexts: Theorizing learning by looking at genre and activity. In R. Edwards, G. Biesta, & M. Thorpe (Eds.), Rethinking contexts for learning and teaching: Communities, activities and networks. Routledge.

Scammacca, N. K., Roberts, G. J., Cho, E., Williams, J., Roberts, G., Vaughn, S. R., et al. (2016). A century of progress: Reading interventions for students in grades 4–12, 1914–2014. Review of Educational Research , 86 (3), 756–800.

Schleppegrell, M. J. (2013). The role of metalanguage in supporting academic language development. Language Learning, 63 (1), 153–170.

Sebolai, K. (2016). Distinguishing between English proficiency and academic literacy in English. Language Matters, 47 (1), 45–60.

Shanahan, C. (2012). How disciplinary experts read. In T. L. Jetlon & C. Shanahan (Eds.), Adolescent literacy in the academic disciplines: General principles and practical strategies. The Guilford Press.

Shanahan, T., & Shanahan, C. (2008). Teaching disciplinary literacy to adolescents: Rethinking content-area literacy. Harvard Educational Review, 78 (1), 40–59.

Short, D. J., Echevarría, J., & Richards-Tutor, C. (2011). Research on academic literacy development in sheltered instruction classrooms. Language Teaching Research, 15 (3), 363–380.

Short, D., & Fitzsimmons, S. (2007). Double the work: Challenges and solutions to acquiring language and academic literacy for adolescent English language learners—A report to Carnegie Corporation of New York . Alliance for Excellent Education.

Street, B. (2003). What’s “new” in New Literacy studies? Critical approaches to literacy in theory and practice. Current Issues in Comparative Education, 52 (2), 77–91.

Uccelli, P., Barr, C. D., Dobbs, C. L., Galloway, E. P., Meneses, A., & Sanchez, E. (2014). Core academic language skills: An expanded operational construct and a novel instrument to chart school-relevant language proficiency in preadolescent and adolescent learners. Applied Psycholinguistics, 36 (5), 1077–1109.

Wen, Q. (2019). Foreign language teaching theories in China in the past 70 years. Foreign Language in China, 16 (5), 14–22.

Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of practice: Learning, meaning, and identity . Cambridge University Press.

Book   Google Scholar  

Wingate, U. (2018). Academic literacy across the curriculum: Towards a collaborative instructional approach. Language Teaching, 51 (3), 349–364.

Zhang, L., & Li, D. (2019). An integrated development of students’ language and cognition under the CLIL pedagogy. Foreign Language Education in China, 2 (2), 16–24.

Zhang, L., & Sun, Y. (2014). A sociocultural theory-based writing curriculum reform on English majors. Foreign Language World, 5 , 2–10.

Zhao, K., & Chan, C. K. K. (2014). Fostering collective and individual learning through knowledge building. International Journal of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning , 9 , 63–95.

Download references

Acknowledgements

I would like to express my sincere thanks to the two anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments on the original manuscript.

The study was supported by the start up research funding for young scholars in Nanjing Normal University (No. 184080H202A135).

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

School of Foreign Languages, Nanjing Normal University, Wenyuanlu #1, Qixia District, Nanjing, 210023, Jiangsu, China

Dongying Li

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Contributions

All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Dongying Li .

Ethics declarations

Competing interests.

The author declares that there is no conflict of interest.

Additional information

Publisher's note.

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ .

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article.

Li, D. A review of academic literacy research development: from 2002 to 2019. Asian. J. Second. Foreign. Lang. Educ. 7 , 5 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1186/s40862-022-00130-z

Download citation

Received : 20 September 2021

Accepted : 01 February 2022

Published : 15 March 2022

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1186/s40862-022-00130-z

Share this article

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

• Academic literacy
• Academic language
• Cognitive development
• Intervention
• Sociocultural context

An official website of the United States government

The .gov means it’s official. Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

The site is secure. The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

• Publications
• Account settings

Preview improvements coming to the PMC website in October 2024. Learn More or Try it out now .

• Advanced Search
• Journal List
• Springer Nature - PMC COVID-19 Collection

A systematic review on digital literacy

Hasan tinmaz.

1 AI & Big Data Department, Endicott College of International Studies, Woosong University, Daejeon, South Korea

Yoo-Taek Lee

2 Endicott College of International Studies, Woosong University, Daejeon, South Korea

Mina Fanea-Ivanovici

3 Department of Economics and Economic Policies, Bucharest University of Economic Studies, Bucharest, Romania

Hasnan Baber

4 Abu Dhabi School of Management, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

Associated Data

The authors present the articles used for the study in “ Appendix A ”.

The purpose of this study is to discover the main themes and categories of the research studies regarding digital literacy. To serve this purpose, the databases of WoS/Clarivate Analytics, Proquest Central, Emerald Management Journals, Jstor Business College Collections and Scopus/Elsevier were searched with four keyword-combinations and final forty-three articles were included in the dataset. The researchers applied a systematic literature review method to the dataset. The preliminary findings demonstrated that there is a growing prevalence of digital literacy articles starting from the year 2013. The dominant research methodology of the reviewed articles is qualitative. The four major themes revealed from the qualitative content analysis are: digital literacy, digital competencies, digital skills and digital thinking. Under each theme, the categories and their frequencies are analysed. Recommendations for further research and for real life implementations are generated.

Introduction

The extant literature on digital literacy, skills and competencies is rich in definitions and classifications, but there is still no consensus on the larger themes and subsumed themes categories. (Heitin, 2016 ). To exemplify, existing inventories of Internet skills suffer from ‘incompleteness and over-simplification, conceptual ambiguity’ (van Deursen et al., 2015 ), and Internet skills are only a part of digital skills. While there is already a plethora of research in this field, this research paper hereby aims to provide a general framework of digital areas and themes that can best describe digital (cap)abilities in the novel context of Industry 4.0 and the accelerated pandemic-triggered digitalisation. The areas and themes can represent the starting point for drafting a contemporary digital literacy framework.

Sousa and Rocha ( 2019 ) explained that there is a stake of digital skills for disruptive digital business, and they connect it to the latest developments, such as the Internet of Things (IoT), cloud technology, big data, artificial intelligence, and robotics. The topic is even more important given the large disparities in digital literacy across regions (Tinmaz et al., 2022 ). More precisely, digital inequalities encompass skills, along with access, usage and self-perceptions. These inequalities need to be addressed, as they are credited with a ‘potential to shape life chances in multiple ways’ (Robinson et al., 2015 ), e.g., academic performance, labour market competitiveness, health, civic and political participation. Steps have been successfully taken to address physical access gaps, but skills gaps are still looming (Van Deursen & Van Dijk, 2010a ). Moreover, digital inequalities have grown larger due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and they influenced the very state of health of the most vulnerable categories of population or their employability in a time when digital skills are required (Baber et al., 2022 ; Beaunoyer, Dupéré & Guitton, 2020 ).

The systematic review the researchers propose is a useful updated instrument of classification and inventory for digital literacy. Considering the latest developments in the economy and in line with current digitalisation needs, digitally literate population may assist policymakers in various fields, e.g., education, administration, healthcare system, and managers of companies and other concerned organisations that need to stay competitive and to employ competitive workforce. Therefore, it is indispensably vital to comprehend the big picture of digital literacy related research.

Literature review

Since the advent of Digital Literacy, scholars have been concerned with identifying and classifying the various (cap)abilities related to its operation. Using the most cited academic papers in this stream of research, several classifications of digital-related literacies, competencies, and skills emerged.

Digital literacies

Digital literacy, which is one of the challenges of integration of technology in academic courses (Blau, Shamir-Inbal & Avdiel, 2020 ), has been defined in the current literature as the competencies and skills required for navigating a fragmented and complex information ecosystem (Eshet, 2004 ). A ‘Digital Literacy Framework’ was designed by Eshet-Alkalai ( 2012 ), comprising six categories: (a) photo-visual thinking (understanding and using visual information); (b) real-time thinking (simultaneously processing a variety of stimuli); (c) information thinking (evaluating and combining information from multiple digital sources); (d) branching thinking (navigating in non-linear hyper-media environments); (e) reproduction thinking (creating outcomes using technological tools by designing new content or remixing existing digital content); (f) social-emotional thinking (understanding and applying cyberspace rules). According to Heitin ( 2016 ), digital literacy groups the following clusters: (a) finding and consuming digital content; (b) creating digital content; (c) communicating or sharing digital content. Hence, the literature describes the digital literacy in many ways by associating a set of various technical and non-technical elements.

Digital competencies

The Digital Competence Framework for Citizens (DigComp 2.1.), the most recent framework proposed by the European Union, which is currently under review and undergoing an updating process, contains five competency areas: (a) information and data literacy, (b) communication and collaboration, (c) digital content creation, (d) safety, and (e) problem solving (Carretero, Vuorikari & Punie, 2017 ). Digital competency had previously been described in a technical fashion by Ferrari ( 2012 ) as a set comprising information skills, communication skills, content creation skills, safety skills, and problem-solving skills, which later outlined the areas of competence in DigComp 2.1, too.

Digital skills

Ng ( 2012 ) pointed out the following three categories of digital skills: (a) technological (using technological tools); (b) cognitive (thinking critically when managing information); (c) social (communicating and socialising). A set of Internet skill was suggested by Van Deursen and Van Dijk ( 2009 , 2010b ), which contains: (a) operational skills (basic skills in using internet technology), (b) formal Internet skills (navigation and orientation skills); (c) information Internet skills (fulfilling information needs), and (d) strategic Internet skills (using the internet to reach goals). In 2014, the same authors added communication and content creation skills to the initial framework (van Dijk & van Deursen). Similarly, Helsper and Eynon ( 2013 ) put forward a set of four digital skills: technical, social, critical, and creative skills. Furthermore, van Deursen et al. ( 2015 ) built a set of items and factors to measure Internet skills: operational, information navigation, social, creative, mobile. More recent literature (vaan Laar et al., 2017 ) divides digital skills into seven core categories: technical, information management, communication, collaboration, creativity, critical thinking, and problem solving.

It is worth mentioning that the various methodologies used to classify digital literacy are overlapping or non-exhaustive, which confirms the conceptual ambiguity mentioned by van Deursen et al. ( 2015 ).

Digital thinking

Thinking skills (along with digital skills) have been acknowledged to be a significant element of digital literacy in the educational process context (Ferrari, 2012 ). In fact, critical thinking, creativity, and innovation are at the very core of DigComp. Information and Communication Technology as a support for thinking is a learning objective in any school curriculum. In the same vein, analytical thinking and interdisciplinary thinking, which help solve problems, are yet other concerns of educators in the Industry 4.0 (Ozkan-Ozen & Kazancoglu, 2021 ).

However, we have recently witnessed a shift of focus from learning how to use information and communication technologies to using it while staying safe in the cyber-environment and being aware of alternative facts. Digital thinking would encompass identifying fake news, misinformation, and echo chambers (Sulzer, 2018 ). Not least important, concern about cybersecurity has grown especially in times of political, social or economic turmoil, such as the elections or the Covid-19 crisis (Sulzer, 2018 ; Puig, Blanco-Anaya & Perez-Maceira, 2021 ).

