Write something new

Okay, I'm currently struggling through a literature review on the concept of direct instruction of autonomous learning practices to first year university or college students - particularly from a library and/or learning advisor perspective.

It should be a walk in the park, all things considered, because a) I'm a librarian and I can find stuff, b) there isn't much stuff to find, and c) I'm the kind of verbose git who can spin an entire paragraph out of "there isn't much stuff to find".

Yet, I'm struggling.  I'm having difficulty thinking my way through this thing.  I just can't seem to wrap my head around how I should take what I know, augment it with what I can find and push it into the mould that has been asked for.  And I don't know why I'm struggling so much with the whole, when I can handle the individual parts without too much difficulty.

I think it's partly because I'm resisting the thing (I've reached a point where I really don't want to do it, even though it's the second last thing I have to do before I'm done with this wretched course and it will actually contribute towards a paper I want to write).

I also think it's because I've realised I'm reading the exact same information over and over and over again.  Over the last 20 or 30 years, people have been regurgitating the same stuff.  I've basically come to the conclusion that I'm really only reading the same three articles.

You have:

1) The "introductory literature review", which can be as short as a magazine column or as long as an exceptionally boring journal article, and basically consists of people saying:  "Here is what autonomy/self-directed learning is all about, and here is a summary of what has been written about it over the past 30 years".  These tend to conclude that autonomous/self-directed learners appear to be mildly better off than traditional students, but there needs to be more research.  Nothing new.

2) The "case study", in which a small group of people is given a project to do which involves some portion of self-directed stuff, and some portion of teaching them how to do the self-directed stuff.  They are then compared with the people who didn't do that project.  These always end up making the exact same conclusions:  Students using self-directed methods appear to be mildly better than those who don't, but we can't be conclusive about this due to our small sample sizes.  There is some contemplation about whether the fact that the sample group also self-selected for the study has tainted the results.  Nothing new.

3) The "pilot study", in which an entire class or cohort has a subject converted into a self-directed thing-or-other and a survey is done to see how well they all coped with it.  These tend to end up making the following conclusions:  students don't really know about this whole autonomy thing, and while some of them really appreciate it others would much rather have an actual curriculum - oh, and self-directed students appear to be mildly better than non-self-directed students, but we can't be conclusive due to the lack of a proper control group (and/or a small sample size).  Nothing new.

Really, people, I think the verdict is in.  After over thirty years of this guff I think we can safely say that autonomous learners are mildly better off than non-autonomous learners.  Yes?  Can we do that?  And can we now move on to looking at, I don't know, which methods of teaching autonomous learning skills to students give you the most bang for you buck?

Would that be too much to ask?