Articles are individual pieces published in magazines, journals and newspapers. They are much shorter, and much more focused than books. Many of them still appear in a physical format but it is far more likely that you will search for them and read them online.
Articles may be found in newspapers, journals and magazines. Articles from newspapers and news magazines will give you up-to-date information on specific current events or issues. Peer-reviewed journals generally contain reports on the results of original research. These articles are much longer than those found in "regular," everyday magazines. Usually they have lists of references at the end. Trade journals contain practical information for practitioners, and news that is relevant to an industry or profession. Your instructor will tell you what types of articles you should use for your papers and presentations. If you are not sure what to use - ask your instructor.
The following databases should be used for researching education topics. As long as you are a student or employee at ECTC you have access to the articles from these databases, whether you are on or off campus.
ERIC (EBSCOhost.) Education Resources Information Center. ERIC is an online library of education research and information, sponsored by the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) of the U.S. Department of Education. It contains articles from education journals. It also contains non-journal documents known as ERIC documents – these include government-funded research reports, dissertations, conference papers and more. All of the articles and documents have numbers assigned to them. Articles from journals have numbers beginning with EJ. ERIC documents have numbers beginning with ED.
Psychology and Behavioral Sciences Collection (EBSCOhost.) This database is an excellent resource for education majors. It contains a large number of articles published in education and behavioral sciences journals on topics pertaining to the classroom.
Academic OneFile (Gale.) Although OneFile does not include Education among the browsable topics it does include a large number of articles from education journals and trade publications.
Academic Search Complete (EBSCOhost.) Provides access to the contents of a few hundred education journals.
To search a database click on the database title. If you are searching off-campus and you are prompted for a user ID and password use your KCTCS credentials (the user ID and password you use for BlackBoard, MyPath, email, etc.
Keywords and Subject Headings
The databases do not respond as well as GOOGLE to natural language searches. You may be discouraged if you try to phrase your search as a question.. Use keywords connected with the word AND.
The question "how can elementary school teachers stop bullying?" is less likely to work in the EBSCO and GALE databases. Construct your search by taking the keywords and combining them with AND. Bullying is the key keyword. You could type that in without anything else and see what comes under Bullying. You can search for Bullying AND elementary schools. You could use the word Stop but Stop is such a common word, used in so many different ways. Use a word like Stop and you could end up with a confused hodgepodge of results. Try Prevention instead. If nothing occurs to you go back to the first search. Search on the word Bullying, look at the entries - the titles, the subject headings, maybe the abstracts. Scroll through the entries. Very soon you will see that the word Prevention appears as a subject heading for articles that discuss STOPPING something. Try the search Bullying AND elementary AND prevention.
If you find a useful article look at the subject headings. You will find these under the article title. You can use these to help you find more articles. For example, if you are researching CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT you may notice that, in the EBSCO databases, the subject heading for articles dealing with classroom management is CLASSROOM TECHNIQUES. Articles in Academic OneFile are indexed with the term CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT.
Try different searches. Read the titles that you pull up; look at the subject headings; read the abstracts. You have to click on article titles to see abstracts. The abstracts are short, half-page descriptions of what is in the article. They can save you time. Read them before you click on HTML Full Text or PDF Full Text (to pull up the actual article.
Do not hesitate to ask for help. Come to the library during business hours; otherwise use the contact information on the right of this page. The CHAT option allows us to see your screen and show you ours.
If you scroll to the bottom of this page you will see some videos on searching the EBSCO databases in the box Instructions for Searching EBSCO and Gale Databases.
Instructions for Searching EBSCO Databases (prepared by Katie Meyer)
Instructions for Searching Gale Databases (prepared by Katie Meyer)
Education majors should become familiar with the trade magazines. These magazines contain news reports and articles on issues that affect teachers and the education field. They also contain professional development articles that discuss best practices for educators.
Journal articles contain the reports of specialist researchers on the results of research projects. The specialists conduct original studies that sometimes take years to complete. They can be difficult to read because the researchers are writing for other researchers.
Selected Peer-Reviewed Full-Text Education Journals
The following titles include some of the journals most commonly used by education majors and faculty
The EBSCO and Gale databases contain hundreds of education journals. The following list contains a few selected titles
The following titles are important education journals. They are not full-text in the available databases. You can still browse them for the titles of articles and the abstracts (half-page summaries of the articles.) If you want an article from these titles you can get it through Interlibrary Loan.
To see a complete list of journal titles in EBSCO click on Publications. Choose By Subject and Description and type in the word Education as your search term.