Ultimately, this systematic review paper focuses on the following major research questions as follows:

• Research question 1: What is the yearly distribution of digital literacy related papers?
• Research question 2: What are the research methods for digital literacy related papers?
• Research question 3: What are the main themes in digital literacy related papers?
• Research question 4: What are the concentrated categories (under revealed main themes) in digital literacy related papers?

This study employed the systematic review method where the authors scrutinized the existing literature around the major research question of digital literacy. As Uman ( 2011 ) pointed, in systematic literature review, the findings of the earlier research are examined for the identification of consistent and repetitive themes. The systematic review method differs from literature review with its well managed and highly organized qualitative scrutiny processes where researchers tend to cover less materials from fewer number of databases to write their literature review (Kowalczyk & Truluck, 2013 ; Robinson & Lowe, 2015 ).

Data collection

To address major research objectives, the following five important databases are selected due to their digital literacy focused research dominance: 1. WoS/Clarivate Analytics, 2. Proquest Central; 3. Emerald Management Journals; 4. Jstor Business College Collections; 5. Scopus/Elsevier.

The search was made in the second half of June 2021, in abstract and key words written in English language. We only kept research articles and book chapters (herein referred to as papers). Our purpose was to identify a set of digital literacy areas, or an inventory of such areas and topics. To serve that purpose, systematic review was utilized with the following synonym key words for the search: ‘digital literacy’, ‘digital skills’, ‘digital competence’ and ‘digital fluency’, to find the mainstream literature dealing with the topic. These key words were unfolded as a result of the consultation with the subject matter experts (two board members from Korean Digital Literacy Association and two professors from technology studies department). Below are the four key word combinations used in the search: “Digital literacy AND systematic review”, “Digital skills AND systematic review”, “Digital competence AND systematic review”, and “Digital fluency AND systematic review”.

A sequential systematic search was made in the five databases mentioned above. Thus, from one database to another, duplicate papers were manually excluded in a cascade manner to extract only unique results and to make the research smoother to conduct. At this stage, we kept 47 papers. Further exclusion criteria were applied. Thus, only full-text items written in English were selected, and in doing so, three papers were excluded (no full text available), and one other paper was excluded because it was not written in English, but in Spanish. Therefore, we investigated a total number of 43 papers, as shown in Table ​ Table1. 1 . “ Appendix A ” shows the list of these papers with full references.

Number of papers identified sequentially after applying all inclusion and exclusion criteria

Data analysis

The 43 papers selected after the application of the inclusion and exclusion criteria, respectively, were reviewed the materials independently by two researchers who were from two different countries. The researchers identified all topics pertaining to digital literacy, as they appeared in the papers. Next, a third researcher independently analysed these findings by excluded duplicates A qualitative content analysis was manually performed by calculating the frequency of major themes in all papers, where the raw data was compared and contrasted (Fraenkel et al., 2012 ). All three reviewers independently list the words and how the context in which they appeared and then the three reviewers collectively decided for how it should be categorized. Lastly, it is vital to remind that literature review of this article was written after the identification of the themes appeared as a result of our qualitative analyses. Therefore, the authors decided to shape the literature review structure based on the themes.

As an answer to the first research question (the yearly distribution of digital literacy related papers), Fig.  1 demonstrates the yearly distribution of digital literacy related papers. It is seen that there is an increasing trend about the digital literacy papers.

Yearly distribution of digital literacy related papers

Research question number two (The research methods for digital literacy related papers) concentrates on what research methods are employed for these digital literacy related papers. As Fig.  2 shows, most of the papers were using the qualitative method. Not stated refers to book chapters.

Research methods used in the reviewed articles

When forty-three articles were analysed for the main themes as in research question number three (The main themes in digital literacy related papers), the overall findings were categorized around four major themes: (i) literacies, (ii) competencies, (iii) skills, and (iv) thinking. Under every major theme, the categories were listed and explained as in research question number four (The concentrated categories (under revealed main themes) in digital literacy related papers).

The authors utilized an overt categorization for the depiction of these major themes. For example, when the ‘creativity’ was labelled as a skill, the authors also categorized it under the ‘skills’ theme. Similarly, when ‘creativity’ was mentioned as a competency, the authors listed it under the ‘competencies’ theme. Therefore, it is possible to recognize the same finding under different major themes.

Major theme 1: literacies

Digital literacy being the major concern of this paper was observed to be blatantly mentioned in five papers out forty-three. One of these articles described digital literacy as the human proficiencies to live, learn and work in the current digital society. In addition to these five articles, two additional papers used the same term as ‘critical digital literacy’ by describing it as a person’s or a society’s accessibility and assessment level interaction with digital technologies to utilize and/or create information. Table ​ Table2 2 summarizes the major categories under ‘Literacies’ major theme.

Categories (more than one occurrence) under 'literacies' major theme

Computer literacy, media literacy and cultural literacy were the second most common literacy (n = 5). One of the article branches computer literacy as tool (detailing with software and hardware uses) and resource (focusing on information processing capacity of a computer) literacies. Cultural literacy was emphasized as a vital element for functioning in an intercultural team on a digital project.

Disciplinary literacy (n = 4) was referring to utilizing different computer programs (n = 2) or technical gadgets (n = 2) with a specific emphasis on required cognitive, affective and psychomotor skills to be able to work in any digital context (n = 3), serving for the using (n = 2), creating and applying (n = 2) digital literacy in real life.

Data literacy, technology literacy and multiliteracy were the third frequent categories (n = 3). The ‘multiliteracy’ was referring to the innate nature of digital technologies, which have been infused into many aspects of human lives.

Last but not least, Internet literacy, mobile literacy, web literacy, new literacy, personal literacy and research literacy were discussed in forty-three article findings. Web literacy was focusing on being able to connect with people on the web (n = 2), discover the web content (especially the navigation on a hyper-textual platform), and learn web related skills through practical web experiences. Personal literacy was highlighting digital identity management. Research literacy was not only concentrating on conducting scientific research ability but also finding available scholarship online.

Twenty-four other categories are unfolded from the results sections of forty-three articles. Table ​ Table3 3 presents the list of these other literacies where the authors sorted the categories in an ascending alphabetical order without any other sorting criterion. Primarily, search, tagging, filtering and attention literacies were mainly underlining their roles in information processing. Furthermore, social-structural literacy was indicated as the recognition of the social circumstances and generation of information. Another information-related literacy was pointed as publishing literacy, which is the ability to disseminate information via different digital channels.

Other mentioned categories (n = 1)

While above listed personal literacy was referring to digital identity management, network literacy was explained as someone’s social networking ability to manage the digital relationship with other people. Additionally, participatory literacy was defined as the necessary abilities to join an online team working on online content production.

Emerging technology literacy was stipulated as an essential ability to recognize and appreciate the most recent and innovative technologies in along with smart choices related to these technologies. Additionally, the critical literacy was added as an ability to make smart judgements on the cost benefit analysis of these recent technologies.

Last of all, basic, intermediate, and advanced digital assessment literacies were specified for educational institutions that are planning to integrate various digital tools to conduct instructional assessments in their bodies.

Major theme 2: competencies

The second major theme was revealed as competencies. The authors directly categorized the findings that are specified with the word of competency. Table ​ Table4 4 summarizes the entire category set for the competencies major theme.

Categories under 'competencies' major theme

The most common category was the ‘digital competence’ (n = 14) where one of the articles points to that category as ‘generic digital competence’ referring to someone’s creativity for multimedia development (video editing was emphasized). Under this broad category, the following sub-categories were associated:

• Problem solving (n = 10)
• Safety (n = 7)
• Information processing (n = 5)
• Content creation (n = 5)
• Communication (n = 2)
• Digital rights (n = 1)
• Digital emotional intelligence (n = 1)
• Digital teamwork (n = 1)
• Big data utilization (n = 1)
• Artificial Intelligence utilization (n = 1)
• Virtual leadership (n = 1)
• Self-disruption (in along with the pace of digitalization) (n = 1)

Like ‘digital competency’, five additional articles especially coined the term as ‘digital competence as a life skill’. Deeper analysis demonstrated the following points: social competences (n = 4), communication in mother tongue (n = 3) and foreign language (n = 2), entrepreneurship (n = 3), civic competence (n = 2), fundamental science (n = 1), technology (n = 1) and mathematics (n = 1) competences, learning to learn (n = 1) and self-initiative (n = 1).

Moreover, competencies were linked to workplace digital competencies in three articles and highlighted as significant for employability (n = 3) and ‘economic engagement’ (n = 3). Digital competencies were also detailed for leisure (n = 2) and communication (n = 2). Furthermore, two articles pointed digital competencies as an inter-cultural competency and one as a cross-cultural competency. Lastly, the ‘digital nativity’ (n = 1) was clarified as someone’s innate competency of being able to feel contented and satisfied with digital technologies.

Major theme 3: skills

The third major observed theme was ‘skills’, which was dominantly gathered around information literacy skills (n = 19) and information and communication technologies skills (n = 18). Table ​ Table5 5 demonstrates the categories with more than one occurrence.

Categories under 'skills' major theme

Table ​ Table6 6 summarizes the sub-categories of the two most frequent categories of ‘skills’ major theme. The information literacy skills noticeably concentrate on the steps of information processing; evaluation (n = 6), utilization (n = 4), finding (n = 3), locating (n = 2) information. Moreover, the importance of trial/error process, being a lifelong learner, feeling a need for information and so forth were evidently listed under this sub-category. On the other hand, ICT skills were grouped around cognitive and affective domains. For instance, while technical skills in general and use of social media, coding, multimedia, chat or emailing in specific were reported in cognitive domain, attitude, intention, and belief towards ICT were mentioned as the elements of affective domain.

Sub-categories under ‘information literacy’ and ‘ICT’ skills

Communication skills (n = 9) were multi-dimensional for different societies, cultures, and globalized contexts, requiring linguistic skills. Collaboration skills (n = 9) are also recurrently cited with an explicit emphasis for virtual platforms.

‘Ethics for digital environment’ encapsulated ethical use of information (n = 4) and different technologies (n = 2), knowing digital laws (n = 2) and responsibilities (n = 2) in along with digital rights and obligations (n = 1), having digital awareness (n = 1), following digital etiquettes (n = 1), treating other people with respect (n = 1) including no cyber-bullying (n = 1) and no stealing or damaging other people (n = 1).

‘Digital fluency’ involved digital access (n = 2) by using different software and hardware (n = 2) in online platforms (n = 1) or communication tools (n = 1) or within programming environments (n = 1). Digital fluency also underlined following recent technological advancements (n = 1) and knowledge (n = 1) including digital health and wellness (n = 1) dimension.

‘Social intelligence’ related to understanding digital culture (n = 1), the concept of digital exclusion (n = 1) and digital divide (n = 3). ‘Research skills’ were detailed with searching academic information (n = 3) on databases such as Web of Science and Scopus (n = 2) and their citation, summarization, and quotation (n = 2).

‘Digital teaching’ was described as a skill (n = 2) in Table ​ Table4 4 whereas it was also labelled as a competence (n = 1) as shown in Table ​ Table3. 3 . Similarly, while learning to learn (n = 1) was coined under competencies in Table ​ Table3, 3 , digital learning (n = 2, Table ​ Table4) 4 ) and life-long learning (n = 1, Table ​ Table5) 5 ) were stated as learning related skills. Moreover, learning was used with the following three terms: learning readiness (n = 1), self-paced learning (n = 1) and learning flexibility (n = 1).

