If you don't already have a current topic in education that you are passionate or just curious about, these resources may get the creative juices flowing.
CQ Researcher Balanced pro/con reports on policy issues written for an academic audience. Browse by Topic Education
Education Commission of the States Interstate organization devoted to helping states develop effective policies for public education. Browse the Education Issues tab.
General Accounting Office Congressional agency tasked with researching public policy issues. Browse by Education
U.S. Department of Education Primary federal agency for educational issues.
Opinion Archives Source for leading public opinion magazines such as Commonweal, The New Republic, The New Yorker and The Nation to name a few. Do advanced search, in the subject field type education and limit by date.
The RSS feed to the NYT education section in the right panel may have some interesting stories too!
These article databases are finding tools for primary empirical research, theoretical papers, practice articles, reviews and opinion. To get the full text you may need to link to the icon.
ERIC The ERIC (Educational Resources Information Center) database is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education to provide extensive access to educational-related literature. It indexes both journal articles and reports from government and private agencies.
Education Full Text Indexes more than 400 English-language periodicals and yearbooks published in the U.S. and elsewhere. Subjects include administration, teaching methods and curriculum, literacy, government funding, and more. ERIC, the government education file, can be searched simultaneously by clicking Open Database Selection Area and selecting ERIC.
PAIS International The PAIS International database contains references to more than 460,000 journal articles, books, government documents, statistical directories, grey literature, research reports, conference reports, publications of international agencies, microfiche, Internet material, and more
PsychInfo Indexes journals, dissertations and some books in the fields of personality psychology, social psychology, educational psychology and more.
Proquest Education Journals Search the leading full-text journals in education and related fields.
Educational Administration Abstracts This database includes bibliographic records covering essential areas related to educational administration, including educational leadership, educational management, educational research, and other areas of key relevance to the discipline.
To do a literature review you not only need to find the research & theory done around your topic but also need to use Bloom's higher order thinking skills to analyse, synthesize and evaluate what those going before have done. In short you have to be an intellectual historian. Rather than starting from scratch find out if anyone else has done a literature review on your topic. At the very least, skimming a few model reviews will give you some ideas about how to go about doing your own. Or you may prefer to consult a how-to book.
Educational Research Review Publishes meta-analytical reviews, narrative reviews, best evidence reviews and research critiques.
Review of Educational Research "Publishes critical, integrative reviews of research literature bearing on education, including conceptualizations, interpretations, and syntheses of literature and scholarly work in a field broadly relevant to education and educational research."
Dissertatons & Theses Full Text If you find a dissertation on topic, you are sure to find a literature review as they are always a required component of the dissertation.
Use ERIC and Education Full Text to find reviews of the literature. In Education Full Text limit Document Type to Review Article or search for review or meta-analys* in the title. In ERIC limit Document Type to Information Analyses, or search for Literature Review in the Subject, or search for review or meta-analys* in the title.
APA Publications Manual is the authoritative source for how to format your paper, do in text citations and your reference list. A copy is available at the Info Desk at Falvey Library.