Sources that Lay the Groundwork
Backgrounds
PLANIPOLIS (UNESCO)
Why: Provides a single entry to point to official education resources from across the globe: education plans and policies, key education frameworks, monitoring reports, and more.
Depending on your country or topic of interest, you may find these other thematic portals worth exploring:
- Learning Portal (issue briefs on improving learning outcomes, globally, for primary- and secondary-education)
- Education 4 Resilience (resources for education in crisis-sensitive environments)
- ETICO (resources on ethics and corruption in education)
- SITEAL (focused on educational trends in Latin American countries)
HANDBOOKS
Pro Tip: Handbooks are an essential academic genre, regardless of discipline, precisely because of the contextualizing and knowledge-updating functions they serve. A good way to find them is simply to add the term handbook to a HOLLIS search string. Examples from HOLLIS searching using this research hack:
- Oxford Handbook of the History of Education (OUP, 2019)
- Handbook of Global Education Policy (Wiley Blackwell, 2016)
- The Palgrave Handbook on Critical Theories of Education (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022)
- International Handbook on Education Development in the Asia-Pacific (Springer, 2023)
SUBJECT BIBLIOGRAPHIES
Why: When you aren't sure what to give your attention to or who some of the influential contributors to a debate have been, an annotated reading list created by an expert in the field can help you find your way or explore more confidently. Oxford Bibliographies Online is our go-to source for this kind of guidance. Some examples related to broad course themes include:
- Citizenship Education (Education module)
- Comparative Education (Education module)
- Education (African Studies module)
- Politics of Education (Education module
Word to the Wise: the OBO is probably the only database for which the "Find this resource" links are misleading. So just copy and paste journal article titles, book length studies, or methodology sources into HOLLIS to more reliably assess the availability (online or print) of a particular publication here at Harvard. And if we don't have it, remember that it's often super easy for us to get you that information, quickly, by other means. Ask us about those options!
Legislative Briefs
CRS Reports (Congressional Research Services)
Compact (2-40 pp.) Legislative briefs prepared by the research arm of the LOC. Frequently updated. To see a list of the education related reports, click on this link.