Table ​ Table7 7 shows other categories listed below the ‘skills’ major theme. The list covers not only the software such as GIS, text mining, mapping, or bibliometric analysis programs but also the conceptual skills such as the fourth industrial revolution and information management.

Categories (one-time occurrence) under 'skills' major theme

Major theme 4: thinking

The last identified major theme was the different types of ‘thinking’. As Table ​ Table8 8 shows, ‘critical thinking’ was the most frequent thinking category (n = 4). Except computational thinking, the other categories were not detailed.

Categories under ‘thinking’ major theme

Computational thinking (n = 3) was associated with the general logic of how a computer works and sub-categorized into the following steps; construction of the problem (n = 3), abstraction (n = 1), disintegration of the problem (n = 2), data collection, (n = 2), data analysis (n = 2), algorithmic design (n = 2), parallelization & iteration (n = 1), automation (n = 1), generalization (n = 1), and evaluation (n = 2).

A transversal analysis of digital literacy categories reveals the following fields of digital literacy application:

• Technological advancement (IT, ICT, Industry 4.0, IoT, text mining, GIS, bibliometric analysis, mapping data, technology, AI, big data)
• Networking (Internet, web, connectivity, network, safety)
• Information (media, news, communication)
• Creative-cultural industries (culture, publishing, film, TV, leisure, content creation)
• Academia (research, documentation, library)
• Citizenship (participation, society, social intelligence, awareness, politics, rights, legal use, ethics)
• Education (life skills, problem solving, teaching, learning, education, lifelong learning)
• Professional life (work, teamwork, collaboration, economy, commerce, leadership, decision making)
• Personal level (critical thinking, evaluation, analytical thinking, innovative thinking)

This systematic review on digital literacy concentrated on forty-three articles from the databases of WoS/Clarivate Analytics, Proquest Central, Emerald Management Journals, Jstor Business College Collections and Scopus/Elsevier. The initial results revealed that there is an increasing trend on digital literacy focused academic papers. Research work in digital literacy is critical in a context of disruptive digital business, and more recently, the pandemic-triggered accelerated digitalisation (Beaunoyer, Dupéré & Guitton, 2020 ; Sousa & Rocha 2019 ). Moreover, most of these papers were employing qualitative research methods. The raw data of these articles were analysed qualitatively using systematic literature review to reveal major themes and categories. Four major themes that appeared are: digital literacy, digital competencies, digital skills and thinking.

Whereas the mainstream literature describes digital literacy as a set of photo-visual, real-time, information, branching, reproduction and social-emotional thinking (Eshet-Alkalai, 2012 ) or as a set of precise specific operations, i.e., finding, consuming, creating, communicating and sharing digital content (Heitin, 2016 ), this study reveals that digital literacy revolves around and is in connection with the concepts of computer literacy, media literacy, cultural literacy or disciplinary literacy. In other words, the present systematic review indicates that digital literacy is far broader than specific tasks, englobing the entire sphere of computer operation and media use in a cultural context.

The digital competence yardstick, DigComp (Carretero, Vuorikari & Punie, 2017 ) suggests that the main digital competencies cover information and data literacy, communication and collaboration, digital content creation, safety, and problem solving. Similarly, the findings of this research place digital competencies in relation to problem solving, safety, information processing, content creation and communication. Therefore, the findings of the systematic literature review are, to a large extent, in line with the existing framework used in the European Union.

The investigation of the main keywords associated with digital skills has revealed that information literacy, ICT, communication, collaboration, digital content creation, research and decision-making skill are the most representative. In a structured way, the existing literature groups these skills in technological, cognitive, and social (Ng, 2012 ) or, more extensively, into operational, formal, information Internet, strategic, communication and content creation (van Dijk & van Deursen, 2014 ). In time, the literature has become richer in frameworks, and prolific authors have improved their results. As such, more recent research (vaan Laar et al., 2017 ) use the following categories: technical, information management, communication, collaboration, creativity, critical thinking, and problem solving.

Whereas digital thinking was observed to be mostly related with critical thinking and computational thinking, DigComp connects it with critical thinking, creativity, and innovation, on the one hand, and researchers highlight fake news, misinformation, cybersecurity, and echo chambers as exponents of digital thinking, on the other hand (Sulzer, 2018 ; Puig, Blanco-Anaya & Perez-Maceira, 2021 ).

This systematic review research study looks ahead to offer an initial step and guideline for the development of a more contemporary digital literacy framework including digital literacy major themes and factors. The researchers provide the following recommendations for both researchers and practitioners.

Recommendations for prospective research

By considering the major qualitative research trend, it seems apparent that more quantitative research-oriented studies are needed. Although it requires more effort and time, mixed method studies will help understand digital literacy holistically.

As digital literacy is an umbrella term for many different technologies, specific case studies need be designed, such as digital literacy for artificial intelligence or digital literacy for drones’ usage.

Digital literacy affects different areas of human lives, such as education, business, health, governance, and so forth. Therefore, different case studies could be carried out for each of these unique dimensions of our lives. For instance, it is worth investigating the role of digital literacy on lifelong learning in particular, and on education in general, as well as the digital upskilling effects on the labour market flexibility.

Further experimental studies on digital literacy are necessary to realize how certain variables (for instance, age, gender, socioeconomic status, cognitive abilities, etc.) affect this concept overtly or covertly. Moreover, the digital divide issue needs to be analysed through the lens of its main determinants.

New bibliometric analysis method can be implemented on digital literacy documents to reveal more information on how these works are related or centred on what major topic. This visual approach will assist to realize the big picture within the digital literacy framework.

Recommendations for practitioners

The digital literacy stakeholders, policymakers in education and managers in private organizations, need to be aware that there are many dimensions and variables regarding the implementation of digital literacy. In that case, stakeholders must comprehend their beneficiaries or the participants more deeply to increase the effect of digital literacy related activities. For example, critical thinking and problem-solving skills and abilities are mentioned to affect digital literacy. Hence, stakeholders have to initially understand whether the participants have enough entry level critical thinking and problem solving.

Development of digital literacy for different groups of people requires more energy, since each group might require a different set of skills, abilities, or competencies. Hence, different subject matter experts, such as technologists, instructional designers, content experts, should join the team.

It is indispensably vital to develop different digital frameworks for different technologies (basic or advanced) or different contexts (different levels of schooling or various industries).

These frameworks should be updated regularly as digital fields are evolving rapidly. Every year, committees should gather around to understand new technological trends and decide whether they should address the changes into their frameworks.

Understanding digital literacy in a thorough manner can enable decision makers to correctly implement and apply policies addressing the digital divide that is reflected onto various aspects of life, e.g., health, employment, education, especially in turbulent times such as the COVID-19 pandemic is.

Lastly, it is also essential to state the study limitations. This study is limited to the analysis of a certain number of papers, obtained from using the selected keywords and databases. Therefore, an extension can be made by adding other keywords and searching other databases.

See Table ​ Management9 9 .

List of papers (n = 43) included in the qualitative analysis—ordered alphabetically by title

Author contributions

The authors worked together on the manuscript equally. All authors have read and approved the final manuscript.

This research is funded by Woosong University Academic Research in 2022.

Availability of data and materials

Declarations.

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Publisher's Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Contributor Information

Hasan Tinmaz, Email: rk.ca.ttocidne@zamnith .

Yoo-Taek Lee, Email: rk.ca.usw@eelty .

Mina Fanea-Ivanovici, Email: [email protected] .

Hasnan Baber, Email: [email protected] .

• Baber H, Fanea-Ivanovici M, Lee YT, Tinmaz H. A bibliometric analysis of digital literacy research and emerging themes pre-during COVID-19 pandemic. Information and Learning Sciences. 2022 doi: 10.1108/ILS-10-2021-0090. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Beaunoyer E, Dupéré S, Guitton MJ. COVID-19 and digital inequalities: Reciprocal impacts and mitigation strategies. Computers in Human Behavior. 2020; 111 :10642. doi: 10.1016/j.chb.2020.106424. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Blau I, Shamir-Inbal T, Avdiel O. How does the pedagogical design of a technology-enhanced collaborative academic course promote digital literacies, self-regulation, and perceived learning of students? The Internet and Higher Education. 2020; 45 :100722. doi: 10.1016/j.iheduc.2019.100722. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Carretero, S., Vuorikari, R., & Punie, Y. (2017). DigComp 2.1: The Digital Competence Framework for Citizens with eight proficiency levels and examples of use (No. JRC106281). Joint Research Centre, https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC106281
• Eshet, Y. (2004). Digital literacy: A conceptual framework for survival skills in the digital era. Journal of Educational Multimedia and Hypermedia , 13 (1), 93–106, https://www.learntechlib.org/primary/p/4793/
• Eshet-Alkalai Y. Thinking in the digital era: A revised model for digital literacy. Issues in Informing Science and Information Technology. 2012; 9 (2):267–276. doi: 10.28945/1621. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Ferrari, A. (2012). Digital competence in practice: An analysis of frameworks. JCR IPTS, Sevilla. https://ifap.ru/library/book522.pdf
• Fraenkel JR, Wallen NE, Hyun HH. How to design and evaluate research in education. 8. Mc Graw Hill; 2012. [ Google Scholar ]
• Heitin, L. (2016). What is digital literacy? Education Week, https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/what-is-digital-literacy/2016/11
• Helsper EJ, Eynon R. Distinct skill pathways to digital engagement. European Journal of Communication. 2013; 28 (6):696–713. doi: 10.1177/0267323113499113. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Kowalczyk N, Truluck C. Literature reviews and systematic reviews: What is the difference ? Radiologic Technology. 2013; 85 (2):219–222. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Ng W. Can we teach digital natives digital literacy? Computers & Education. 2012; 59 (3):1065–1078. doi: 10.1016/j.compedu.2012.04.016. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Ozkan-Ozen YD, Kazancoglu Y. Analysing workforce development challenges in the Industry 4.0. International Journal of Manpower. 2021 doi: 10.1108/IJM-03-2021-0167. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Puig B, Blanco-Anaya P, Perez-Maceira JJ. “Fake News” or Real Science? Critical thinking to assess information on COVID-19. Frontiers in Education. 2021; 6 :646909. doi: 10.3389/feduc.2021.646909. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Robinson L, Cotten SR, Ono H, Quan-Haase A, Mesch G, Chen W, Schulz J, Hale TM, Stern MJ. Digital inequalities and why they matter. Information, Communication & Society. 2015; 18 (5):569–582. doi: 10.1080/1369118X.2015.1012532. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Robinson P, Lowe J. Literature reviews vs systematic reviews. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health. 2015; 39 (2):103. doi: 10.1111/1753-6405.12393. [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Sousa MJ, Rocha A. Skills for disruptive digital business. Journal of Business Research. 2019; 94 :257–263. doi: 10.1016/j.jbusres.2017.12.051. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Sulzer A. (Re)conceptualizing digital literacies before and after the election of Trump. English Teaching: Practice & Critique. 2018; 17 (2):58–71. doi: 10.1108/ETPC-06-2017-0098. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Tinmaz, H., Fanea-Ivanovici, M., & Baber, H. (2022). A snapshot of digital literacy. Library Hi Tech News , (ahead-of-print).
• Uman LS. Systematic reviews and meta-analyses. Journal of the Canadian Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. 2011; 20 (1):57–59. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Van Deursen AJAM, Helsper EJ, Eynon R. Development and validation of the Internet Skills Scale (ISS) Information, Communication & Society. 2015; 19 (6):804–823. doi: 10.1080/1369118X.2015.1078834. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Van Deursen AJAM, van Dijk JAGM. Using the internet: Skills related problems in users’ online behaviour. Interacting with Computers. 2009; 21 :393–402. doi: 10.1016/j.intcom.2009.06.005. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Van Deursen AJAM, van Dijk JAGM. Measuring internet skills. International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction. 2010; 26 (10):891–916. doi: 10.1080/10447318.2010.496338. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Van Deursen AJAM, van Dijk JAGM. Internet skills and the digital divide. New Media & Society. 2010; 13 (6):893–911. doi: 10.1177/1461444810386774. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• van Dijk JAGM, Van Deursen AJAM. Digital skills, unlocking the information society. Palgrave MacMillan; 2014. [ Google Scholar ]
• van Laar E, van Deursen AJAM, van Dijk JAGM, de Haan J. The relation between 21st-century skills and digital skills: A systematic literature review. Computer in Human Behavior. 2017; 72 :577–588. doi: 10.1016/j.chb.2017.03.010. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]

