Education
The study of learning and developing knowledge, skills, values, and understanding through study, experience, and teaching.
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Overview
This overview provides a brief introduction to education, highlighting its major areas of study, related disciplines, and resources for exploring the field in greater depth.
What's education?
What's education?
Education is the study of learning and teaching processes. It aims to understand how individuals acquire knowledge and skills. It also examines the roles of teachers, schools, and educational policies in shaping these processes. It is the academic field that studies how people learn and how teaching happens.
Education is among the most widely studied disciplines worldwide, making it both a social science and an applied profession.
For an in-depth description of the field of education, see the article on education from the Encyclopedia Britannica.
What are the main subfields of education?
What are the main subfields of education?
Education studies cover a wide range of topical areas. However, most universities traditionally divide these topical areas into the following main areas of study:
- Curriculum and Instruction
- Early Childhood Education
- Educational Policy
- Educational Psychology
- Educational Technology
- Higher Education
- International Education
- Special Education
What other subjects are important to education research?
What other subjects are important to education research?
Education is an interdisciplinary field drawing from various academic disciplines, including:
- Anthropology
- Economics
- History
- Philosophy
- Public policy
- Psychology
- Sociology
Resources for new education majors.
Resources for new education majors.
If you’re thinking about majoring in education, these resources can provide useful background information and help guide your next steps. They explain what to expect from the major and the wide variety of career paths available to you.
- What You Need to Know About Becoming An Education Major – U.S. News & World Report
- Find Your Teacher Career Path – Teach.org
- Major Education – Big Future/College Board
Literature Reviews
After selecting a topic, conducting a literature review is an essential step in the research and writing process. Writing a literature review helps you:
- Understand how scholars have approached your topic
- Identify key debates and theoretical perspectives
- Recognize gaps in the existing research
- Situate your own work within the broader academic conversation.
But what are the best resources for a literature review if you are unfamiliar with the topic? The following databases are great places to start to help you locate major publications and relevant scholarship on education topics.
The Annual Reviews are peer-reviewed academic journals that publish comprehensive and critical literature review articles in many academic disciplines. Each year, a new volume consisting of a series of review articles written by leading experts in the field is released, providing overviews of the most important and influential research and scholarship in various disciplines.
Although the Annual Reviews does not offer dedicated reviews for communication, education, geography, or international relations, it does include bibliographies covering a variety of topics related to each discipline.
Oxford Bibliographies provides scholarly bibliographies in most social science disciplines, including education. Each bibliography includes authoritative books, journal articles, websites, and other materials selected and organized by academic scholars. These bibliographies can also help researchers begin building literature reviews by identifying important authors, major debates, foundational studies, and key publications on different education topics.
When searching for literature reviews, don’t overlook dissertations found in ProQuest Dissertations & Theses. Doctoral students are typically required to write extensive literature reviews. Each review will examine major debates, theories, methods, and key publications related to their research topic, which can help you identify important authors, major studies, useful keywords, and gaps in the existing research.
To learn more about finding resources for a literature review, see “How to Locate Resources for a Literature Review.”
Education Reference
Reference sources provide a convenient way to locate background information for research on critical education concepts, key people, or significant issues. This section lists major education reference materials by type.
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General Databases
Academic libraries subscribe to a wide range of research databases. EBSCO and ProQuest are the largest and most widely used subscription-based academic research databases. Most colleges and universities offer access to one or both platforms which provide multiple subject-specific databases. Although each has unique features, they share several key characteristics:
- Both are multidisciplinary research platforms that cover a broad range of academic disciplines.
- Both provide a single search interface for accessing dozens of subject-specific databases.
- Both offer access to diverse content, including e-books, scholarly and peer-reviewed journals, trade publications, magazines, newspapers, and images.
EBSCO is a major research database platform that allows users to search multiple EBSCO databases simultaneously. The difference between EBSCOhost and Academic Search is that Academic Search can be searched as part of the EBSCOhost platform or searched separately if your institution has a subscription. To check if your institution subscribes to EBSCOhost, use EBSCO’s Find your institution page.
