EDLS496 (Senior Seminar: Education and Professional Ethics): Finding Articles on Your Topic

The best way to find articles on your topic is to use one of the APU Libraries' online article databases. Databases are searchable collections of articles from different journals, and they are often specialized by subject area.

The short video below explains more about what databases contain and how they work. (Note: this video was created by the RMIT University Library in Melbourne, Australia.)

Once you've got a grasp of how databases work, use the links below to access recommended databases for EDLS496. I've also included instructions for locating full text articles when they're not available in the database you're using.

All APU Library databases can be accessed through the Libraries' web site. To get to them, go to the APU Libraries home page, then click on "All Databases."

You can access databases by title using the alphabetical links, or you can use the subject menu to see a list of databases recommended for your topic.

Databases are collections of articles and documents. You can use a database to find articles on your topic from a variety of journals. Many of the articles you find through the Libraries' online databases will include an electronic copy of the article that you can print, save, or email.

The databases below are specifically recommended for education research. If your topic also falls under another discipline, like religion or sociology, you may also need to look in databases for those subjects. Use the drop-down subject menu on our "All Databases" page to find recommended databases.

Articles in peer-reviewed journals have a number of characteristics that make them authoritative sources:

1. They are written by people with advanced education and qualifications in the discipline.
2. Their methodology and content are reviewed by other subject experts before publication.
3. They are published in scholarly journals that generally do not include advertising.
4. They always include bibliographies of sources cited.

Most databases, including ERIC and PsycInfo, give you the option to limit your search to peer-reviewed articles. As you become a more sophisticated researcher, you should get into the habit of actively looking for peer-reviewed articles on your topic.

There are a couple of ways to find articles that focus on the religious, moral, and ethical aspects of your topic.

The first method is to add additional keywords, like "moral," or "ethics," or "Christian," to whatever search you're doing. ERIC applies the subject terms "Moral Issues" and "Ethics" to articles that deal with the ethics or morality of education. So, you can add the string ((DE "Moral Issues") OR (DE "Ethics")) to any search to find articles that address morality or ethics--like this search for peer-reviewed journal articles in ERIC that use the terms (DE "Moral Issues") OR (DE "Ethics")) AND (DE "Special Education").

PsycINFO uses the subjects "Ethics," "Morality," and "Values." As with ERIC, you can add those terms to your search to focus it, like this: (DE "Ethics" OR DE "Morality" OR DE "Values") AND (DE "Special Education").

The second method is to do a search for your topic in a religion database. APU actually has several of these databases; I'd recommend starting with the following:

• ATLA Religion Database (mostly scholarly journals)
• Christian Periodical Index (these are mostly non-scholarly magazines and newspapers)
• ProQuest Religion (mix of scholarly and non-scholarly)
• Religious and Theological Abstracts (note that this database does not contain full text. If you want to access an article, copy and paste the citation into the Article Finder form to see if APU has a copy--or to request a copy through ArticleReach if we don't have it).