Middle Level / Secondary Education

Young Adult literature, curriculum materials, and citing sources for secondary education.

Library Research Guide

Keywords

Good keywords are essential to good research. Develop a list of keywords before you start searching.

To start the list, ask yourself two questions:

1. What do I know about my topic?

2. What do I want to know about my topic?

Write the answers to those questions using single words or simple phrases. These become your keywords.

Developing this list is an iterative process. Your list of keywords may change as you learn more information through your research.

Use keywords! The databases and catalog don’t understand sentences or questions. Be flexible! Different words will work in different databases.

Education Full Text
Contains articles related to education in general and thousands of articles on secondary education. Note: the database is not really all full-text (though the title might make you think otherwise) - you'll need to use the Get-It button to access articles.

ERIC (Educational Resources Information Center)
Publication Dates Covered: 1966 - present Paid for by K-State Libraries
Non-K-Staters: use this link
Sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education, ERIC provides coverage of journal articles, conferences, meetings, government documents, theses, dissertations, reports, audiovisual media, bibliographies, directories, and books on education-related topics. Links to some full-text articles. ERIC also has an excellent thesaurus.
PsycInfo (APA)
Publication Dates Covered: 1800s - present Paid for by K-State Libraries
Contains citations and abstracts of the world’s literature in psychology, behavioral sciences, and related subjects. It includes citations to journal articles from more than 1,900 journal titles, technical reports, and dissertations of psychological relevance from more than 50 countries. Also includes books and book chapters.
Children’s Literature Comprehensive Database
Paid for by K-State Libraries
The CLCD is a complete source of information about children’s books, audio recordings, and films. Can search by age, genre, grade, reading metrics, and language. Also includes curriculum tools for lesson planning. Contains book awards and reviews from major publications such as Booklist, Horn Book, and Kirkus. All reviews of books are full text searchable.