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Conducting the SoTL Literature Review

Reviewing SoTL publications relevant to your study and teaching helps orient you to the types of scholarship, styles of journals, and the current research in the areas of teaching and learning you are interested in. Consuming SoTL publications is beneficial not only when you are preparing your own study, but also as a professional practice to stay updated as to innovations and approaches to teaching and learning at the higher education level.

These are searchable databases that can lead to SoTL publications; not all are available at each CUNY but many are. Contact your campus Education Librarian for assistance!

  • Education Source
    As the complete source of education scholarship, Education Source covers all levels of education – from early childhood to higher education – as well as all educational specialties, such as multilingual education, health education and testing. Coverage goes back to 1929 and includes the full text of more than 1700 journals and information from international array of English-language periodicals, monographs, yearbooks and more.
  • ERIC Education Index
    The Educational Resources Information Center is a collection of more than 1 million records of journal articles and other education-related materials. Other materials found in this database include books, conference papers, technical reports, policy papers, and publications from various organizations. These items are not available in full text from ERIC.
  • SCOPUS
    Scopus is the largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature: scientific journals, books and conference proceedings. It delivers a comprehensive overview of the world’s research output in the fields of science, technology, medicine, social sciences, and arts and humanities.
  • GOOGLE SCHOLAR: Oftentimes Google Scholar does not provide the full-text and will link you to the publisher’s web site where you will be prompted to pay. DON’T PAY for an article-check your campus library portal.
  • ERIC (EBSCO)
    Indexes scholarly journals and magazines in all areas of education, from early intervention (birth to age three), preschool, K-12 (public and private), and higher education. Includes bilingual, special, gifted, and computer education.
  • PsycInfo
    Scholarly articles in psychology, plus medicine, psychiatry, education, social work, criminology, social science, business, & organizational behavior.
  • Academic Search Premier
  • Includes articles from scholarly journals and popular magazines covering a wide variety of disciplines with the humanities, social sciences, and sciences.
  • Professional Development Collection
    Full-text articles about education, covering children’s health and development, pedagogical theory, and current topics in education.

This is a collection of journals that focus on SoTL across the Disciplines:

Many journals that focus on online/distance education are a good source for SoTL research as well. This is a particularly comprehensive list of such journals.

Discipline specific education research, also known as DBER (Discipline-Based Educational Research), can be a great source of SoTL studies.

Go to these links for a list of discipline-specific SoTL journals:

Accounting to Computer Science  

Economics to Information Systems

Languages to Political Science 

Psychological Science to Theater

These are other library guides which have lists of discipline-based SoTL journals: