"Don't believe everything you read!" As teacher leaders, you try to help students with their critical thinking skills. In graduate school, the advice is the same but the task is more complex. There are hundreds of journals in the field, competing views, scads of secondary sources, millions of web sites. Making sense of it all takes some effort. The quality of your research depends on the sources you find and the sense you make of them. In the last lesson, you learned how to access resources. In this lesson, you learn what to make of them.
Not all resources are created equal. As you progress through the MTL program, you'll see or hear something on the news or the radio that will capture your interest. But if you're going to claim to have researched the topic, you'll need to visit some primary sources.
Take a closer look at this web page to learn How to Distinguish Between Primary and Secondary Sources. Knowing how to tell the difference is important as you determine who you trust. Also, take a look at the information Diana Hacker shares about evaluating sources.
Most of your professors will tell you the name of their favorite search engine. Many will admit they use the Internet to look things up online. Certainly all of them will tell you that merely doing an Internet search is not good enough for a research project. In fact, it's only the beginning.
As your research progresses, be certain to visit Brookens Library and take advantage of their electronic databases.
When you find a terrific resource that is relevant to your topic, think of it as a treasure map. You can use it to track down some of the references at the end of the best papers you've read. This approach is an extremely productive way to find additional information on your topic. Some people like to start with the most recent publications and work backward chronologically. When you see the same paper cited over and over again, you can be fairly certain it's a good one and worth reading for yourself. In addition, reading the work on which the first paper was based will deepen your understanding of that one, too.
If you need help, be sure to visit the library's tutorial on education-specific resources. Also, take the time to learn some advanced search strategies to help you when you get too many or too few citations. Advanced searches also help you find the most relevant works on your topic.
This guide from Cornell University will help you evaluate the resources you find. You will need this information to proceed with both your individual and your group projects.
| Many thanks to the Graphics Communications classes at City College of San Francisco for making the icons used on this page and for making them publicly available. |