Purdue Online Writing Lab Purdue OWL® College of Liberal Arts

Introduction

Welcome to the Purdue OWL

This page is brought to you by the OWL at Purdue University. When printing this page, you must include the entire legal notice.

Copyright ©1995-2018 by The Writing Lab & The OWL at Purdue and Purdue University. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, reproduced, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed without permission. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our terms and conditions of fair use.

What Makes a Good Literature Paper?

An argument.

When you write an extended literary essay, often one requiring research, you are essentially making an argument. You are arguing that your perspective-an interpretation, an evaluative judgment, or a critical evaluation-is a valid one.

A debatable thesis statement

Like any argument paper you have ever written for a first-year composition course, you must have a specific, detailed thesis statement that reveals your perspective, and, like any good argument, your perspective must be one which is debatable.

You would not want to make an argument of this sort:

Shakespeare's Hamlet is a play about a young man who seeks revenge. That doesn't say anything-it's basically just a summary and is hardly debatable.

A better thesis would be this:

Hamlet experiences internal conflict because he is in love with his mother. That is debatable, controversial even. The rest of a paper with this argument as its thesis will be an attempt to show, using specific examples from the text and evidence from scholars, (1) how Hamlet is in love with his mother, (2) why he's in love with her, and (3) what implications there are for reading the play in this manner.

You also want to avoid a thesis statement like this:

Spirituality means different things to different people. King Lear , The Book of Romans , and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance each view the spirit differently. Again, that says nothing that's not already self-evident. Why bother writing a paper about that? You're not writing an essay to list works that have nothing in common other than a general topic like "spirituality." You want to find certain works or authors that, while they may have several differences, do have some specific, unifying point. That point is your thesis.

Lear , Romans , and Zen each view the soul as the center of human personality. Then you prove it, using examples from the texts that show that the soul is the center of personality.

Chapter Four: Theory, Methodologies, Methods, and Evidence

Research Methods

You are viewing the first edition of this textbook. a second edition is available – please visit the latest edition for updated information..

This page discusses the following topics:

Research Goals

Research method types.

Before discussing research   methods , we need to distinguish them from  methodologies  and  research skills . Methodologies, linked to literary theories, are tools and lines of investigation: sets of practices and propositions about texts and the world. Researchers using Marxist literary criticism will adopt methodologies that look to material forces like labor, ownership, and technology to understand literature and its relationship to the world. They will also seek to understand authors not as inspired geniuses but as people whose lives and work are shaped by social forces.

Example: Critical Race Theory Methodologies

Critical Race Theory may use a variety of methodologies, including

• Interest convergence: investigating whether marginalized groups only achieve progress when dominant groups benefit as well
• Intersectional theory: investigating how multiple factors of advantage and disadvantage around race, gender, ethnicity, religion, etc. operate together in complex ways
• Radical critique of the law: investigating how the law has historically been used to marginalize particular groups, such as black people, while recognizing that legal efforts are important to achieve emancipation and civil rights
• Social constructivism: investigating how race is socially constructed (rather than biologically grounded)
• Standpoint epistemology: investigating how knowledge relates to social position
• Structural determinism: investigating how structures of thought and of organizations determine social outcomes

To identify appropriate methodologies, you will need to research your chosen theory and gather what methodologies are associated with it. For the most part, we can’t assume that there are “one size fits all” methodologies.

Research skills are about how you handle materials such as library search engines, citation management programs, special collections materials, and so on.

Research methods  are about where and how you get answers to your research questions. Are you conducting interviews? Visiting archives? Doing close readings? Reviewing scholarship? You will need to choose which methods are most appropriate to use in your research and you need to gain some knowledge about how to use these methods. In other words, you need to do some research into research methods!

Your choice of research method depends on the kind of questions you are asking. For example, if you want to understand how an author progressed through several drafts to arrive at a final manuscript, you may need to do archival research. If you want to understand why a particular literary work became a bestseller, you may need to do audience research. If you want to know why a contemporary author wrote a particular work, you may need to do interviews. Usually literary research involves a combination of methods such as  archival research ,  discourse analysis , and  qualitative research  methods.

Literary research methods tend to differ from research methods in the hard sciences (such as physics and chemistry). Science research must present results that are reproducible, while literary research rarely does (though it must still present evidence for its claims). Literary research often deals with questions of meaning, social conventions, representations of lived experience, and aesthetic effects; these are questions that reward dialogue and different perspectives rather than one great experiment that settles the issue. In literary research, we might get many valuable answers even though they are quite different from one another. Also in literary research, we usually have some room to speculate about answers, but our claims have to be plausible (believable) and our argument comprehensive (meaning we don’t overlook evidence that would alter our argument significantly if it were known).

A literary researcher might select the following:

Theory: Critical Race Theory

Methodology: Social Constructivism

Method: Scholarly

Skills: Search engines, citation management

Wendy Belcher, in  Writing Your Journal Article in 12 Weeks , identifies two main approaches to understanding literary works: looking at a text by itself (associated with New Criticism ) and looking at texts as they connect to society (associated with Cultural Studies ). The goal of New Criticism is to bring the reader further into the text. The goal of Cultural Studies is to bring the reader into the network of discourses that surround and pass through the text. Other approaches, such as Ecocriticism, relate literary texts to the Sciences (as well as to the Humanities).

The New Critics, starting in the 1940s,  focused on meaning within the text itself, using a method they called “ close reading .” The text itself becomes e vidence for a particular reading. Using this approach, you should summarize the literary work briefly and q uote particularly meaningful passages, being sure to introduce quotes and then interpret them (never let them stand alone). Make connections within the work; a sk  “why” and “how” the various parts of the text relate to each other.

Cultural Studies critics see all texts  as connected to society; the critic  therefore has to connect a text to at least one political or social issue. How and why does  the text reproduce particular knowledge systems (known as discourses) and how do these knowledge systems relate to issues of power within the society? Who speaks and when? Answering these questions helps your reader understand the text in context. Cultural contexts can include the treatment of gender (Feminist, Queer), class (Marxist), nationality, race, religion, or any other area of human society.

Other approaches, such as psychoanalytic literary criticism , look at literary texts to better understand human psychology. A psychoanalytic reading can focus on a character, the author, the reader, or on society in general. Ecocriticism  look at human understandings of nature in literary texts.

We select our research methods based on the kinds of things we want to know. For example, we may be studying the relationship between literature and society, between author and text, or the status of a work in the literary canon. We may want to know about a work’s form, genre, or thematics. We may want to know about the audience’s reading and reception, or about methods for teaching literature in schools.

Below are a few research methods and their descriptions. You may need to consult with your instructor about which ones are most appropriate for your project. The first list covers methods most students use in their work. The second list covers methods more commonly used by advanced researchers. Even if you will not be using methods from this second list in your research project, you may read about these research methods in the scholarship you find.

Most commonly used undergraduate research methods:

• Scholarship Methods:  Studies the body of scholarship written about a particular author, literary work, historical period, literary movement, genre, theme, theory, or method.
• Textual Analysis Methods:  Used for close readings of literary texts, these methods also rely on literary theory and background information to support the reading.
• Biographical Methods:  Used to study the life of the author to better understand their work and times, these methods involve reading biographies and autobiographies about the author, and may also include research into private papers, correspondence, and interviews.
• Discourse Analysis Methods:  Studies language patterns to reveal ideology and social relations of power. This research involves the study of institutions, social groups, and social movements to understand how people in various settings use language to represent the world to themselves and others. Literary works may present complex mixtures of discourses which the characters (and readers) have to navigate.
• Creative Writing Methods:  A literary re-working of another literary text, creative writing research is used to better understand a literary work by investigating its language, formal structures, composition methods, themes, and so on. For instance, a creative research project may retell a story from a minor character’s perspective to reveal an alternative reading of events. To qualify as research, a creative research project is usually combined with a piece of theoretical writing that explains and justifies the work.

Methods used more often by advanced researchers:

• Archival Methods: Usually involves trips to special collections where original papers are kept. In these archives are many unpublished materials such as diaries, letters, photographs, ledgers, and so on. These materials can offer us invaluable insight into the life of an author, the development of a literary work, or the society in which the author lived. There are at least three major archives of James Baldwin’s papers: The Smithsonian , Yale , and The New York Public Library . Descriptions of such materials are often available online, but the materials themselves are typically stored in boxes at the archive.
• Computational Methods:  Used for statistical analysis of texts such as studies of the popularity and meaning of particular words in literature over time.
• Ethnographic Methods:  Studies groups of people and their interactions with literary works, for instance in educational institutions, in reading groups (such as book clubs), and in fan networks. This approach may involve interviews and visits to places (including online communities) where people interact with literary works. Note: before you begin such work, you must have  Institutional Review Board (IRB)  approval “to protect the rights and welfare of human participants involved in research.”
• Visual Methods:  Studies the visual qualities of literary works. Some literary works, such as illuminated manuscripts, children’s literature, and graphic novels, present a complex interplay of text and image. Even works without illustrations can be studied for their use of typography, layout, and other visual features.

Regardless of the method(s) you choose, you will need to learn how to apply them to your work and how to carry them out successfully. For example, you should know that many archives do not allow you to bring pens (you can use pencils) and you may not be allowed to bring bags into the archives. You will need to keep a record of which documents you consult and their location (box number, etc.) in the archives. If you are unsure how to use a particular method, please consult a book about it. [1] Also, ask for the advice of trained researchers such as your instructor or a research librarian.

• What research method(s) will you be using for your paper? Why did you make this method selection over other methods? If you haven’t made a selection yet, which methods are you considering?
• What specific methodological approaches are you most interested in exploring in relation to the chosen literary work?
• What is your plan for researching your method(s) and its major approaches?
• What was the most important lesson you learned from this page? What point was confusing or difficult to understand?

