For this assignment you must select a disposition and write a short paper where you defend your choice of the disposition. You will need to find at least 5 recent articles.

The boxes below will help you:

• Identify relevant keywords for your disposition
• Build a search in the library databases

After selecting your disposition, you'll need to brainstorm possible keywords for your search.

Read over your chosen disposition and think critically about the types of research that may relate to it.  It may be helpful to go back to the Dispositions document in the assignment area of your course.  Look at the subareas for the disposition and identify key terms that may have been used in Education research studies.  These terms can be used for keyword searches in the library databases.

The concepts used in the dispositions are very broad, so you will need to brainstorm the specific focus you want to take to defend your choice of disposition.

Here is an example of a disposition and possible keywords:

Disposition 2: The educator understands how students learn and develop and can provide a variety of learning opportunities adapted to diverse learners that support all students' intellectual, social, and personal development.

• diverse
• diversity
• multiculturalism
• culture
• multiple intelligences
• differentiated instruction
• differentiation
• individualized instruction
• cognitive style
• background
• family
• socioeconomic

The keywords you select will depend on the specific focus you want to take when you defend your choice of disposition.

The next step is to use your keywords to build a search within a library database. While each database has a unique collection, and may look slightly different, these general steps will work in every library database.

Below is an example search using the keywords provided in the box above.

1. From the library website, go to the Research by Subject box. 
   
   
    
2. Click on Research by Subject and choose Education.  Now you will see the Education Research guide. This guide has links to the databases used most often for Education research.
    
3. Select a database. This search example uses Education Source, one of our Education subject databases. Scroll down to the Education Databases box.  Click the Education Source link.  You may need to log in with your myWalden user name and password.
   
   NOTE: There are many databases you can use for this assignment. You may want to try more than one database, since each database has a different collection of articles.
   
   See the bottom of this box for a list of relevant databases, and more information about each one.
    
4. Type your keywords into the search boxes. Place keywords for a single concept into one box, using "or" between each one. This tells the database to find articles that have any of those terms. Place the asterisk (*) at the end of the root of a word to find all possible word endings (e.g. divers* finds diverse, diversity, diversified, etc.)
   
   For example, first search box:  
   
   divers* or multicultural
   
    Second search box:  
   
   differentiated instruction
   
   
      
   
    Learn more about OR and other Boolean operators.
   
    
5. Add limits to your search. The limits you choose will depend on what you need to find. Check the Scholarly Peer-Reviewed box, if the database you are using includes the option. You can also add a date limit.
   
   
    
   • Learn more about database limiters
   • Learn more about Peer Review
    
6. Click the Search button. See if the articles are relevant by reading titles and abstracts.

Education Databases