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Annotated Bibliographies for Education & Behavioral Sciences: Articles

Guides you in how to prep, search for, and write an annotated bibliography, as well as provide a one-stop-shop for finding articles, books and more for your annotated bib for a range of Education & Behavioral Sciences topics.

Quick Search Tips

  • Use quotation marks to search for a phrase. For example, "feminist art" or "art brut".

  • Input each phrase or concept in a different box. For example, Michelangelo in the first box and “Sistine Chapel” in the second will find articles about Michelangelo's work on the Sistine Chapel.

  • Set search limits such as scholarly journals, full-text, or document type.

  • Sort results by date or relevance, especially if requested by your professor.

  • Look at suggested subjects to narrow your search.

  • Use truncation, for example, "strateg*" will find results with strategic, strategy, strategies

 

Search GALILEO

GALILEO searches across all of the Libraries' databases at once.
Enter a few keywords and/or "key phrases", or search by title or author > Search or hit Enter/Return

DISCOVER articles, books, media, and more

Search GALILEO

Find articles for an annotated bibliography on education topics

Why try an individual or a set of databases rather than GALILEO?

As GALILEO covers a wide range of disciplines, searching within an individual, or a small set of subject-specialty databases can be more on target and efficient. It is worth trying GALILEO first, and then run a similar search in a subject database or a set of databases. 

EBSCOhost offers a range of research databases for education and related subjects, like psychology. Once you enter the EBSCOhost, you can search across several databases simultaneously.

Search across the below recommended EBSCOhost databases at once:
Enter one of these databases > Select 'Choose Databases' > Select the other databases > OK.
Note: Avoid 'Select All' databases - the search speed will be slow.

Also, try searching within these top recommended databases provided by other organizations.

Apart from the ProQuest databases, as the other databases are by different organizations, they cannot be searched simultaneously:

Search Databases like a Pro by applying Search Techniques

The table below outlines search techniques to help you find more relevant results.

The majority of examples given are for searching the following research question: 
What are the benefits of early literacy students learning phonics; if any?

  1. Firstly, brainstorm any synonyms: Think of additional synonyms or related keywords to include in your search. For example:
  • Early Literacy - "lower elementary", "lower primary", kindergarten, first grade, second grade, K-2, etc.
  • Benefits - advantages, effectiveness, impact, etc.
  1. Apply the following search techniques wherever applicable to find more relevant results.
Search Technique
Format
Example Search Query
Exact Phrase Searching: Use quotation marks to direct the search engine to search on a phrase. "key phrase"

"early literacy"

will retrieve results containing "early literacy" at least once.

Boolean Operators: Combine keywords or key phrases in order to narrow or expand your search. 

In a Simple Search, if you use no Boolean Operator, the default operator is AND.

AND: Retrieves records that contain all of the keywords/key phrases.

OR: Retrieves records that contain any of the keywords / key phrases

NOT: Excludes records containing the following keyword.

Some databases have more boolean operators.

"early literacy" AND phonics AND benefits

benefits OR advantages 
-- enter OR combinations in a separate search field or in parentheses (see below) 

"early literacy" AND phonics AND benefits NOT ESL

Parentheses: Directs the search engine to perform your search in a certain order.

Great for combining synonyms.

For example:

(keyword/phrase BOOLEAN OPERATOR keyword/phrase)

BOOLEAN OPERATOR

(keyword/phrase BOOLEAN OPERATOR keyword/phrase) 

 

("early literacy" OR "lower elementary" OR "lower primary") AND (phonics OR phonetic) AND (benefits OR advantages OR effectiveness) 
Truncation Device: Enter part of a keyword and place the truncation symbol at the end. The database will return results that include any ending of that partial word.

Typically an asterisk: *

May vary according to the database. 

Consult the database's 'Help' or 'Search Tips' page to verify the truncation symbol.

 

benefi* will retrieve 

benefit, benefits, benefited, beneficial

advantag* will retrieve

advantage, advantages, advantageous
Wildcard: A wildcard will substitute a symbol for one letter of a word. Great for including spelling variations of a keyword in your search.

Typically a question mark: ?

May vary according to the database. Consult the database's 'Help' or 'Search Tips' page to verify the wildcard symbol.

behavio?r will retrieve

behavior, behaviour

colo?r will retrieve

color, colour