Academic journal searching with Proquest

 I tend to use Proquest a lot for researching so I know that I will get something of value here.

Inquiry based learning and middle school and history- returned 1 result which I already had from my google scholar search. Hmm, not a good start.

For the next search I didn’t put in middle school and returned 26 results- there were only about 2 articles that could be of use, as per a lot of my other searches a lot of science related articles were included. For the next search I added ‘not science’. Adding ‘not science’ narrowed my hits down to 13.

Next I tried using the simple term ‘guided inquiry’ to try and find articles to broaden my understanding of this type of inquiry. I got 56 hits, very heavy on the emphasis of science. I will try the ‘and not science’ search again. 

This technique only returned 17 articles, there were a few that could be used.

Next I tried a different approach of searching for the name of an author but not in the author field. I am hoping that I will get results of papers where people have included that author in their paper or base their research on their models.

I will search for both Kuhlthau, and Callison. 

Kuhlthau- 29 documents- Bingo! Almost all of these are valuable, now let’s try Callison. 

Callison returned 14 documents, a couple of them look like they could be useful.

I was also curious to see what would happen if I used the ‘quick find’ function on the QUT library page. I put in ‘Inquiry based learning’ and got 124,002 results.

I then used the Advanced search function and put in a date range and ticked peer reviewed and full text and narrowed it down to 93,087 hits.

Next I used the –science command and returned 30,925 hits. There seems to be some wonderful articles here, although there are still way to many to go through I had a bit of fun browsing and found some great stuff.

I added +”middle school” to the last command and narrowed my search to 1,513 results, much more manageable.

There wasn't really a great deal of difference with how many articles were returned between A+ Education and Proquest. They both had some articles of interest.  I will definitely be using some of the ones found today in my essay. 

It really is beginning to look like there isn't much in the way of history specific articles. I'm very jealous of my peers that are working with the Science department. On second thoughts, they would have even more to try and sift through than me.

I have realised that  this is a real weakness of mine when it comes to searching for things. I collect to many things then spend too long reading through them all before synthesising my knowledge. I feel really stressed at that point I have to let go and get writing. Often when I start writing my essay I feel the compulsion to go back through the literature that I've already read again and again to make sure I'm not missing anything and I'm doing it justice. I'll work on gaining confidence and therefore speed in the future.

Kuhlthau's ISP

Feelings- I have a clear sense of direction but wish that I could hurry myself up and stop the collection process so I'm still a bit anxious.


Thoughts-I know exactly what I'm looking for in a 'good' resource.


Actions- Pretty much at the end of the exploration process now onto the collection and documentation of my k nowledge