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Indigenous Education K-12

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How to Search Summon

To find journal articles, theses, and reviews, search for your topics in Summon - the first search that appears on the UBC Library homepage

Guided Keyword Searches through Summon

Try this strategy to begin your research in Summon from the UBC Library homepage:

1) Combine a Keyword for the concept of "Indigenous" with another Keyword for the concept of Education:

  • "First Nations" or Aboriginal or Native or Indigenous or "Indians of North America" or Inuit

AND

  • education
  • primary
  • teach
  • elementary
  • curricula
  • secondary

 

2). Add a third Keyword to introduce specific subjects:

  • "First Nations" AND Science AND Education
  • Métis AND Beadwork AND Curric?
  • Indigenous AND Mathematics AND Primary


3). Select "Journal Article" from the search filters in the toolbar to the left:

 

Advanced Search
You can also search Summon in more depth through the Advanced Search function. This includes optional AND, OR, and NOT fields, as well as the ability to filter by publication date, content type, discipline, and language, to limit your result to peer reviewed publications, and to exclude certain formats (newspapers, reviews, etc) from your results.

Example:

 


TIP:
Use quotation marks to search for a phrase 

   Example: "First Nations", "ice fishing"
Use a question mark to truncate a term to search words with the same stem. 
   Example: curric? searches curriculum, curricula, etc


For more information on terminology, please consult X̱wi7x̱wa's Aboriginal Studies guide to Terminology.

Why Databases?

Searching within databases can be more time consuming than using Summon, but there are advantages to this research strategy: 

  • Databases are usually limited by academic discipline, which means you will retrieve fewer results but they may be more relevant.
  • Databases are highly structured, which means you can perform complex searches using controlled vocabulary.

The following databases are useful for finding articles related to this topic. For a more comprehensive list, see the Articles page of our First Nations and Indigenous Studies research guide. 

Each database may have their own way and limitations of searching within the database. Some may use "And," "Or," quotation marks and other search strategies listed on the books & media tab, but some may not. If you are not getting the results you expected within a database, make sure the search is worded the way the database works. 

TIP: Searching databases with the keywords recommended in this research guide is a good starting strategy. However, be aware that some databases may use different terminology. When you find a relevant article, check the subject headings and article description for terminology that could be useful in a new keyword search.

Education Databases

Additional Databases

Though these databases might not focus specifically on education, they can have useful articles for your research.