Research Guides: PSYC 203: Educational Psychology (BMC): Literature Searching

Background Information (Pre-Search)

Doing some background research will help you uncover related concepts and synonyms to use as keywords when searching for scholarly, peer-reviewed articles. It is also a good idea to gain some basic knowledge on your topic and learn the vocabulary of the experts before diving into scholarly literature.

Tripod
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Look for books that provide general overviews on your topic. Ebooks can be especially handy since you can search for keywords inside and scan their bibliographies for other sources.
Annual Review of Psychology
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Critical reviews of significant research in psychology. Another great place to begin exploring a topic.

Critical Educational Psychology
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ISBN: 9781421422633
Publication Date: 2017-02-15
Examines the psychology of learning, cognitive development, motivation, creativity, discipline, and attention, and explores how that contemporary educational psychology is entangled in and underpinned by specific political, ideological, historical, and cultural contexts.
Educational Psychology Reader
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ISBN: 9781433124495
Publication Date: 2014-01-01
Includes many chapters on both traditional and less traditional educational psychological topics including constructivist and postformalist perspectives, behaviorism, Piaget and Vygotsky, Paulo Freire’s legacies, motivation, assessment, teacher education, and complex ecologies.
Handbook of Educational Psychology
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ISBN: 9780415894814
Publication Date: 2015-07-14
Covers new developments in theory and research methods in educational psychology, human learning and motivation, the learning sciences, and psychological research methods in education and psychology.

Oxford Bibliographies in Education
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Offers peer-reviewed annotated bibliographies on the study of education. A good place to get an overview on a topic and available scholarship. When searching by keyword, be sure to check off "education" in the advanced search screen.

Wikipedia
It is perfectly fine to use Wikipedia for initial background research on your topic. Since Wikipedia articles are edited by a community of people, they often include much of the different language used to describe the same concept. Good Wikipedia articles also have great bibliographies that will lead you to more authoritative sources of information.

Empirical Literature Databases

Recommended Databases:

Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC)
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Comprehensive database of education research, including journal articles, books, reports, and other sources.
Also freely available through www.eric.ed.gov.
PsycINFO
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Essential database of scholarly journal articles, book chapters, and dissertations in psychology and related behavioral sciences from 1887 - present.
Includes PsycARTICLES journals.

Using a Search Thesaurus

Using a database thesaurus (when available) instead of keywords can help you find relevant articles without having to know all the terms authors might use to discuss the same concept. This video explains how to use the thesaurus in PsycINFO, but the ERIC thesaurus works the same way.