ProQuest is a major database vendor and platform that provides access to hundreds of database collections. The ProQuest platform provides a multidisciplinary search with access to scholarly ebooks, journals, video and audio, newspapers, and more, all searchable simultaneously. ProQuest is unique in providing dissertations and theses, historical newspapers, and other primary sources.
Scholarly Databases
Scholarly research databases provide peer-reviewed academic journal articles, book reviews, and other scholarly resources authored by scholars, researchers, or academics who are experts in their fields. Unlike magazines which focus on current events and general-interest stories, articles in scholarly journals undergo rigorous peer-review before publication. The following is a list of the most important multidisciplinary scholarly research databases.
Google Scholar is a free academic search engine that helps researchers and students find scholarly literature across disciplines. It indexes journal articles, books, conference papers, theses, patents, and other resources from academic publishers, universities, and professional organizations.
- Unlike subscription databases, which publish lists of journals in their collections, Google Scholar does not provide a list of the journals, books, repositories, or conference proceedings it indexes.
- General databases such as EBSCO and ProQuest allow you to limit your results to peer-reviewed articles only. Google Scholar does not filter results for peer-reviewed articles.
- When off your school’s network, you must enable your institution’s Google Scholar library links (review process) to see full-text articles available in your institution. If Library Links are not enabled, you’ll only see paywalls, publisher links, and what’s available open-access in the public domain.
The International Bibliography of the Social Sciences (IBSS), compiled by the British Library of Political and Economic Science at the London School of Economics, provides access to a vast collection of scholarly literature in the social sciences. Covering multiple disciplines, IBSS includes references to journal articles, books, newspapers, and dissertations, with records dating back to 1951.
JSTOR is an important scholarly research database for the humanities, social sciences, and sciences. It provides the full text of articles from thousands of influential academic journals. In addition to journal articles, users can access eBooks, book chapters, images, and primary source documents. JSTOR also provides an AI research tool that provides key points and arguments of articles.
JSTOR contains the full text of more than 2,000 journals from 1,000 publishers, with publication dates ranging from 1665 to 2015 (for certain titles). JSTOR also provides:
- Free access to Early Journal Content published before the last 95 years in the United States or before the last 143 years if initially published internationally.
- A collection of nearly 150 open-access journals covering the humanities, social sciences, and sciences.
- JSTOR allows anyone to register for a free personal JSTOR account and provides access to 100 free monthly articles.
Project MUSE offers online access to a vast collection of scholarly journals, books, and academic resources in the humanities, social sciences, and arts. As a leading provider of digital humanities content, it features high-quality, peer-reviewed publications from prestigious university presses, scholarly societies, and academic publishers.
ProQuest Dissertations & Theses is a database of dissertations and theses from universities worldwide. It provides access to millions of full-text works across many disciplines, including the social sciences, humanities, sciences, and business. Each dissertation includes an abstract or summary that provides a concise overview of the research, its methodology, and key findings.
ScienceDirect is a leading full-text scholarly scientific database that provides journal articles and book chapters from more than 2,500 peer-reviewed journals and more than 11,000 books. It covers over 24 major subjects in the physical sciences and engineering, life sciences, health sciences, social sciences, and the humanities.
Social Sciences Full Text provides access to a wide range of scholarly literature in the social sciences. It covers many disciplines, including sociology, psychology, international relations, political science, anthropology, economics, and education.
Web of Science is a comprehensive, multidisciplinary research and citation index that provides access to a wide range of scientific, technical, social science, and humanities research. It maintains rigorous criteria for the journals and publications it indexes, ensuring that only high-quality, peer-reviewed content is included. Web of Science includes 98 million papers dating back to 1900.
Education Subject Databases
Searching general or multi-disciplinary databases can sometimes give you too many results. To narrow your focus, try using a database dedicated to education research. The list below highlights key databases for education journals and articles.
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Education Policy
Education policy refers to the laws, rules, decisions, and practices that shape how education systems operate. This includes policies related to schools, teaching, curriculum, funding, testing, access to education, student rights, and educational standards.