Write your answers in a webcourse discussion page.

• Introduction to Research Methods: A Practical Guide for Anyone Undertaking a Research Project  by Catherine, Dr. Dawson
• Practical Research Methods: A User-Friendly Guide to Mastering Research Techniques and Projects  by Catherine Dawson
• Qualitative Inquiry and Research Design: Choosing Among Five Approaches  by John W. Creswell  Cheryl N. Poth
• Qualitative Research Evaluation Methods: Integrating Theory and Practice  by Michael Quinn Patton
• Research Design: Qualitative, Quantitative, and Mixed Methods Approaches  by John W. Creswell  J. David Creswell
• Research Methodology: A Step-by-Step Guide for Beginners  by Ranjit Kumar
• Research Methodology: Methods and Techniques  by C.R. Kothari

Strategies for Conducting Literary Research Copyright © 2021 by Barry Mauer & John Venecek is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

Share This Book

• Harvard Library
• Research Guides
• Faculty of Arts & Sciences Libraries

Literary Research in Harvard Libraries

Literary theory.

• Get Organized
• Find Background
• Where to Search
• Search Vocabulary
• Obscure/Recent Topics
• Literary Journalism Search (under construction!)
• Find Primary or Archival Material
• Foreign Language Literatures
• Distant Reading, Close Reading

Don't Rely on Search Alone

Several of the terms used to describe literary theory---"criticism," "theory," "literature"---are used in many other contexts as well, clogging up your search results. Plus, the kinds of abstract concepts discussed in literary theory can be hard to pin down with a search term. D ictionaries, encyclopedias , and critical companions help you jumpstart your research by giving you an overview of the critical discussion around various points of theory and guiding you to the most relevant scholarship.

Start with Online Reference Sources

• LION : use the general search box and refine your results by content type "Reference" to explore material from several important literary encyclopedias as well as student guides and Penguin Classics introductions. Once you've identified an encyclopedia that's particularly helpful, click on its title in the list of  specific reference works  to browse the table of contents for more entries.
• The Johns Hopkins Guide to Theory and Criticism : the online edition of a key reference source for literary theory. Pro tip: don't rely on search alone! Browse the contents and topic list to get a better sense of which articles will be most helpful.
• The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy : a free online encyclopedia whose content is produced by scholars in the field and rigorously peer-reviewed. A great resource for gaining a broader perspective, as there is often significant overlap between literary theory and various topics in philosophy.

Supplement with Print Reference Sources

Some of the best guides aren't available online.

Loker Reading Room

On the 2nd floor of Widener Library, you'll find shelves full of indispensable encyclopedias, handbooks and guides. Most of what you'll need is along the long wall opposite the main entrance: start at RR 3100. Here are some titles to keep an eye out for: 

• Twentieth-Century Literary Movements Index
• A Glossary of Contemporary Literary Theory
• Dictionary of Concepts in Literary Criticism and Theory
• Reader's Guide to Literature in English

Elsewhere in the libraries: 

• Literary  Theory: A Very Short Introduction   (Jonathan Culler ). Part of Oxford's Very Short Introductions series . Available online!
• The Cambridge Companion to...  check out various titles in the "literature" and "philosophy" series:  feminist literary theory ,  Deleuze ,  Adorno , etc. Also available online!
• Literary Theory: A Guide for the Perplexed
• The Blackwell Guide to Literary Theory

Find literary theory in HOLLIS: search terms and strategies

• Criticism: an official term for literary theory. But a simple search for "criticism" will also pick up material with subheadings such as "criticism and interpretation" or "history and criticism." The best way to access material that has the main subject heading "Criticism" is via a HOLLIS browse . After executing the browse you can click on "criticism" to turn it into a search, and then use filters to drill down into your results.
• "Theory, etc. " a common subheading: try adding this phrase to your other search terms in an  Advanced Search . Other theory-related subheadings include rhetoric  and  criticism.  If you've found a search formula for your topic that works well in HOLLIS and you want to narrow your results down to theoretical treatments, try adding  AND ("theory, etc." OR rhetoric OR criticism) .
• Name as subject: Another good strategy is to search for a theorist's name in the subject field: this will turn up subsequent discussions of his or her theory. (If you get too many results, try adding AND "criticism and interpretation".)
• << Previous: Find Primary or Archival Material
• Next: Foreign Language Literatures >>

Except where otherwise noted, this work is subject to a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License , which allows anyone to share and adapt our material as long as proper attribution is given. For details and exceptions, see the Harvard Library Copyright Policy ©2021 Presidents and Fellows of Harvard College.

The Palgrave Handbook of Teacher Education Research pp 1–26 Cite as

Developing a “Research Literacy Way of Thinking” in Initial Teacher Education: Students as Co-researchers

• Tone M. Eriksen 2 &
• Lisbeth M. Brevik   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-2478-5677 2  
• Living reference work entry
• First Online: 06 December 2022

64 Accesses

1 Citations

Recent trends within teacher education have promoted the development of students’ research literacy during initial teacher education (ITE) and beyond. However, knowledge is lacking about how to operationalize research literacy and, in particular, how research literacy is implemented in ITE. This chapter discusses how research literacy can enrich ITE by allowing for the development of what has been coined here as “a research literacy way of thinking”.

Research literacy is herein conceptualized as more than an engagement with research through research-based education. The argument is that to enrich the understanding of how to develop research literacy in teaching and teacher education, emphasis should be placed on connecting research and education by actively engaging students in research, for instance, by inviting students to become co-researchers in ongoing projects as part of their education. Research literacy is outlined as a key construct before delving into research engagement , competence as continuum and co-research as key issues facing ITE researchers and practitioners. Together, these key issues are framed as “a research literacy way of thinking”. Used as an empirical lens, the co-research model is presented as a way to develop research literacy, comprising co-research in dissertations, in university seminars, as formative assessment and as data collection. This illustrates how “a research literacy way of thinking” has the potential to connect research and education by providing opportunities to develop situation-specific skills to connect student teachers’ dispositions and school performance during ITE.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution .

Angouri, J. (2021). Reimagining research-led education in a digital age (The Guild Insight Paper No. 3). The Guild of European Research-Intensive Universities. https://doi.org/10.48350/156297

BERA-RSA. (2013). Research and the teaching profession – Building the capacity for a self-improving education system . https://www.thersa.org/globalassets/pdfs/bera-rsa-research-teaching-profession-full-report-for-web-2.pdf https://www.thersa.org/globalassets/pdfs/bera-rsa-research-teaching-profession-full-report-for-web-2.pdf

Blömeke, S., & Kaiser, G. (2017). Understanding the development of teachers’ professional competencies as personally, situationally, and societally determined. In D. J. Clandinin & J. Husu (Eds.), International handbook of research on teacher education (pp. 783–802). Sage.

Google Scholar  

Blömeke, S., Gustafsson, J. E., & Shavelson, R. (2015). Beyond dichotomies: Competence viewed as a continuum. Zeitschrift für Psychologie, 223 , 3–13. https://doi.org/10.1027/2151-2604/a000194

Article   Google Scholar  

Borg, S. (2010). Language teacher research engagement. Language Teaching, 43 (4), 391–429.

Brevik, L. M. (2020, September 2). Utdanningsprisen 2020: Studenter som medforskere. Hvordan involvere masterstudenter i forskningsprosjekter og som medforfattere? [Lecture]. University of Oslo.

Brevik, L. M. (2022). Medforskning i lærerutdanningen [Co-research in teacher education]. Bedre Skole, 1 , 52–57.

Brevik, L. M., Blikstad-Balas, M., & Engelien, K. L. (2017). Integrating assessment for learning in the teacher education programme at the University of Oslo. Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy & Practice, 24 (2), 164–184. https://doi.org/10.1080/0969594X.2016.1239611

Brevik, L. M., Gunnulfsen, A. E., & Renzulli, J. (2018). Student teachers’ practice and experience with differentiated instruction for students with higher learning potential. Teaching and Teacher Education, 71 , 34–45. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2017.12.003

Brevik, L. M., Gudmundsdottir, G. B., Lund, A., & Strømme, T. A. (2019). Transformative agency in teacher education: Fostering professional digital competence. Teaching and Teacher Education, 86 , 102875. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2019.07.005

Brevik, L. M., Reedy, G., Breivik, J., Thue, T., & Barreng, R. (2022, March 28). Driving pedagogical innovation . Circle U. [Café seminar] University of Oslo. https://www.uio.no/english/about/news-and-events/events/circle-u/circle-u-cafe-connecting-research-and-education.html

Brevik, L. M., & Rindal, U. E. (2020). Language use in the classroom: Balancing target language exposure with the need for other languages. TESOL Quarterly, 54 (4), 925–953. https://doi.org/10.1002/tesq.564

Bullock, S. M. (2016). Teacher candidates as researchers. In J. Loughran & M. L. Hamilton (Eds.), International handbook of teacher education (pp. 379–403). Springer Press.

Chapter   Google Scholar  

Cain, T. (2015). Teachers’ engagement with published research: Addressing the knowledge problem. Curriculum Journal, 26 (3), 488–509. https://doi.org/10.1080/09585176.2015.1020820

Cain, T. (2016). Research utilization and the struggle for the teacher’s soul: A narrative review. European Journal of Teacher Education, 39 (5), 616–629. https://doi.org/10.1080/02619768.2016.1252912

Dagenais, C., Lysenko, L., Abrami, P. C., Bernard, R. M., Ramde, J., & Janosz, M. (2012). Use of research-based information by school practitioners and determinants of use: A review of empirical research. Evidence & Policy, 8 (3), 285–309. https://doi.org/10.1332/174426412X654031

Darling-Hammond, L. (2017). Teacher education around the world: What can we learn from international practice? European Journal of Teacher Education, 40 (3), 291–309. https://doi.org/10.1080/02619768.2017.1315399

Evans, C., Waring, M., & Christodoulou, A. (2017). Building teachers’ research literacy: Integrating practice and research. Research Papers in Education, 32 (4), 403–423. https://doi.org/10.1080/02671522.2017

Groß Ophoff, J., & Rott, B. (2017). Educational research literacy. Journal for Educational Research Online, 9 (2), 5–10.

Gutman, M., & Genser, L. (2017). How pre-service teachers internalize the link between research literacy and pedagogy. Educational Media International, 54 (1), 63–76.

Han, J., & Schuurmans-Stekhoven, J. (2017). Enhancement of higher degree candidates’ research literacy: A pilot study of international students. The Asia-Pacific Education Researcher, 26 , 31–41. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40299-016-0324-z

Hargreaves, D. H. (1996). Teaching as a research-based profession: Possibilities and prospects. Teacher Training Agency.

Healey, M., & Jenkins, A. (2009). Developing undergraduate research and inquiry . Higher education academy. https://www.heacademy.ac.uk/knowledge-hub/developing-undergraduate-research-and-inquiry

Jemsy, A. U. (2018). Educational research literacy: Meanings and components. Asian Journal of Multidisciplinary Studies, 1 (1), 126–134.

