In the new age of research-informed practice, review articles will be popular among time-pressed teachers because they give a concise overview of a topic. However, it is useful to analyse how these articles actually work so that you can read them in an informed way.

The first thing to look out for in a review article is what research questions are being explored. Even a slight change in research question can have large consequences for the conclusion. So make sure you know what is being reviewed.

Another thing to consider is which search methodology has been used. Most reviews use a combination of search strategies and online reference systems - for example, EBSCOhost, Web of Science (formerly Web of Knowledge) or Google Scholar.

Ideally, in the spirit of open science and transparency, authors should give the exact search terms they have used, so you can replicate their source list.

After creating what is often a long list of articles, authors try to make that number smaller by imposing inclusion or exclusion criteria. These could focus on the target audience (for example, primary, secondary, higher education), research design (for example, experimental studies or case studies) or singling out articles that turn out not to be relevant for the chosen research question.

These criteria don’t serve only as way to trim down the number of studies; they can also be used to give an overview of the research on a topic. Make sure you look out for overly strict or lenient criteria.

The results of a review can be presented in several ways. A popular quantitative method is by using effect sizes to summarise the impact of each article.

Reviews of this kind, often called meta-analyses, have been criticised for sometimes including wildly different types of studies under one heading. Some well-known providers of meta-analyses (and even meta-analyses of meta-analyses) are Professor John Hattie and the Education Endowment Foundation.

Often, quantitative reviews can be usefully complemented with more qualitative reviews, something US psychologist Professor Robert Slavin calls “best-evidence reviews”.

The most important thing to remember is to interpret these reviews through your own experience.

Christian Bokhove is associate professor in mathematics education at the University of Southampton