Aerj Literature Positioning

---
name: aerj-literature-positioning
description: Use when positioning an American Educational Research Journal (AERJ) manuscript in the literature. AERJ readers span the whole field, so the paper must engage the literatures a general education-research audience expects and speak past its own subfield. Builds the positioning argument; it does not write the literature review for you.
---

# Literature Positioning (aerj-literature-positioning)

An AERJ paper must locate itself in the **field-wide** conversation, not just a niche citation cluster.
The literature review establishes the gap, the stakes, and why this study advances understanding for a
general education-research reader.

## When to trigger

- Drafting or revising the literature/background section
- A reviewer said the paper "doesn't engage the relevant literature" or "talks only to insiders"
- Establishing the gap the study fills and why it matters broadly
- Reconciling literatures across subfields or methods

## How to position

1. **Map the conversation, not a pile of citations.** Organize by debate or construct, not by author.
   Show the reader the shape of what is known and where it disagrees.
2. **Engage what AERJ readers expect.** Cite the field-defining and section-relevant work (SIA:
   policy/organizational/equity literatures; TLHD: learning/teaching/development literatures), plus the
   methodological literature your design rests on.
3. **Name the gap precisely.** Not "little is known" — specify the unanswered question, the unresolved
   tension, or the untested mechanism your study addresses.
4. **Cross subfields deliberately.** Connect to at least one adjacent literature so the contribution
   reads as field-wide, not subfield-only.
5. **Set up the framework.** The review should hand off cleanly to `aerj-theory-and-framework`: the gap
   motivates the conceptual frame.

## The "so what for the field" test

Write one sentence a researcher in a *different* education subfield would underline. If the only people
who would care are already in your niche, broaden the framing or the literatures you engage.

## Anti-patterns

- Citation dumping with no synthesis or argument
- Reviewing only your own subfield's recent work; ignoring foundational or adjacent literatures
- A gap stated as "no one has studied X in this exact setting" with no broader stake
- Strawmanning prior work rather than engaging its strongest version
- Mismatched citations to the wrong section's debates

## Output format

```
【Conversation map】the 2–4 debates/constructs the paper sits within
【Gap】the precise unanswered question / unresolved tension
【Cross-subfield link】the adjacent literature engaged
【So-what-for-the-field】the underline-able sentence
【Hand-off】how the gap motivates the framework
【Next】aerj-theory-and-framework
```

## Supplementary resources

- [`../../resources/external_tools.md`](../../resources/external_tools.md) — reference managers (APA 7th) and literature tooling
- [`../../resources/official-source-map.md`](../../resources/official-source-map.md) — AERJ scope and section literatures