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EDU 6320: Culturally Responsive Teaching Methods

This is a guide to library resources in the course EDU 6320: Culturally Responsive Teaching Methods. Here you will find databases, electronic journals, tutorials, and other information.

Advanced Searching Strategies

Search Terms

  • You do not need to use all of your keywords or search terms in every search, especially if you come up with too few results 
  • Make a list of terms related to your keywords to try if your initial search doesn’t return the results you need. You can build this list by consulting the database thesaurus or a general thesaurus.

Searching

  • Do not expect to find all of your resources after one search.  When doing research in a database, you may need to perform several searches, trying different combinations of terms, before coming up with a list of good results.
  • More than likely, you will have to perform many searches in many different databases before you will have a complete list of useful, relevant resources.
  • What is a successful search?   
    • It is when you find at least one resource that you can use
  • When searching for results in databases, you do not need to find resources that are exactly like your research proposal; they just have to be similar to it in some way.
  • Databases offer many search tools—such as limiters, expanders, and search modes—and adjusting any of these can alter your results.
  • One way to find additional relevant results is to look at the bibliography or references of an already useful article.
  • Another way to find additional relevant results is to search for literature review articles.

Limiting Your Search

  • Do not limit your searching to just articles that are available in the database (PDF or HTML Full Text). You probably will need to access at least some of your articles from other libraries through InterLibrary Loan (ILL)
  • You will probably want to limit your search results to Scholarly/Peer Reviewed journals because they contain the results of research.

Results

  • Many databases allow you to change the order of the records retrieved.
  • You can click on the "Relevance" drop-down to sort your search results:
    • Relevance
    • Date newest
    • Date oldest

Using the Right Terms

When searching in databases, how do you know that you are using the right terms.  If you come up with zero results, then you know that you have used at least one term that should be changed to another term that is similar in meaning.  It could mean the difference between zero results and many results. 

  • One way to find similar terms is to use a thesaurus. Further down the page are several thesauri that you could use.

What are index terms?
Index terms are controlled vocabulary terms used in database records to make searching easier and more successful. By standardizing the words or phrases used to represent concepts, you don't need to try and figure out all the ways different authors could refer to the same concept. 

Why is a controlled vocabulary essential for searching?
With the wide variety of concepts and vocabulary used in academic literature. Search and retrieval of records about specific concepts is virtually impossible without the controlled vocabulary of a thesaurus. This controlled vocabulary provides a way of structuring the subject matter in a way that is consistent among users 

  • For example: searching for Dysphoria, Melancholia, and Depression can all be achieved by searching the term “Major Depression”

Controlled Vocabulary Thesauri

 


 

The ERIC Thesaurus is a leading authority on the language used in the field of education. It is a controlled vocabulary with nearly 12,000 terms, including more than 4,500 descriptors and 7,000 synonyms. Descriptors from the Thesaurus are assigned to each of the 1.9 million records in ERIC to describe the main subjects of the content. Synonyms point searchers to the preferred term, or descriptor, in ERIC.

 

General Thesauri 

Search modes offer different ways to conduct a search and find information.

 

Search Mode What it Does
Keyword/Phrase

Searches for terms that are in proximity to one another.

  • For example, the search web accessibility gets searched as web N5 accessibility, which means “web” and “accessibility” separated by five words or less, in any order.

A record will be returned only if all the words searched are found within the same field, such as title, subject, or abstract. There is no proximity across fields or subfields.

  • Supports any Boolean searching when Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT) are included between terms
Find all my search terms

Automatically searches with Boolean “AND” between all search terms. 

  • For example, the search web accessibility gets searched as web AND accessibility.
Find any of my search terms

Automatically searches with Boolean “OR” between all search terms. 

  • For example, the search web accessibility gets searched as web OR accessibility.
SmartText Searching

You can copy and paste large chunks of text into the search box. 

  • For example, a paragraph or a page.

SmartText Searching technology reduces the text entered to the most important search terms based on term frequency (TF) and inverse document frequency (IDF) , and then creates a weighted Boolean query for search execution.
Natural Language
(DEFAULT)

Natural Language Search (NLS) mode is an advanced search feature that allows users to query using everyday language.

Instead of relying on complex keywords or Boolean operators, NLS enables users to form searches in a more conversational manner.

Citation Chaining: Finding the Original Research

Citation chaining is a research technique where you review sources referenced by an original source, thus creating a 'chain'

  • Pro Tip: Use the works cited or references page---it can be one of the most useful tools in research! 
Rolo chain

How to Chain

  1. Go to the bibliography or references of an article or book that you already have
  2. Scan the bibliography to find potentially useful resources
  3. When you have found one, copy the citation and paste it into the search box of the database that you are using
  4. Look under Search Options
    • If using EDS (the search bar on the library's home page) click on Advanced search to view Search Options
  5. Select SmartText Searching
  6. Click the "Search" button

If the article is in the database, it will display in the search results list.

To learn more about how citation chaining works, watch the video below.

How Library Stuff Works: Citation Chaining

Video Summary
This video provides an overview of the research tool citation chaining, including its benefits and limitations.

Expanders are search settings that broaden your results by adding related terms, going beyond the use of the OR Boolean operator.

 

Expander What it Does
Apply Equivalent Subjects

Select this option to utilize mapped vocabulary terms to add precision to unqualified keyword searches.

  • This is selected by DEFAULT.
Truncation

Allows you to enter the root of a search term and replace the ending with an asterisk (*)  

This allows the database to find all words with the same root.

  • Example: teach*
    •  will find teach, teacher, teaching
Wildcard Symbol

Can insert this symbol (?) anywhere within a search term, and it holds the place of a letter/character.

It matches exactly one letter/character, helpful for alternative spellings of words.                  

  • Example: Wom?n
    • includes both woman and women in the results.

 

Limiters are ways, other than using the Boolean operators AND or NOT that will make your search results smaller.

 

Limiter What it Does
Available at West Library Retrieves only documents that are available physically in the West Library, or are available in one of the West Library’s online databases
Peer reviewed Limits search results to articles from peer-reviewed journals. Peer-reviewed journals are publications that include only those articles that have been reviewed and/or qualified by a selected panel of acknowledged experts in the field of study covered by the journal.
Catalog Only

Limits your search results to items in the Library's catalog.
PDF full text

Limits your results to just items that are available in PDF full text.
Quotation marks Limits your search results to whatever is in the quotation marks. If it is a phrase, then it will limit your results to only results where the two or more words appear as a phrase
Field Limiters

When selected, limits the search term(s) to the selected field.  

  • Example: "Teacher control" in TI
    • limits the words "teacher control" to the title of every document retrieved. 

All Field Limiter Options:

All Text (TX) Limits your search term to the text of the document.
Abstract (AB) Limits your search term to the abstract field or the abstract of the source
Author (AU) Limits your search term to the author field.
Title (TI) Limits your search term to the title field
Subject Terms (SU) Limits your search term to the subject field or the subject(s) assigned to the resource
Journal Title/Source (SO) Limits your search term to the title of the journal or source
Journal Name

Limits your search term(s) to the title of the journal.

  • It does the same thing as the Journal Title/Source limiter above.

 

 

The All filters button looks like this:   

Other limiters include:

  • Publication Date
  • Content Provider (database name)
  • Source Types (ex.,books, journal article)
  • Subject
  • Subject: Major Heading
  • Publication 
  • Publisher 
  • Language
  • Geography (country) 
  • Location (in the library)