History: Teaching Resources: Journals

The Social Studies -   Articles for educators at all levels dealing with social studies, the social sciences, history and interdisciplinary studies. Also available in print from Hunter Library's Current Periodicals.

The History Teacher - Devoted to the teaching of history in the secondary & higher education classroom.  Also available in print from Hunter Library's Current Periodicals.

Magazine of History - Each issue focuses on a theme in U.S. history; articles draw upon recent scholarship, survey the historiography, and provide practical teaching strategies.

Teaching History - Each issue focuses on a theme in U.S. history; articles draw upon recent scholarship, survey the historiography, and provide practical teaching strategies.

Hunter Library's databases allow you to search across thousands of journals for articles related to your topic.  Start with the education database list.  The most commonly used databases for education research are ERIC and Education Source. Databases are very useful when you have a topic in mind and want to locate articles. 

Usually people like to start with a keyword search when searching databases, but you should be aware that databases do not handle natural language well, so it pays to pay attention to the language the database uses.  Most commonly this language appears in the “subject,” or “descriptor” fields.  Your searching will be much more effective if you use the same language the database is uses.

Example: If you scan the result list for the keyword search “achievement gap” in ERIC, in the descriptors field you will notice that the database uses the term “student achievement.”  You will also find lots of other terms in the descriptors fields that might help you focus your search, such as: “racial bias,” “bilingual children” and “gender bias.”  Scanning your result list is a great way to get ideas for keyword searches. 

You can string together keywords to search databases, just as you do with Internet search engines, but when you search a database, you should put the word “and” in between your keywords.   Example:  “african americans” and “achievement gap.” 

You can also use the word “or” to broaden your search.

• Example:  (“african americans” or hispanics) and “achievement gap. 

Phrases:  Just as with most internet search engines, enclosing your phrases in quotes will produce a more efficient result list.

• Example:  “african americans” not african americans

Parentheses:  Use parentheses when you structure a search with both “and” and “or” commands.

• Example:  (“african americans” or hispanics) and “achievement gap."

Truncation:  Wild card searching will search for a root word and all variant endings of that word. Most databases use an * for wild card searches.

• Example:  education* searches for both education and educational.