Jenset, I. S., Klette, K., & Hammerness, K. (2018). Grounding teacher education in practice around the world: An examination of teacher education coursework in teacher education programs in Finland, Norway, and the United States. Journal of Teacher Education, 69 (2), 184–197. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022487117728248

Leat, D., Reid, A., & Lofthouse, R. (2015). Teachers’ experiences of engagement with and in educational research: What can be learned from teachers’ views? Oxford Review of Education, 41 (2), 270–286. https://doi.org/10.1080/03054985.2015.1021193

McGregor, S. L. T. (2018). Critical research literacy. In Understanding and evaluating research. A Critical Guide . SAGE Publications.

Menter, I., & Flores, M. A. (2021). Connecting research and professionalism in teacher education. European Journal of Teacher Education, 44 (1), 115–127. https://doi.org/10.1080/02619768.2020.1856811

Rott, B., & Leuders, T. (2017). Mathematical competencies in higher education: Epistemological beliefs and critical thinking in different strands of pre-service teacher education. Journal for Educational Research Online, 9 (2017) 2 , 115–136. https://doi.org/10.25656/01:14899

Rueß, J., Gess, C., & Deicke, W. (2016). Forschendes Lernen und forschungsbezogene Lehre – empirisch gestützte Systematisierung des Forschungsbezugs hochschulischer Lehre. ZFHE, 11 (2), 23–44.

Shank, G., & Brown, L. (2007). Exploring educational research literacy (1st ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203943786

Book   Google Scholar  

Tatto, M. T. (2015). The role of research in the policy and practice of quality teacher education: An international review. Oxford Review of Education, 41 (2), 171–201. https://doi.org/10.1080/03054985.2015.1017405

Tatto, M. T., & Furlong, J. (2015). Research and teacher education: Papers from the BERA-RSA inquiry. Oxford Review of Education, 41 (2), 145–153. https://doi.org/10.1080/03054985.2015.101404

UNESCO. (2021, April 7). Literacy . https://en.unesco.org/themes/literacy

Download references

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway

Tone M. Eriksen & Lisbeth M. Brevik

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Lisbeth M. Brevik .

Section Editor information

University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

Trevor Mutton

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2022 The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG

About this entry

Cite this entry.

Eriksen, T.M., Brevik, L.M. (2022). Developing a “Research Literacy Way of Thinking” in Initial Teacher Education: Students as Co-researchers. In: The Palgrave Handbook of Teacher Education Research . Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-59533-3_9-1

Download citation

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-59533-3_9-1

Received : 09 April 2022

Accepted : 04 July 2022

Published : 06 December 2022

Publisher Name : Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

Print ISBN : 978-3-030-59533-3

Online ISBN : 978-3-030-59533-3

eBook Packages : Springer Reference Education Reference Module Humanities and Social Sciences Reference Module Education

• Publish with us

Policies and ethics

• Find a journal
• Track your research

• Open access
• Published: 08 June 2022

A systematic review on digital literacy

• Hasan Tinmaz   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-4310-0848 1 ,
• Yoo-Taek Lee   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-1913-9059 2 ,
• Mina Fanea-Ivanovici   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-2921-2990 3 &
• Hasnan Baber   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-8951-3501 4  

Smart Learning Environments volume  9 , Article number:  21 ( 2022 ) Cite this article

45k Accesses

35 Citations

10 Altmetric

Metrics details

The purpose of this study is to discover the main themes and categories of the research studies regarding digital literacy. To serve this purpose, the databases of WoS/Clarivate Analytics, Proquest Central, Emerald Management Journals, Jstor Business College Collections and Scopus/Elsevier were searched with four keyword-combinations and final forty-three articles were included in the dataset. The researchers applied a systematic literature review method to the dataset. The preliminary findings demonstrated that there is a growing prevalence of digital literacy articles starting from the year 2013. The dominant research methodology of the reviewed articles is qualitative. The four major themes revealed from the qualitative content analysis are: digital literacy, digital competencies, digital skills and digital thinking. Under each theme, the categories and their frequencies are analysed. Recommendations for further research and for real life implementations are generated.

Introduction

The extant literature on digital literacy, skills and competencies is rich in definitions and classifications, but there is still no consensus on the larger themes and subsumed themes categories. (Heitin, 2016 ). To exemplify, existing inventories of Internet skills suffer from ‘incompleteness and over-simplification, conceptual ambiguity’ (van Deursen et al., 2015 ), and Internet skills are only a part of digital skills. While there is already a plethora of research in this field, this research paper hereby aims to provide a general framework of digital areas and themes that can best describe digital (cap)abilities in the novel context of Industry 4.0 and the accelerated pandemic-triggered digitalisation. The areas and themes can represent the starting point for drafting a contemporary digital literacy framework.

Sousa and Rocha ( 2019 ) explained that there is a stake of digital skills for disruptive digital business, and they connect it to the latest developments, such as the Internet of Things (IoT), cloud technology, big data, artificial intelligence, and robotics. The topic is even more important given the large disparities in digital literacy across regions (Tinmaz et al., 2022 ). More precisely, digital inequalities encompass skills, along with access, usage and self-perceptions. These inequalities need to be addressed, as they are credited with a ‘potential to shape life chances in multiple ways’ (Robinson et al., 2015 ), e.g., academic performance, labour market competitiveness, health, civic and political participation. Steps have been successfully taken to address physical access gaps, but skills gaps are still looming (Van Deursen & Van Dijk, 2010a ). Moreover, digital inequalities have grown larger due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and they influenced the very state of health of the most vulnerable categories of population or their employability in a time when digital skills are required (Baber et al., 2022 ; Beaunoyer, Dupéré & Guitton, 2020 ).

The systematic review the researchers propose is a useful updated instrument of classification and inventory for digital literacy. Considering the latest developments in the economy and in line with current digitalisation needs, digitally literate population may assist policymakers in various fields, e.g., education, administration, healthcare system, and managers of companies and other concerned organisations that need to stay competitive and to employ competitive workforce. Therefore, it is indispensably vital to comprehend the big picture of digital literacy related research.

Literature review

Since the advent of Digital Literacy, scholars have been concerned with identifying and classifying the various (cap)abilities related to its operation. Using the most cited academic papers in this stream of research, several classifications of digital-related literacies, competencies, and skills emerged.

Digital literacies

Digital literacy, which is one of the challenges of integration of technology in academic courses (Blau, Shamir-Inbal & Avdiel, 2020 ), has been defined in the current literature as the competencies and skills required for navigating a fragmented and complex information ecosystem (Eshet, 2004 ). A ‘Digital Literacy Framework’ was designed by Eshet-Alkalai ( 2012 ), comprising six categories: (a) photo-visual thinking (understanding and using visual information); (b) real-time thinking (simultaneously processing a variety of stimuli); (c) information thinking (evaluating and combining information from multiple digital sources); (d) branching thinking (navigating in non-linear hyper-media environments); (e) reproduction thinking (creating outcomes using technological tools by designing new content or remixing existing digital content); (f) social-emotional thinking (understanding and applying cyberspace rules). According to Heitin ( 2016 ), digital literacy groups the following clusters: (a) finding and consuming digital content; (b) creating digital content; (c) communicating or sharing digital content. Hence, the literature describes the digital literacy in many ways by associating a set of various technical and non-technical elements.

• Digital competencies

The Digital Competence Framework for Citizens (DigComp 2.1.), the most recent framework proposed by the European Union, which is currently under review and undergoing an updating process, contains five competency areas: (a) information and data literacy, (b) communication and collaboration, (c) digital content creation, (d) safety, and (e) problem solving (Carretero, Vuorikari & Punie, 2017 ). Digital competency had previously been described in a technical fashion by Ferrari ( 2012 ) as a set comprising information skills, communication skills, content creation skills, safety skills, and problem-solving skills, which later outlined the areas of competence in DigComp 2.1, too.

• Digital skills

Ng ( 2012 ) pointed out the following three categories of digital skills: (a) technological (using technological tools); (b) cognitive (thinking critically when managing information); (c) social (communicating and socialising). A set of Internet skill was suggested by Van Deursen and Van Dijk ( 2009 , 2010b ), which contains: (a) operational skills (basic skills in using internet technology), (b) formal Internet skills (navigation and orientation skills); (c) information Internet skills (fulfilling information needs), and (d) strategic Internet skills (using the internet to reach goals). In 2014, the same authors added communication and content creation skills to the initial framework (van Dijk & van Deursen). Similarly, Helsper and Eynon ( 2013 ) put forward a set of four digital skills: technical, social, critical, and creative skills. Furthermore, van Deursen et al. ( 2015 ) built a set of items and factors to measure Internet skills: operational, information navigation, social, creative, mobile. More recent literature (vaan Laar et al., 2017 ) divides digital skills into seven core categories: technical, information management, communication, collaboration, creativity, critical thinking, and problem solving.

It is worth mentioning that the various methodologies used to classify digital literacy are overlapping or non-exhaustive, which confirms the conceptual ambiguity mentioned by van Deursen et al. ( 2015 ).

• Digital thinking

Thinking skills (along with digital skills) have been acknowledged to be a significant element of digital literacy in the educational process context (Ferrari, 2012 ). In fact, critical thinking, creativity, and innovation are at the very core of DigComp. Information and Communication Technology as a support for thinking is a learning objective in any school curriculum. In the same vein, analytical thinking and interdisciplinary thinking, which help solve problems, are yet other concerns of educators in the Industry 4.0 (Ozkan-Ozen & Kazancoglu, 2021 ).

However, we have recently witnessed a shift of focus from learning how to use information and communication technologies to using it while staying safe in the cyber-environment and being aware of alternative facts. Digital thinking would encompass identifying fake news, misinformation, and echo chambers (Sulzer, 2018 ). Not least important, concern about cybersecurity has grown especially in times of political, social or economic turmoil, such as the elections or the Covid-19 crisis (Sulzer, 2018 ; Puig, Blanco-Anaya & Perez-Maceira, 2021 ).

Ultimately, this systematic review paper focuses on the following major research questions as follows:

Research question 1: What is the yearly distribution of digital literacy related papers?

Research question 2: What are the research methods for digital literacy related papers?

Research question 3: What are the main themes in digital literacy related papers?

Research question 4: What are the concentrated categories (under revealed main themes) in digital literacy related papers?

This study employed the systematic review method where the authors scrutinized the existing literature around the major research question of digital literacy. As Uman ( 2011 ) pointed, in systematic literature review, the findings of the earlier research are examined for the identification of consistent and repetitive themes. The systematic review method differs from literature review with its well managed and highly organized qualitative scrutiny processes where researchers tend to cover less materials from fewer number of databases to write their literature review (Kowalczyk & Truluck, 2013 ; Robinson & Lowe, 2015 ).

Data collection

To address major research objectives, the following five important databases are selected due to their digital literacy focused research dominance: 1. WoS/Clarivate Analytics, 2. Proquest Central; 3. Emerald Management Journals; 4. Jstor Business College Collections; 5. Scopus/Elsevier.

The search was made in the second half of June 2021, in abstract and key words written in English language. We only kept research articles and book chapters (herein referred to as papers). Our purpose was to identify a set of digital literacy areas, or an inventory of such areas and topics. To serve that purpose, systematic review was utilized with the following synonym key words for the search: ‘digital literacy’, ‘digital skills’, ‘digital competence’ and ‘digital fluency’, to find the mainstream literature dealing with the topic. These key words were unfolded as a result of the consultation with the subject matter experts (two board members from Korean Digital Literacy Association and two professors from technology studies department). Below are the four key word combinations used in the search: “Digital literacy AND systematic review”, “Digital skills AND systematic review”, “Digital competence AND systematic review”, and “Digital fluency AND systematic review”.

