Developing academic reading, writing and research

Many different factors influence students' ability to carry out their degree studies successfully. This chapter concerns the development of early years student's key skills, including the ability to undertake critical reading to facilitate analysis and evaluation of literature sources and their own professional practice, whilst exploring how students can effectively transfer these skills to their academic assignments. It discusses how to find academic literature, and then how to review the quality of the literature, the first step to critical reading. The development of criticality skills in student practitioners' reading and writing not only supports their continued professional development (CPD) through assisting them academically, it also supports their ability to think critically about their own and others' professional practice. Drifting away from the focus of a topic is a potential danger when faced with the mass of literature available within institutional library catalogues and online search facilities, which can be distracting.