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Education: Plan Your Search

This guide contains resources and guidance to help students studying education subjects.

Plan your search

 

At university you are expected to find and use scholarly information:

  • in your assignments
  • to prepare for class
  • to explore new theories and ideas

However, to find scholarly information you need to search in a particular way to get good results.

When you receive your assessment details, the first thing to do is to read it carefully and fully understand the requirements of the task. You need to plan your search before you use the library system. The planning involves the following 6 steps.

Step 1. Identify key concepts

 

Breaking down task topic into key concepts.

Example topic: 

Environmental education in English language teaching (ESL or EFL).

Key concepts:

environment English language teaching

Step 2. Identify synonyms

 

Researchers may use different terms to refer to these concepts. So it's important to think of what other terms could be used.

environment English langauge teaching

ecology

green  

nature 

 

ESL

English as a second language

EFL

English as a foreign language

education

training

curriculum

Tips icon

Tips: 

Some resources to help with brainstorming: 

  • Google & Wikipedia
  • Dictionaries & Thesauri
  • Reference books & Encyclopedias

Step 3. Connect keywords & synonyms 

 

Boolean Operators are words that connect search terms (keywords) to perform a search that a database can understand. ‘AND’ and ‘OR’ are commonly used Boolean Operators.
AND finds results that use both keywords. Use it to connect key concepts.
OR finds results that use either of the keywords. Use it to connect synonyms/alternative words.

Watch this short video and understand more about Boolean Operators.

Phrase searching and truncation can be also helpful! 

Use “     “ to do phrase searching. It narrows the search to retrieve results in which the exact phrase appears, e.g. “social media”.

Use * at the end of a root word to search for variable endings of a root word, e.g. environment* can find environment, environmental, and environmentalism.

Step 4. Build effective searches 

 

You now have the key concepts, synonyms, and connectors. You can build effective searches according to the previous steps.

Examples:

  1. Environment* AND (“English as a second language” OR ESL) AND teach*

  2. Environment* AND (“English as a second language” OR ESL) AND teach* AND (“high school” OR “secondary school”)

Note: Searching is exploring.  You need to modify your searches as well try different searches until you get relevant results.

Step 5: Start searching

 

You will need to find different types of information during your studies. These may include: 

  • Books & book chapters
  • Journal articles
  • Newspaper articles
  • Standards & statistics
  • Reports
  • Grey literature

The type of information you are looking for will determine where you search, and how you search. 

Using the steps above will help you find most of these information types, but there are also other places to look.

Explore this study guide or contact us via the link below to discover more. 

Step 6: Evaluating information

 

Not all the information you get from a search will be useful. A successful search will show results relevant to your topic. If your results are not relevant, go back and try different keywords in your search.

Find relevant results by checking the: 

Even if your information is relevant, it might not be good quality. Check if it passes the C.R.A.P. Test before you use it.