There are several places where you can find sources for your paper. It is helpful to gather more resources that you need, then make your selection to pick the resources you will cite in your paper.
When it comes to selection, quality is more important than quantity, although you want to ensure you have the minimum number of resources your professor specifies.
You would want to keep in mind the below considerations when selecting your final list of sources to use in your literature review.
Keep in mind the following considerations when looking for sources to use in your literature review:
For example, if you were looking for an article on tablet apps for early childhood education, you might find an article that completely focuses on the use of apps in early childhood education as well as one that only has a sentence or two about apps in early childhood education. The second one would probably not be very useful to your literature review.
It definitely should! There should at least a few scholarly sources, eg. other academic journal articles, academic books.
Does the author have the education and experience to discuss this subject? Is this person's work cited often in this subject?
Though good research can be found in low-impact journals (journals that are not cited as much as others) and books from small publishers without much of a reputation, and bad research can be found in high-impact journals (journals that are cited often and are well-regarded) and books from highly regarded publishers, the reputation of a journal or a publisher can and often does matter in the scholarly world.
If you see an article being cited over and over again in the bibliographies of works you find, you should look at it.
All studies are not created equal. If you are using a source with original research, evaluate the strength of its methodology.
For example, "Apple Classrooms for Tomorrow" research.
This research was funded by Apple Computers and, not surprisingly, the outcomes of the study were largely positive.
While there is a lot of research in education that is funded by organizations with a particular agenda, this does not mean that you should necessarily eliminate it from your literature review. However, you should examine the research for flaws or omissions resulting from bias and include that analysis in the literature review.