Please note: this guide reuses and builds upon content from a prior library guide on systematic reviews in health care by Penn State librarians Christina Wissinger and Kathleen Phillips. Here, we have adapted their material to assist Education faculty and students.
A systematic review is a comprehensive analysis of all known evidence on a given subject. In the words of Siddaway, Wood, and Hedges (2019), systematic reviews are "methodical, comprehensive, transparent, and replicable." Sometimes conducted for publication in scholarly venues, they are much more rigorous than the literature searches that students usually do when writing course papers. In Education and Psychology, systematic reviews typically include:
Kogut, A., Foster, M., Ramirez, D., & Xiao, D. (2019). Critical Appraisal of Mathematics Education Systematic Review Search Methods: Implications for Social Sciences Librarians. College & Research Libraries, 80(7), 973–995. https://doi.org/10.5860/crl.80.7.973