CTE 525: Learning Theories in Career & Technical Education

These databases are the best ones to search for education-related articles. 

Unfortunately, there's no such thing as a perfect search - you will likely need to try a few different combinations of keywords in order to find good results. We're going to discuss two methods for coming up with additional keywords and phrases:

• Using the autocomplete suggestions
• Looking at articles' subject headings

Second, you will need to use database limiters to meet some of the requirements for your assignments. Database limiters limit or reduce the number of results you get. The two limiters we'll focus on are:

• The date limiter - because you need to find articles from the last 10 years 
• The scholarly / peer reviewed limiter - because you will need to find some scholarly articles (need a refresher on what makes an article or a journal scholarly? How about how to read a scholarly journal article?)

A few other search tips you might find handy: 

• Getting too many results, or irrelevant results? Try searching for an exact phrase by putting it in quotes. (ex. "career and technical education" vs. career and technical education)
• Getting too few results? Consider alternative words or spellings (ex. you can try searching for "vocational education" if you're not finding many results searching for "career and technical education").

Using Autocomplete Suggestions

The screenshot below is from Education Combo. I recommend that you put one concept in each search box, like I did here: 

As you can see in the last box, the autocomplete has offered several useful suggestions. I've chosen "grades or academic performance or academic achievement" in the search below.

Using subject headings & abstracts

After limiting my results to the last 10 years, my search only retrieved 22 results, so I'm going to look at the articles' subjects and abstracts (the summary that appears just above the subjects) for ideas on how I can get more results: 

The result pictured above, Free Lunch for All! The Effect of the Community Eligibility Provision on Academic Outcomes, looks relevant, since it talks about academic outcomes. Looking over the subject headings, there are a few that we might want to try searching for: 

• Luncheons (since it's the closest to our actual search)
• Other Individual and Family Services (this concept and the concepts below are broader than just school lunches, but they might help us find more useful information) 
• Emergency and Other Relief Services
• Health and Welfare Funds
• Public Welfare 

We can also see that, according to the abstract, the "Community Eligibility Provision" is a "universal free-lunch program." That's another term we can look for. 

TIP: Mix and match the concepts you come up with - you'll likely do several different searches, and you may only find a few good articles with each search. Don't worry, this is a normal part of the search process!

In Education Source and ERIC, the most commonly used filters are just below the search box.

Click Peer Reviewed (labeled #1 in the screenshot below) to narrow your results to peer-reviewed, scholarly articles.

Click All Time to narrow your results to the most recent year, 5 years, or 10 years (labeled #2 in the screenshot below). If you want to choose a different time frame, click the All Filters button on the left.

In Education Database, the filters are on the left side of the results page. 

Click the checkbox next to Peer reviewed (labeled #1 in the screenshot below) to narrow your results to peer-reviewed, scholarly articles.

Click the sliders to narrow your results to a particular timeframe, and then click the Update button (labeled #2 in the screenshot below). You can also click "Enter a date range" if you want to enter your own dates.

You can request it through a free service called interlibrary loan. Here are some instructions on how to request articles the library doesn't have.