International Education: Getting Started

Click on the image below to see a video tutorial on library services and how to search ERIC. Scroll down for strategies to locate information about international education in particular.

See the following example. Use the first row for a topic you want to focus on such as reading comprehension.

To look for articles with an international perspective, use foreign countries in the Subject Heading field.  See just the first two rows in the example below.

To find articles with a specifical perspective, search for keywords such as Jamaica*, Caribbean, etc. For the narrower results, use all three rows.

 

Publicly Accessible Internet Resources

a. International Organizations that Focus on Education

•  
  • Institute of International Education
  • Academy for Educational Development - Education
  • Association for the Development of Education in Africa (ADEA)
  • Commonwealth of Learning
  • Education International
  • Organization of American States - Education
  • United Nations
  • United Nations Children's Fund
  • UNESCO - Education 
  • UNESCO Institute for Statistics 
  • International Bureau of Education, see World Data on Education 
  • Country Profiles - provides basic data concerning elementary, secondary, and tertiary education for countries of the world.
  • World Bank - Choose Topcs, then Education.

 b. Ministries/Departments of Education

•  
  • Foreign Governments - list from Northwestern University Library.

 c. Statistical Sources  See also: Foriegn Governments above

•  
  •  World Bank
    see Topics, then choose Education, then Statistics. Includes country data, thematic data, world bank lending for education
  • International Statistics Agency
    List from U.S. Census Bureau of the main statistical agency of each country.
  • International Comparisions in Education - NCSE (IAED)
  • World Development Indicators
    Includes child employment, children out of school, literacy rates, persistence to grade 5, personal computers, primary completion rate, progression to secondary school, public spending on education, ratio of female to make enrollments, school enrollment, trained teachers

d. International Financial Institutions

•  
  •  African Development Bank
  • Asian Development Bank
  • European Bank for Reconstruction and Development
  • Inter-American Development Bank
  • International Monetary Fund
  • WorldBank
  • Education

e. Study Abroad

•  
  • Open Doors - Institute of International Education
    Much publically accepted data. Penn is a member. Students, Faculty, and Staff at Penn may write IIE for access to restricted portions of Open Doors.
  • Council on International Educational Exchange

These subject headings can be used when searching in the NovaCat catalog:

Education--[country name]--
Education, Higher--[country name]
Education and state--[country name]
Education, Bilingual--[country name]
Education, Rural--[country name]--
Education, Secondary--[country name]--
Education--Social aspects--[country name]--

Educational change--[country name]--
Educational indicators--[Country name]
Educational indicators--Developed countries

Community and school--[country name]--
High School students--[country name]--
Nationalism and education--[country name]--
School management and organization--[country name]--
Women--Education--[country name]--

ERIC -- "How Do I?" videos on using the ERIC database:

• Author Searching -- Full Name  (45 sec.)
• Author Searching – Last Name, First Initial (1 min.)
• Author Searching – Last Name (30 sec.)
• Boolean Operators (2 min.) -- AND, OR, NOT
• Descriptors – Combining (1 min.)
• EJ and ED Accession Numbers (45 sec.)
• Empirical Research (1 min.)
• ERIC – Using Public vs Subscription Version (1 min. 30 sec.)
• FindIt (1 min. 30 sec.)
• Finding Full Text Documents (1 min. 30 sec.)
• Keyword vs. Descriptor Search (1 min. 45 sec.)
• Narrowing Search Results (1 min. 15 sec.)
• Phrase Searching (1 min.)
• Primary and Secondary Resources (1 min. 45 sec.)
• Thesaurus – Finding the Right Descriptors (2 min. 15 sec.)
• Truncation (1 min. 30 sec.)
• Wildcards (45 sec.)
• APA Citing of ERIC