Writing the literature review was such a great experience. I rediscovered my passion for my topic and found some great new resources, which I did not expect at all! I was confused at first on how to organize the topic, with all of the sources, and add in the new sources I found. I decided to approach it with the basic topics: who, what, why and how. Under each heading I was able to organize different material and make a lot of information much more accessible. I am planning on using this strategy from now on because it makes it so easy to access your sources in an organized way. It helped me stay on topic and I think it would be so helpful when writing a research paper. I ended up with so much information that I went far beyond the 2-3 pages and I felt like I had enough information to write a completely informed research paper with the information I had. This was a great assignment that taught me so much about research organization.

Annotated Bibliography

This week while writing my annotated bibliography I found a few new resources that explored disproportionality in greater depth. One article, written by Dr. Gentry, a professor of special education, explores in depth solutions to disproportionality and helpful recommendations for the entirety of special education. The article also addresses overrepresentation and underrepresentation, and how each scenario can negatively impact students, explores the bias of misdiagnosis in detail and offers solutions to bring about much needed change.

The second article is a research study that focuses on the over representation of minorities from across the United States and explores reasons why overrepresentation occurs, what mandates have been implemented to prevent it and whether those mandates made any true change. Although this study is based upon surveys taken from 2004 to 2008, this study introduces evidence that may show that the mandates in place to protect from disproportionality are not effective. The article describes the factors that contribute to disproportionality, legislative initiatives to prevent or reduce disproportionality, the current study, which was based on the US Census Bureau, and the findings of the study.

I found each article on Ebscohost, and I believe that even though the study is dated from information from 2008, the mandates that have been put into place are not effective and need revision. That is why I believe this research is so important to educators. This is a problem that is affecting students for their entire lives because they are misdiagnosed. We need to recognize the difference between learning disabilities and other factors that may contribute to learning, but have nothing to do with a student’s intelligence.

Plagiarism and academic integrity are fundamental issues as a college student. I distinctly remember the night after freshman orientation in college waking from a nightmare that I had accidentally mis-cited a source and was banned from every school in the country. While the drama of my dream was a bit extreme, the value of writing with academic integrity is of the utmost importance. When we write, we are using tools that have been learned through other author’s countless hours of research, study and hard work. We must always give credit where it is due for the facts and opinions of others. I have always felt that my greatest accomplishment as a student would be creating unique and original work that would reflect my heart as a writer and would impart wisdom to others. The research we use every week to develop our own research topics were written by those who feel the same and to steal the ideas of another person makes our own contribution cheap and false. Give credit where it is due, cite sources, even just one sentence from one article, if it was written by someone else, it belongs to someone else and they deserve that credit. In doing so, you stay authentic and honest, and your writing will display your own character.