A sequential systematic search was made in the five databases mentioned above. Thus, from one database to another, duplicate papers were manually excluded in a cascade manner to extract only unique results and to make the research smoother to conduct. At this stage, we kept 47 papers. Further exclusion criteria were applied. Thus, only full-text items written in English were selected, and in doing so, three papers were excluded (no full text available), and one other paper was excluded because it was not written in English, but in Spanish. Therefore, we investigated a total number of 43 papers, as shown in Table 1 . “ Appendix A ” shows the list of these papers with full references.

Data analysis

The 43 papers selected after the application of the inclusion and exclusion criteria, respectively, were reviewed the materials independently by two researchers who were from two different countries. The researchers identified all topics pertaining to digital literacy, as they appeared in the papers. Next, a third researcher independently analysed these findings by excluded duplicates A qualitative content analysis was manually performed by calculating the frequency of major themes in all papers, where the raw data was compared and contrasted (Fraenkel et al., 2012 ). All three reviewers independently list the words and how the context in which they appeared and then the three reviewers collectively decided for how it should be categorized. Lastly, it is vital to remind that literature review of this article was written after the identification of the themes appeared as a result of our qualitative analyses. Therefore, the authors decided to shape the literature review structure based on the themes.

As an answer to the first research question (the yearly distribution of digital literacy related papers), Fig.  1 demonstrates the yearly distribution of digital literacy related papers. It is seen that there is an increasing trend about the digital literacy papers.

Yearly distribution of digital literacy related papers

Research question number two (The research methods for digital literacy related papers) concentrates on what research methods are employed for these digital literacy related papers. As Fig.  2 shows, most of the papers were using the qualitative method. Not stated refers to book chapters.

Research methods used in the reviewed articles

When forty-three articles were analysed for the main themes as in research question number three (The main themes in digital literacy related papers), the overall findings were categorized around four major themes: (i) literacies, (ii) competencies, (iii) skills, and (iv) thinking. Under every major theme, the categories were listed and explained as in research question number four (The concentrated categories (under revealed main themes) in digital literacy related papers).

The authors utilized an overt categorization for the depiction of these major themes. For example, when the ‘creativity’ was labelled as a skill, the authors also categorized it under the ‘skills’ theme. Similarly, when ‘creativity’ was mentioned as a competency, the authors listed it under the ‘competencies’ theme. Therefore, it is possible to recognize the same finding under different major themes.

Major theme 1: literacies

Digital literacy being the major concern of this paper was observed to be blatantly mentioned in five papers out forty-three. One of these articles described digital literacy as the human proficiencies to live, learn and work in the current digital society. In addition to these five articles, two additional papers used the same term as ‘critical digital literacy’ by describing it as a person’s or a society’s accessibility and assessment level interaction with digital technologies to utilize and/or create information. Table 2 summarizes the major categories under ‘Literacies’ major theme.

Computer literacy, media literacy and cultural literacy were the second most common literacy (n = 5). One of the article branches computer literacy as tool (detailing with software and hardware uses) and resource (focusing on information processing capacity of a computer) literacies. Cultural literacy was emphasized as a vital element for functioning in an intercultural team on a digital project.

Disciplinary literacy (n = 4) was referring to utilizing different computer programs (n = 2) or technical gadgets (n = 2) with a specific emphasis on required cognitive, affective and psychomotor skills to be able to work in any digital context (n = 3), serving for the using (n = 2), creating and applying (n = 2) digital literacy in real life.

Data literacy, technology literacy and multiliteracy were the third frequent categories (n = 3). The ‘multiliteracy’ was referring to the innate nature of digital technologies, which have been infused into many aspects of human lives.

Last but not least, Internet literacy, mobile literacy, web literacy, new literacy, personal literacy and research literacy were discussed in forty-three article findings. Web literacy was focusing on being able to connect with people on the web (n = 2), discover the web content (especially the navigation on a hyper-textual platform), and learn web related skills through practical web experiences. Personal literacy was highlighting digital identity management. Research literacy was not only concentrating on conducting scientific research ability but also finding available scholarship online.

Twenty-four other categories are unfolded from the results sections of forty-three articles. Table 3 presents the list of these other literacies where the authors sorted the categories in an ascending alphabetical order without any other sorting criterion. Primarily, search, tagging, filtering and attention literacies were mainly underlining their roles in information processing. Furthermore, social-structural literacy was indicated as the recognition of the social circumstances and generation of information. Another information-related literacy was pointed as publishing literacy, which is the ability to disseminate information via different digital channels.

While above listed personal literacy was referring to digital identity management, network literacy was explained as someone’s social networking ability to manage the digital relationship with other people. Additionally, participatory literacy was defined as the necessary abilities to join an online team working on online content production.

Emerging technology literacy was stipulated as an essential ability to recognize and appreciate the most recent and innovative technologies in along with smart choices related to these technologies. Additionally, the critical literacy was added as an ability to make smart judgements on the cost benefit analysis of these recent technologies.

Last of all, basic, intermediate, and advanced digital assessment literacies were specified for educational institutions that are planning to integrate various digital tools to conduct instructional assessments in their bodies.

Major theme 2: competencies

The second major theme was revealed as competencies. The authors directly categorized the findings that are specified with the word of competency. Table 4 summarizes the entire category set for the competencies major theme.

The most common category was the ‘digital competence’ (n = 14) where one of the articles points to that category as ‘generic digital competence’ referring to someone’s creativity for multimedia development (video editing was emphasized). Under this broad category, the following sub-categories were associated:

Problem solving (n = 10)

Safety (n = 7)

Information processing (n = 5)

Content creation (n = 5)

Communication (n = 2)

Digital rights (n = 1)

Digital emotional intelligence (n = 1)

Digital teamwork (n = 1)

Big data utilization (n = 1)

Artificial Intelligence utilization (n = 1)

Virtual leadership (n = 1)

Self-disruption (in along with the pace of digitalization) (n = 1)

Like ‘digital competency’, five additional articles especially coined the term as ‘digital competence as a life skill’. Deeper analysis demonstrated the following points: social competences (n = 4), communication in mother tongue (n = 3) and foreign language (n = 2), entrepreneurship (n = 3), civic competence (n = 2), fundamental science (n = 1), technology (n = 1) and mathematics (n = 1) competences, learning to learn (n = 1) and self-initiative (n = 1).

Moreover, competencies were linked to workplace digital competencies in three articles and highlighted as significant for employability (n = 3) and ‘economic engagement’ (n = 3). Digital competencies were also detailed for leisure (n = 2) and communication (n = 2). Furthermore, two articles pointed digital competencies as an inter-cultural competency and one as a cross-cultural competency. Lastly, the ‘digital nativity’ (n = 1) was clarified as someone’s innate competency of being able to feel contented and satisfied with digital technologies.

Major theme 3: skills

The third major observed theme was ‘skills’, which was dominantly gathered around information literacy skills (n = 19) and information and communication technologies skills (n = 18). Table 5 demonstrates the categories with more than one occurrence.

Table 6 summarizes the sub-categories of the two most frequent categories of ‘skills’ major theme. The information literacy skills noticeably concentrate on the steps of information processing; evaluation (n = 6), utilization (n = 4), finding (n = 3), locating (n = 2) information. Moreover, the importance of trial/error process, being a lifelong learner, feeling a need for information and so forth were evidently listed under this sub-category. On the other hand, ICT skills were grouped around cognitive and affective domains. For instance, while technical skills in general and use of social media, coding, multimedia, chat or emailing in specific were reported in cognitive domain, attitude, intention, and belief towards ICT were mentioned as the elements of affective domain.

Communication skills (n = 9) were multi-dimensional for different societies, cultures, and globalized contexts, requiring linguistic skills. Collaboration skills (n = 9) are also recurrently cited with an explicit emphasis for virtual platforms.

‘Ethics for digital environment’ encapsulated ethical use of information (n = 4) and different technologies (n = 2), knowing digital laws (n = 2) and responsibilities (n = 2) in along with digital rights and obligations (n = 1), having digital awareness (n = 1), following digital etiquettes (n = 1), treating other people with respect (n = 1) including no cyber-bullying (n = 1) and no stealing or damaging other people (n = 1).

‘Digital fluency’ involved digital access (n = 2) by using different software and hardware (n = 2) in online platforms (n = 1) or communication tools (n = 1) or within programming environments (n = 1). Digital fluency also underlined following recent technological advancements (n = 1) and knowledge (n = 1) including digital health and wellness (n = 1) dimension.

‘Social intelligence’ related to understanding digital culture (n = 1), the concept of digital exclusion (n = 1) and digital divide (n = 3). ‘Research skills’ were detailed with searching academic information (n = 3) on databases such as Web of Science and Scopus (n = 2) and their citation, summarization, and quotation (n = 2).

‘Digital teaching’ was described as a skill (n = 2) in Table 4 whereas it was also labelled as a competence (n = 1) as shown in Table 3 . Similarly, while learning to learn (n = 1) was coined under competencies in Table 3 , digital learning (n = 2, Table 4 ) and life-long learning (n = 1, Table 5 ) were stated as learning related skills. Moreover, learning was used with the following three terms: learning readiness (n = 1), self-paced learning (n = 1) and learning flexibility (n = 1).

Table 7 shows other categories listed below the ‘skills’ major theme. The list covers not only the software such as GIS, text mining, mapping, or bibliometric analysis programs but also the conceptual skills such as the fourth industrial revolution and information management.

Major theme 4: thinking

The last identified major theme was the different types of ‘thinking’. As Table 8 shows, ‘critical thinking’ was the most frequent thinking category (n = 4). Except computational thinking, the other categories were not detailed.

Computational thinking (n = 3) was associated with the general logic of how a computer works and sub-categorized into the following steps; construction of the problem (n = 3), abstraction (n = 1), disintegration of the problem (n = 2), data collection, (n = 2), data analysis (n = 2), algorithmic design (n = 2), parallelization & iteration (n = 1), automation (n = 1), generalization (n = 1), and evaluation (n = 2).

A transversal analysis of digital literacy categories reveals the following fields of digital literacy application:

Technological advancement (IT, ICT, Industry 4.0, IoT, text mining, GIS, bibliometric analysis, mapping data, technology, AI, big data)

Networking (Internet, web, connectivity, network, safety)

Information (media, news, communication)

Creative-cultural industries (culture, publishing, film, TV, leisure, content creation)

Academia (research, documentation, library)

Citizenship (participation, society, social intelligence, awareness, politics, rights, legal use, ethics)

Education (life skills, problem solving, teaching, learning, education, lifelong learning)

Professional life (work, teamwork, collaboration, economy, commerce, leadership, decision making)

Personal level (critical thinking, evaluation, analytical thinking, innovative thinking)

This systematic review on digital literacy concentrated on forty-three articles from the databases of WoS/Clarivate Analytics, Proquest Central, Emerald Management Journals, Jstor Business College Collections and Scopus/Elsevier. The initial results revealed that there is an increasing trend on digital literacy focused academic papers. Research work in digital literacy is critical in a context of disruptive digital business, and more recently, the pandemic-triggered accelerated digitalisation (Beaunoyer, Dupéré & Guitton, 2020 ; Sousa & Rocha 2019 ). Moreover, most of these papers were employing qualitative research methods. The raw data of these articles were analysed qualitatively using systematic literature review to reveal major themes and categories. Four major themes that appeared are: digital literacy, digital competencies, digital skills and thinking.

