Well, yes and no. It depends on what you mean by 'model'.
If you were looking for some sort of proforma into which you could just plug your text, that might appeal in the short term but, like most short cuts when it comes to deep and complex writing, it won't be helpful and in the long run it will only waste time. There are at least two reasons why this is:
1) Your literature review is yours. It makes the case for why your research question should be asked. This means that what you find in the literature as you set about building this case will be different to what anyone else finds -- they are researching their topic, not yours. And the argument you eventually construct as you grapple with your review will be based on what you find and, more importantly, what you make of what you find. Since neither of these things is predictable, neither of them can be reduced to any particular, one-size-fits all proforma.
2) Your literature review is not just a 'review'. In fact, I dislike that word when it comes to reviews because you are doing much more than 'reviewing'. You are really doing a literature analysis, but since the name 'review' has stuck (sigh), we'll stick with it. It is your job as the literature reviewer (analyser) to discover and name the patterns and trends in previous findings and to work out the steps of your argument -- what it is about those patterns and trends that adds up to why your research question needs to be asked (My research question should be asked because . . . ). If you fill in some sort of proforma, answering questions in relation to a series of pre-set prompts and then turning that into paragraphs, you are skipping the most crucial step of all -- building your own argument with all the evidence you have found. You will feel busy, but you won't have accomplished much, and you still won't know why your research question should be asked.
And that is what you should know when your literature review is done. If someone (your supervisor, someone on an internal review panel, an examiner) were to say 'So, why does the world need this question?', you'll be able to look the questioner straight in the eye with confidence and reply 'Because previous research indicates that . . . '. Doing your literature review properly will put you in this strong position. Filling in a proforma will not.
So beware of proformas. They are good for collecting information, but they are not very useful when it comes to the creative and generative act of thinking about how that information is evidence for why your research question needs to be asked.
If by 'model' what you were looking for was a literature review that can give you ideas on how to structure your own, you are on stronger ground. All of the research articles you have been reading will have literature reviews. Read these for structure as well as content. Take out some fresh paper (or start a new document, or whatever the equivalent is for you). Write at the top Their research question is . . . Then, skip a few lines and write According to them, this question should be asked because . . . And then list the steps they set out in their argument. You can also write these out on cards (regular readers of this blog will know how much I love the card-sorting technique). Is research common in their area, but corralled thus far into 2 or three narrow areas? And if so, what are those areas? Or is research common in their area, but flawed in various ways? What are those ways? Or maybe research in their field covers a number of areas but has been limited by design flaws, or measurement effects, or unexplored assumptions? These questions are, of course not meant to be exhaustive -- every argument, as noted above, will be different because every reviewer is defending a different question with different evidence. Rather, these questions are designed to get you going on the task of reading published literature reviews for the structure of the arguments they put forward.
If you find this difficult at first, persevere. It is a little bit like looking at those pictures that seem very similar, but then as you really study them, you spot the differences, which stand out clear as day once you have pegged them (remember those?). And if after you get the hang of it you come across a literature review where you can't trace the steps of the argument very well, or find that the steps are jumbled, or that a step seems to be left implicit, well, well, well -- you have found a paper that maybe didn't nail down its argument as elegantly as it could have. And maybe you can do a better job than that. How about that! 😀