General Policy Databases
General public policy databases provide access to various types of education policy documents. The following three major policy databases aggregate thousands of reports, working papers, and policy briefs from governments, think tanks, and research organizations worldwide. These databases are especially useful for locating grey literature that does not appear in traditional academic journals.
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Major Education Policy Think Tanks
Think tanks such as the RAND Corporation and the Brookings Institution are valuable starting points for locating free education policy research. Here is an alphabetical listing of the Top Education Policy Think Tanks as listed by the last Global Go To Think Tank Index Report published by the Lauder Institute of the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School. Each offers freely accessible reports, briefs, and working papers on a wide range of education topics.
- American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research (AEI)
- Bay Area Council Economic Institute
- Brookings Institution
- Cato Institute
- Center for American Progress (CAP)
- Center for Education Policy Analysis (CEPA)
- Center for Education Policy Research (CEPR)
- Center for Education Policy, SRI International
- Center for International Higher Education (CIHE)
- Committee for Economic Development
- Consortium for Policy Research in Education (CPRE)
- Education Policy and Data Center (EPDC)
- Heritage Foundation
- Mathematica Policy Research (MPR)
- RAND Corporation
- Urban Institute
Education Journals
Scholarly journals are essential for academic research. However, not all scholarly journals are of the same quality. While peer review is a good starting point, researchers should also consider a journal's reputation and impact within its discipline. Journal Citation Reports (JCR) is considered one of the best tools to help researchers identify leading journals within a discipline.
Journal Citation Reports (JCR) is widely regarded as the leading subscription-based resource for identifying high-quality, peer-reviewed journals and assessing the impact, influence, and quality of scholarly journals across all academic disciplines. To learn more about JCR and journal impact, go to Journal Databases.
To review the JCR list of highly cited educational journals, go to Journal Citation Reports and choose Categories > Social Sciences, General > Education. Listed below are the top ten education journals that receive the highest number of citations from other scholars in 2024.
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Education News & Magazines
Education news sources and magazines highlight emerging research topics, issues, and trends in the field, sparking ideas for research questions and assignments. Remember that magazines are written for the general public and lack peer review.
Major Newspaper Education Sections
Major Online Education Magazines
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Education Video Databases
Educational videos give students and scholars a clearer window into teaching and learning. They show real classrooms, student interactions, and instructional strategies in ways that textbooks cannot. Seeing a concept modeled in action makes it far easier to grasp than reading about it alone.
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Education Statistics
Education statistics are essential for understanding the state of learning at every level, from individual classrooms to national systems. The following resources provide data on things such as enrollment, graduation rates, achievement gaps, funding, and teacher qualifications.
U.S. Education Statistics
The United States publishes a wealth of education statistics through federal agencies. These data sources track a broad range of indicators across K-12 and higher education.
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International Education Statistics
Several international organizations provide reliable and comprehensive statistical data. Listed below are the most important international education statistical resources.
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Research Methods
Research methods are the specific strategies, tools, and techniques researchers use to collect and analyze information to answer questions or solve problems. Research methods can be qualitative (interviews or observations), quantitative (numerical and statistical), or mixed methods (a mixture of both).
Sage Research Methods is an important resource for learning about research methods and can help you choose the methods best suited to your research question or project.
Sage Research Methods is an important resource for learning about research methods and can help you choose the methods best suited to your research question or project.
Sage Research Methods is a major subscription database that guides users in understanding research methodologies across different academic disciplines. It provides electronic access to reference books, journal articles, instructional videos, and other research methods resources.
The following resources provide in-depth information on various research design concepts, methodologies, and techniques specific to education.
The icons next to each resource indicate its access requirements.
Open source/ Free
Subscription required
The Pygmalion Effect is the idea that people often perform better when others expect them to succeed. In education, this means students may improve academically when teachers hold high expectations and provide encouragement, attention, and support. The concept suggests that positive expectations can influence behavior and outcomes. Learn More...
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