Searching using Google, Google scholar, A+ Education, ERIC and Proquest

Armed with my mind-map of search terms and databases I began my search using Google. I found it quite useful to watch the following video before doing the Google search. Using the Boolean operators mentioned in my first video, I typed the search string ... (“inquiry learning” AND SOSE AND (secondary OR “high school”) OR “inquiry based teaching” into the Google toolbar. The bracketed portions force the search engine to perform the functions within the brackets first and the quotation marks force the search engine to return only phrases that are exactly the same as those within the quotes.

 

I received just under 4000 results. Above is a screenshot of the first four. I then decided to narrow the search down! To accomplish this I started by eliminating the hits with “Wikipedia” in them. Although Wikipedia has its place when searching for information, at this stage I needed scholarly, peer reviewed articles. So I limited the results to those of the last ten years, and removed any related to Wikipedia. Therefore I typed in the search string (“inquiry learning” AND SOSE) AND (secondary OR “high school”) OR “inquiry based teaching” –Wikipedia. I also used the “More search options” on the left hand side to narrow the search down to the last ten years.

Although this tactic did help to retrieve more useful results, I decided to continue my search using Google scholar.

The reasons behind this choice lay in the fact that Google scholar uses comprehensive searches of peer-reviewed scholarly articles. The results of a Google scholar search displays the number of times the article has been cited by other authors as well as related articles to that topic. Results fulfilling these parameters were more relevant and appropriate for my purposes.

I used the search string (“guided inquiry” OR “inquiry learning”) AND SOSE AND “middle school”. Google scholar returned 30 results, some of which seemed quite interesting. I decided to look through them and use them as stepping stones to more articles on the same topic.

The following search string brought in more results from America as their term for SOSE is social studies. (“guided inquiry” OR inquiry-based learning) AND ("social studies" OR SOSE -science) AND “middle school”. Inquiry learning is usually associated with science subjects; any search of inquiry tends to return many results for the sciences. As I was searching for articles on how to teach a middle school SOSE class, the science results may not have been as useful and for this reason they were eliminated from my results using the “-“ sign. The "custom range" on the left hand side enabled me to specify that only results from 2000-2012 were required.

From the above searches I obtained over 40 articles that seemed quite interesting. I started to feel more confident about my ability to find pertinent results.

At this stage I decided to use the databases provided by the library at QUT University. Although search engines like Google are also databases; the databases like A+ Information, ProQuest and ERIC, provided by the University’s library provide a searchable collection of reliable, carefully selected research such as articles, studies, theses and book chapters.  They have rich, descriptive records most of which cannot be accessed via a search engine. They are developed by information specialists to meet the needs of researchers. They are not added to automatically by a computer program as are those of Google; anyone can post any kind of information to a website retrievable by Google; the information need not necessarily be true or relevant.

I tried the A+ Education database first. This is an Australian database and it provides access to journal articles from published research on education. It operates through a website called Informit by Cunningham Library at ACER (Australian Council for Educational Research).

At the QUT website I clicked on “library” and then “find databases” then I clicked on “Education”. Once there, I clicked on “Education General”. The first option was “A+ Education via Informit”. I clicked on it and was asked for my QUT student ID and password. Once those were entered the following screen appeared.

Instead of typing a search string into the search box as I did with Google and Google scholar; I typed each search parameter into separate subsequent boxes, changing the AND and OR operators as required. I also added 2 extra terms using the “add more terms” option and specified a date range between 2004 and 2012. See below ...

Eliminating articles about science or technology produced quite a few articles that I was able to use in my research.

After this I tried the ERIC database via EBSCO host. This database is described as “The premier bibliographic database of education literature.” It has two files: “Resources in Education”, which covers the document literature, consisting of research reports, curriculum and teaching guides, conference papers, and books; and “Current Index to Journals in Education”, which covers published journal literature from over 1000 periodicals. The database also includes the full text of ERIC Digest Records. These one- to two-page records, written specifically for teachers, administrators, and other practitioners, provide an overview of information on a given topic and supply references with more detailed information. ERIC is sponsored by the US Department of Education Educational Resources Information Centre.” As this is an American database I used "Social Sciences" as well as SOSE.

Using the following parameters ...

I received far too many results.

 Therefore I decided to add some more parameters. I specified "peer reviewed" and "full text" articles and a date range from 2004 - 2012.

72 results. Much better.

I then moved onto ProQuest education journals. Coverage spans the literature on primary, secondary and higher education as well as special education, home schooling and adult education. Many titles are indexed in the ERIC database. The ProQuest searchbar is similar to Google’s so I tried the search string  ... inquiry-based learning AND SOSE   ... which produced the following 4 results...

I then specified “peer reviewed” and “full text” articles and tried this search string ...(inquiry-based learning OR problem-based learning) AND (SOSE OR "studies of society") AND middle....

ProQuest returned 8 articles, some of which will be useful in my research.