Narrowing focus

We were asked for our last class to have pulled, from various academic databases, scholarly articles related to an area of research that is of interest to us and would be the subject of a literature review toward the end of the course. Ideally, one is to brainstorm and think about possible subject areas and try to narrow it down to a more precise direction. The topic selection is very open-ended but most students in the course seem to have chosen ideas that are not only of interest to them but that are also relevant to their current teaching situation or previous and future research areas.

I am very much a perfectionist when it comes to work that is to be submitted and evaluated. I also have a tendency to expect this of the students I teach. Of course, it is not reasonable that all students will comply or achieve the expectations I have. One example is in grammatical correctness and accuracy of spelling. Being an English teacher, not even by training, I find when I read student work that is full of mistakes that my frustration grows. Sometimes this is due to the lack of skill in this area but often it is simply due to lack of effort or pride in work. That is my assumption in many cases.

In my classes, we complete daily grammar lessons and we also work on weekly, themed spelling units to develop vocabulary. As my area of research for my literature review, I want to investigate the literature as it pertains to spelling units, testing, whole-language instruction, success rates, types of learners when it comes to spelling, etc. As you can tell...this area is massive and overwhelming. Trying to narrow it down is difficult in that I feel that if I focus on one specific area, I may lose the broader picture or perspective. This hunt for appropriate literature and articles is proving to be the most time-consuming part of the research process I am finding. This is mainly due to the fact that as I find new article and read them, my mind wanders to new questions that could be asked and I find my focus digressing in some ways. I suppose that is the process one must go through. I need to fight the temptation to just choose articles randomly and begin to narrow my focus.