Highlighted Databases: Philosophy and Education

The study of Philosophy and Education embraces exploration of the fundamental nature, purpose, and methods of teaching and learning. Taking a step further, how can we  advance humanistic and critical thinking about education, and also philosophical psychology? In August, we highlight resources that support study, teaching and research in Philosophy and Education, including aesthetics, ethics, social and political philosophy.

Academic Search Premier is a multidisciplinary database providing full text for more than 4,600 journals, including nearly 3,900 peer-reviewed titles. PDF backfiles to 1975 or further are available for well over one hundred journals. See also Academic Search Complete (CU), a scholarly, multidisciplinary full-text database, with more than 8,500 full-text periodicals, including more than 7,300 peer-reviewed journals. The database features PDF content going back as far as 1887.

Dissertations and Theses Global is a searchable and browsable database of dissertations and theses from around the world, spanning from 1743 to the present day. It also offers full text for graduate works added since 1997, along with selected full text for works written prior to 1997. It contains a significant amount of new international dissertations and theses both in citations and in full text. Designated as an official offsite repository for the U.S. Library of Congress, PQDT Global offers comprehensive historic and ongoing coverage for North American works and significant and growing international coverage from a multiyear program of expanding partnerships with international universities and national associations.

e-Book Collection (EBSCO) provides access to more than 2.4 million e-books, including 300,000+ DRM-free titles.

Education Full Text provides comprehensive coverage of an international range of English-language periodicals, monographs, and yearbooks. Indexing coverage begins June 1983; abstracts are included beginning spring 1994; full text of some journals is available beginning in January 1996.

Education Index Retrospective provides cover-to-cover indexing for an international range of English-language periodicals and yearbooks; coverage from 1929 through mid-1983.

Education Research Complete provides indexing and abstracts for more than 2,100 journals, as well as full text for more than 1,200 journals, and includes full text for nearly 500 books and monographs.

ERIC, the Education Resource Information Center, provides access to education literature and research dating back to 1966. The database provides access to information from journals included in the Current Index of Journals in Education, and a wide variety of material, such as conference proceedings, government documents, theses, dissertations, reports, audiovisual media, bibliographies, directories, books, and monographs, in Resources in Education. ERIC is available via Ebsco, Proquest, and the government site.

Essay and General Literature Index offers indexed essays and articles contained in collections of essays and miscellaneous works published in the United States, Great Britain, and Canada; areas covered include the humanities and social sciences, with subject coverage ranging from economics, political science, and history to criticism of literary works, drama, and film.

Humanities Full Text  brings full text (starting 1995) plus abstracts and bibliographic indexes (starting 1984) of noted scholarly sources in the humanities, as well as lesser known specialized magazines. The database indexes, abstracts and delivers the full text of feature articles, interviews, obituaries, bibliographies, original works of fiction, drama, and poetry, book reviews, and reviews of ballets, dance programs, motion pictures, musicals, operas, plays, radio and television programs.

Humanities Index is an "international abstracting and indexing tool for research in the humanities, covering over internationally respected humanities journals and weekly magazines published in the UK and other English speaking countries, as well as quality newspapers published in the UK."

JSTOR is an online archive of over 1,200 leading scholarly journals across the humanities, social sciences, and sciences, as well as select monographs and other materials valuable for academic work. Journals are always included from volume 1, issue 1 and include previous and related titles. The most recently published issues (the past 3-5 years) are generally not available through JSTOR, though they usually are through other e-sources.

Past Masters contains several searchable full-text collections of writings by key philosophers and thinkers from ancient times to the present, including Anselm, Aristotle, Augustine, Bentham, Berkeley, Calvin, Nicholas of Cusa, Descartes, John Dewey, Hegel, Hobbes, Hume, Leibniz, Locke, Luther, Mill, Nietzche, Peirce, Plato, Ricardo, Rousseau, Adam Smith, Thomas Aquinas, Wittgenstein and many others.

Philosopher's Index is an index with abstracts for journal articles, books, contributions to anthologies, and book reviews. It covers the major fields of philosophy, including aesthetics, epistemology, ethics, logic, metaphysics, and the philosophy of related fields such as education, history, law and religion.

PhilPapers: Philosophical Research Online is a comprehensive directory of online philosophy articles and books by academic philosophers" that monitors journals "in many areas of philosophy, as well as archives and personal pages.

POIESIS is produced by the Philosophy Documentation Center,  and "provides access to the full text of hundreds of issues of a selection of philosophy journals and series", including  "journals and series published by philosophical societies, departments, and university presses in several countries."

Professional Development Collection provides a highly specialized collection of nearly 520 education journals, including more than 350 peer-reviewed titles and contains more than 200 educational reports.

ProQuest Ebook Central: Academic Complete provides authoritative, full-text e-books in a wide range of subject areas along with powerful tools to find, use, and manage the information.

Social Sciences Full Text covers the latest concepts, theories and methods from both applied and theoretical aspects of the social sciences, this full-text database includes the most important English-language social science journals.

For additional resources, including key books, journals, and websites,  please see the Philosophy and Education Research Guide.