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Education Field Experience - EDUC230

Library Research

Two important differences between searching on the internet and researching in library databases are:

Keywords! Rather than typing in a whole question, pull out the most important terms and use those to search. The more specific you can be, the better, so consider using language from your assignment or textbook. You can also start with a broad search on the internet to learn more and find additional terms.
Free academic resources! Many scholarly and professional articles are not available for free online, so you may be asked to pay or wind up choosing something that is not intended for academic research. Library databases are full of scholarly and professional articles that are free to you as RVCC students.

Library databases

Library databases group related resources together to make your life easier. That means a search for "cognitive development" in these education databases won't find articles about chimpanzees! Think of it as another filter to help narrow your results.

Education Database This link opens in a new window
This is a ProQuest database which includes over 1,000 full-text journals and 18,000 dissertations, supporting research on the theory and practice of education.
This database covers not only the literature on primary, secondary, and higher education but also special education, home schooling, early childhood education, and adult education. Approximately 75% of the publications included in this database are scholarly journals. The majority of the content spans from 1980-present, but there are earlier documents and articles included. Use this database in conjunction with ERIC for comprehensive education research and full-text access to some articles only cited in ERIC.
Educators Reference Complete This link opens in a new window
This Gale database covers multiple levels of education from preschool to college and includes many educational specialties such as bilingual studies, health, technology and testing.
This resource also includes information on issues related to administration, funding and policy in education. It contains articles from journals and magazines and reports from the U.S. Department of Education and it provides full-text results for many of the articles cited in ERIC. This is a great resource for students studying any level of education.
ERIC (Educational Resources Information Center) This link opens in a new window
ERIC (Education Resources Information Center) is an authoritative database of indexed and full-text education literature and resources supported by the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Educational Research and Improvement and is administered by the U.S. National Library of Education (NLE).
It contains more than 1.6 million records and links to hundreds of thousands of full-text documents including journal articles (most of which are scholarly), books, conference papers, curriculum guides, policy papers and more. Through the EBSCO interface, it provides an education-specific thesaurus that includes controlled vocabulary.

See more of our recommended databases for Education here:

RVCC Education databases