Whereas the mainstream literature describes digital literacy as a set of photo-visual, real-time, information, branching, reproduction and social-emotional thinking (Eshet-Alkalai, 2012 ) or as a set of precise specific operations, i.e., finding, consuming, creating, communicating and sharing digital content (Heitin, 2016 ), this study reveals that digital literacy revolves around and is in connection with the concepts of computer literacy, media literacy, cultural literacy or disciplinary literacy. In other words, the present systematic review indicates that digital literacy is far broader than specific tasks, englobing the entire sphere of computer operation and media use in a cultural context.

The digital competence yardstick, DigComp (Carretero, Vuorikari & Punie, 2017 ) suggests that the main digital competencies cover information and data literacy, communication and collaboration, digital content creation, safety, and problem solving. Similarly, the findings of this research place digital competencies in relation to problem solving, safety, information processing, content creation and communication. Therefore, the findings of the systematic literature review are, to a large extent, in line with the existing framework used in the European Union.

The investigation of the main keywords associated with digital skills has revealed that information literacy, ICT, communication, collaboration, digital content creation, research and decision-making skill are the most representative. In a structured way, the existing literature groups these skills in technological, cognitive, and social (Ng, 2012 ) or, more extensively, into operational, formal, information Internet, strategic, communication and content creation (van Dijk & van Deursen, 2014 ). In time, the literature has become richer in frameworks, and prolific authors have improved their results. As such, more recent research (vaan Laar et al., 2017 ) use the following categories: technical, information management, communication, collaboration, creativity, critical thinking, and problem solving.

Whereas digital thinking was observed to be mostly related with critical thinking and computational thinking, DigComp connects it with critical thinking, creativity, and innovation, on the one hand, and researchers highlight fake news, misinformation, cybersecurity, and echo chambers as exponents of digital thinking, on the other hand (Sulzer, 2018 ; Puig, Blanco-Anaya & Perez-Maceira, 2021 ).

This systematic review research study looks ahead to offer an initial step and guideline for the development of a more contemporary digital literacy framework including digital literacy major themes and factors. The researchers provide the following recommendations for both researchers and practitioners.

Recommendations for prospective research

By considering the major qualitative research trend, it seems apparent that more quantitative research-oriented studies are needed. Although it requires more effort and time, mixed method studies will help understand digital literacy holistically.

As digital literacy is an umbrella term for many different technologies, specific case studies need be designed, such as digital literacy for artificial intelligence or digital literacy for drones’ usage.

Digital literacy affects different areas of human lives, such as education, business, health, governance, and so forth. Therefore, different case studies could be carried out for each of these unique dimensions of our lives. For instance, it is worth investigating the role of digital literacy on lifelong learning in particular, and on education in general, as well as the digital upskilling effects on the labour market flexibility.

Further experimental studies on digital literacy are necessary to realize how certain variables (for instance, age, gender, socioeconomic status, cognitive abilities, etc.) affect this concept overtly or covertly. Moreover, the digital divide issue needs to be analysed through the lens of its main determinants.

New bibliometric analysis method can be implemented on digital literacy documents to reveal more information on how these works are related or centred on what major topic. This visual approach will assist to realize the big picture within the digital literacy framework.

Recommendations for practitioners

The digital literacy stakeholders, policymakers in education and managers in private organizations, need to be aware that there are many dimensions and variables regarding the implementation of digital literacy. In that case, stakeholders must comprehend their beneficiaries or the participants more deeply to increase the effect of digital literacy related activities. For example, critical thinking and problem-solving skills and abilities are mentioned to affect digital literacy. Hence, stakeholders have to initially understand whether the participants have enough entry level critical thinking and problem solving.

Development of digital literacy for different groups of people requires more energy, since each group might require a different set of skills, abilities, or competencies. Hence, different subject matter experts, such as technologists, instructional designers, content experts, should join the team.

It is indispensably vital to develop different digital frameworks for different technologies (basic or advanced) or different contexts (different levels of schooling or various industries).

These frameworks should be updated regularly as digital fields are evolving rapidly. Every year, committees should gather around to understand new technological trends and decide whether they should address the changes into their frameworks.

Understanding digital literacy in a thorough manner can enable decision makers to correctly implement and apply policies addressing the digital divide that is reflected onto various aspects of life, e.g., health, employment, education, especially in turbulent times such as the COVID-19 pandemic is.

Lastly, it is also essential to state the study limitations. This study is limited to the analysis of a certain number of papers, obtained from using the selected keywords and databases. Therefore, an extension can be made by adding other keywords and searching other databases.

Availability of data and materials

The authors present the articles used for the study in “ Appendix A ”.

Baber, H., Fanea-Ivanovici, M., Lee, Y. T., & Tinmaz, H. (2022). A bibliometric analysis of digital literacy research and emerging themes pre-during COVID-19 pandemic. Information and Learning Sciences . https://doi.org/10.1108/ILS-10-2021-0090 .

Article   Google Scholar  

Beaunoyer, E., Dupéré, S., & Guitton, M. J. (2020). COVID-19 and digital inequalities: Reciprocal impacts and mitigation strategies. Computers in Human Behavior, 111 , 10642. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2020.106424

Blau, I., Shamir-Inbal, T., & Avdiel, O. (2020). How does the pedagogical design of a technology-enhanced collaborative academic course promote digital literacies, self-regulation, and perceived learning of students? The Internet and Higher Education, 45 , 100722. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.iheduc.2019.100722

Carretero, S., Vuorikari, R., & Punie, Y. (2017). DigComp 2.1: The Digital Competence Framework for Citizens with eight proficiency levels and examples of use (No. JRC106281). Joint Research Centre, https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC106281

Eshet, Y. (2004). Digital literacy: A conceptual framework for survival skills in the digital era. Journal of Educational Multimedia and Hypermedia , 13 (1), 93–106, https://www.learntechlib.org/primary/p/4793/

Eshet-Alkalai, Y. (2012). Thinking in the digital era: A revised model for digital literacy. Issues in Informing Science and Information Technology, 9 (2), 267–276. https://doi.org/10.28945/1621

Ferrari, A. (2012). Digital competence in practice: An analysis of frameworks. JCR IPTS, Sevilla. https://ifap.ru/library/book522.pdf

Fraenkel, J. R., Wallen, N. E., & Hyun, H. H. (2012). How to design and evaluate research in education (8th ed.). Mc Graw Hill.

Google Scholar  

Heitin, L. (2016). What is digital literacy? Education Week, https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/what-is-digital-literacy/2016/11

Helsper, E. J., & Eynon, R. (2013). Distinct skill pathways to digital engagement. European Journal of Communication, 28 (6), 696–713. https://doi.org/10.1177/0267323113499113

Kowalczyk, N., & Truluck, C. (2013). Literature reviews and systematic reviews: What is the difference ? . Radiologic Technology, 85 (2), 219–222.

Ng, W. (2012). Can we teach digital natives digital literacy? Computers & Education, 59 (3), 1065–1078. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2012.04.016

Ozkan-Ozen, Y. D., & Kazancoglu, Y. (2021). Analysing workforce development challenges in the Industry 4.0. International Journal of Manpower . https://doi.org/10.1108/IJM-03-2021-0167

Puig, B., Blanco-Anaya, P., & Perez-Maceira, J. J. (2021). “Fake News” or Real Science? Critical thinking to assess information on COVID-19. Frontiers in Education, 6 , 646909. https://doi.org/10.3389/feduc.2021.646909

Robinson, L., Cotten, S. R., Ono, H., Quan-Haase, A., Mesch, G., Chen, W., Schulz, J., Hale, T. M., & Stern, M. J. (2015). Digital inequalities and why they matter. Information, Communication & Society, 18 (5), 569–582. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2015.1012532

Robinson, P., & Lowe, J. (2015). Literature reviews vs systematic reviews. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health, 39 (2), 103. https://doi.org/10.1111/1753-6405.12393

Sousa, M. J., & Rocha, A. (2019). Skills for disruptive digital business. Journal of Business Research, 94 , 257–263. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2017.12.051

Sulzer, A. (2018). (Re)conceptualizing digital literacies before and after the election of Trump. English Teaching: Practice & Critique, 17 (2), 58–71. https://doi.org/10.1108/ETPC-06-2017-0098

Tinmaz, H., Fanea-Ivanovici, M., & Baber, H. (2022). A snapshot of digital literacy. Library Hi Tech News , (ahead-of-print).

Uman, L. S. (2011). Systematic reviews and meta-analyses. Journal of the Canadian Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 20 (1), 57–59.

Van Deursen, A. J. A. M., Helsper, E. J., & Eynon, R. (2015). Development and validation of the Internet Skills Scale (ISS). Information, Communication & Society, 19 (6), 804–823. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2015.1078834

Van Deursen, A. J. A. M., & van Dijk, J. A. G. M. (2009). Using the internet: Skills related problems in users’ online behaviour. Interacting with Computers, 21 , 393–402. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.intcom.2009.06.005

Van Deursen, A. J. A. M., & van Dijk, J. A. G. M. (2010a). Measuring internet skills. International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction, 26 (10), 891–916. https://doi.org/10.1080/10447318.2010.496338

Van Deursen, A. J. A. M., & van Dijk, J. A. G. M. (2010b). Internet skills and the digital divide. New Media & Society, 13 (6), 893–911. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444810386774

van Dijk, J. A. G. M., & Van Deursen, A. J. A. M. (2014). Digital skills, unlocking the information society . Palgrave MacMillan.

van Laar, E., van Deursen, A. J. A. M., van Dijk, J. A. G. M., & de Haan, J. (2017). The relation between 21st-century skills and digital skills: A systematic literature review. Computer in Human Behavior, 72 , 577–588. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2017.03.010

Download references

This research is funded by Woosong University Academic Research in 2022.

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

AI & Big Data Department, Endicott College of International Studies, Woosong University, Daejeon, South Korea

Hasan Tinmaz

Endicott College of International Studies, Woosong University, Daejeon, South Korea

Yoo-Taek Lee

Department of Economics and Economic Policies, Bucharest University of Economic Studies, Bucharest, Romania

Mina Fanea-Ivanovici

Abu Dhabi School of Management, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

Hasnan Baber

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Contributions

The authors worked together on the manuscript equally. All authors have read and approved the final manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Hasnan Baber .

Ethics declarations

Competing of interests.

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Additional information

Publisher's note.

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ .

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article.

Tinmaz, H., Lee, YT., Fanea-Ivanovici, M. et al. A systematic review on digital literacy. Smart Learn. Environ. 9 , 21 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1186/s40561-022-00204-y

Download citation

Received : 23 February 2022

Accepted : 01 June 2022

Published : 08 June 2022

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1186/s40561-022-00204-y

Share this article

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

• Digital literacy
• Systematic review
• Qualitative research