Doctoral School:Information & Literature Searching Session 1

Nazlin Bhimani

Research Support & Special Collections Librarian

The course will develop your capacity to:

Adopt effective information/literature searching strategies

Discover and evaluate critically a wide range of literature and other resources relevant to your research

Use a range of search interfaces to find resources through the library catalogues, indexing and abstracting services, web portals and general internet search engines

Evaluate opportunities to use social software/emerging technologies in the literature search process

Organise and manage a wide range of resources using reference management software

Learning Outcomes

Plan

Day 1• Introduction• The Research Process, Searching Strategies, Resources at

the IOE, Group Exercise, Education Databases, Reference Management Software & Hands on practice

Day 2• Other Social Sciences Databases, Citation Searching &

Hands on practice

Day 3• Using Other Libraries (Senate House, British Library & other

research libraries), Keeping Current using Zetoc, Open Access Resources including Datasets and Hands on practice

Managing Informationbibliographic management software

• is a bibliographic reference manager, which allows you to maintain a personal "library" of all your references to books, journal articles, theses, websites, etc. It can reproduce those references in your own writing - assignment, thesis, article, reading list etc - in hundreds of different bibliographic styles. You will need to purchase EndNote. Teach yourself EndNote.

is a Firefox (browser) add-on that collects, manages, and cites research sources. It lives in your web browser where you do your work, and all it's free. Zotero allows you to attach PDFs, notes and images to your citations, organize them into collections for different projects, and create bibliographies. Teach yourself Zotero.

is another one of the bibliographic management software packages available freely.  Like EndNote and Zotero, it can be an extremely valuable tool when doing research and composing papers. The program stores your references, figures, and PDFs all in one place on your computer, which makes retrieving these items easy. The social networking feature lets you network with researchers worldwide. Teach yourself Mendeley.

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Managing Informationbibliographic management software

• EndNote is supported at the IOE.

(Workshops (Introductory and Advanced) are advertised on the EndNote LibGuide)

• Read the blogpost “EndNote, Mendely or Zotero? That is the question.” on Newsam News

• Watch videos or follow on-line tours and/or teach yourself the reference management software by following the instructions on the LibGuides at libguides.ioe.ac.uk)

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The Literature Search

Definition:

“. . . a systematic and thorough search of all types of published literature in order to identify as many items as possible that are relevant to a particular topic.”

Gash, S. (2000)  Effective Literature Searching for Research. 2nd ed. Aldershot:  Gower Publishing

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When do I stop?

How long, how far, how detailed, how much . . . and when do I stop?!

• DO NOT allow the literature review to service your research; the literature review should frame/scaffold your research

• The WHY is more important than the HOW

• The bibliography demonstrates ACADEMIC RIGOUR

- (use diverse sources – both primary/original sources and secondary sources to scaffold your argument; demonstrate creativity in the use of new scholarship in new ways (TV, video, film, podcasts, vodcasts (interviews etc), blogs etc)

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The Research Process:7 steps1. Identify research question

2. Background reading

3. Fine tune the question

4. Type & amount of information

5. Choose access tools

6. Examine results

7. Evaluate sources

…repeat as necessary

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Sample research question

What research has been done on bullying and classroom teaching?

How have primary school teachers managed peer aggression UK classrooms in the last decade?

How have London primary school teachers implemented the anti-bullying policy recommended by the DfE since 2008?

Pupil behaviour

Racial harassment

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Bullying

Mental cruelty

Aggression

Violence

BEHAVIOUR

Antisocial behaviour

Disruptive Behaviour

Vandalism

RACISM

Interpersonal conflict

pupils attitude Teacher’s

attitude

Teacher’s behaviour

Teacher effectiveness

Teaching skills

Classroom discipline

Teacher-student relationship

Teaching practice

Educational materials

Educational environment

Curriculum development

Racial discrimination

Juvenile delinquents

Classroom management

Educational policy

Emotional & Behavioural difficulties

Classroom teaching

Classroom behaviour Teacher’s

role

Teacher’s knowledge & experience

Education

Psychology

Social Sciences

Learning strategies

Peer violence

Government/Law

Government/Law

Behavioural Sciences

(Psychology)

Constructing a search

1. Dictionaries, Encyclopaedias and Thesauri to collect– Individual keywords– Consider spelling e.g. behaviour vs. behavior– Terminology e.g. High School vs. Secondary School etc.– One or two words? E.g. Headmaster or head master?

2. Background Reading– Key concepts and theories

3. Truncation & Symbol – using * or $ with the root word to bring up permutations– e.g. poss? poss* or sometimes poss$

4. Logic– Analyse your topic into constituent components/concepts and use the phrase

search e.g. “Theory of Mind”

5. Type of material & date range– Data, case studies, peer-reviewed journal articles, archives, special collections, 5

years, 10 years, historic account etc.

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Another example:Gender issues in school science achievement

Gender or girl* or women or sex differences or sex discrimination or sex bias or boy* (or ……)

Science or physics or chemistry or biology (or ……)

Achievement or underachievement or success or failure or attitudes or teacher expectations (or ……)

Group exercise

1. Assessment of dance and drama

2. The effective use of humour in the classroom

3.  Technical education and vocational training in Nigeria and Ghana:  the Colonial Legacy

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Information Resources

• The IOE Library Catalogue: E-books: Dawsonera E-journals Search

• IOE Eprints• DERA• Archives• Education Databases

BEI, ERIC & AEI, • Other relevant SS databases

IBSS, ASSIA, Web of Knowledge, Dissertations and Theses and ETHOS

• Other Libraries: Senate House, British Library, SCONUL Scheme

Questions?

Library Support is available from:

IOE LibGuides http://libguides.ioe.ac.uk

IOE LibAnswers http://libanswers.ioe.ac.uk

Text us: +44 (0)20 3322 1810  

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