Information seeking in Education

The guide provides an overview of the specific features of information seeking in the field of education. The information is particularly suitable for students working on their thesis or dissertation, but also for more advanced information seekers who need a revision.

Table of contents

How to start?

Sources for study and research are easier to find when you take the time to brainstorm keywords and use standard concepts in your discipline. 

The publication culture of your discipline will influence the choice of relevant databases. So you need to know the format in which the research in your discipline is reported.

  • Previously, much educational knowledge has been published in books.
  • Books are still published, but today the main type of publication in the field is articles in scientific journals. 

NB. Not all publications in the field of education have been peer-reviewed, i.e. they are not scientific. For example, general non-fiction books aimed at the general public and articles in professional journals may provide perspectives for your own thesis or serve as a source for an introduction, but a scientific source is used when looking for a reference for your research. Guidance on assessing the scholarly nature and reliability of sources can be found in the Library Tutorial.

Search terms


The most important search terms are 1) terms commonly used in research, which can be found in various search results, and 2) subject headings, which describe the content of publications.

Reference works

Search for research terms in reference books, handbooks and encyclopaedias. You can use these, for example:

Glossaries

You can look up subject headings in glossaries or look at the sources you find to see what subject headings are associated with them.

The most common names for databases' own subject glossaries are thesaurus, subject terms or subjects.

An example of the use of Eric Thesaurus is shown in the figure.


Click here to view the accessible version of this interactive content

Different types of databases

Publications in the field of education have been collected in databases dedicated to the discipline, most of which consist of articles.  Databases of neighbouring disciplines, multidisciplinary databases, book databases, JYKDOK article search, and Google Scholar are also usable.

The advantages of searching in your own field are that they are specialised in saving and searching for information specifically related to education. This means that the information is more selective, you can apply relevant filters, and the number of search results is usually sufficient to go through everything.

Multidisciplinary databases give an overview of the amount of research that has been done on a subject. There are usually many search results and it can be difficult to narrow down a search.

 

Main databases

 

Other databases 

 

Multidisciplinary databases

It is usable to search in your own discipline. For example, in Scopus: do a search > select Subject Area: social sciences from the left.

 

Book databases

  • In JYKDOK, you can find print and e-books by searching under the "Books, journals and databases" tab.
  • Finna database (Finnish libraries, archives and museums)

E-books can also be searched from multidisciplinary and publisher-specific databases:

Other information sources

JYKDOK International articles search

JYKDOK's international articles search is ideal for quick searches and when you already know the name of an article and want to find it. Search results can be filtered to peer-reviewed articles. For more specific searches, you can use databases in your discipline.

 

Google Scholar

Google Scholar can be used as a search tool in addition to databases, as long as you remember that, despite its name, its results include more than just scientific information. Therefore, the scientific nature of a publication must always be assessed separately! Results cannot be limited to peer-reviewed publications/articles.

 

Theses and dissertations

Remember that masters' theses are not used as scientific sources, as they rarely correspond to the level of scientific research.

Information about research methods

 

Other tips

Instructions and guides

 

Need help?