This is a great database to use if you are researching international or comparative education topics. It is clearly structured so you can easily study and compare countries through six key education levels:  early childhood education, childhood, youth, primary education, secondary education, and higher education. It contains regularly updated information to make it a reliable source for current information and has a wide range of content formats including academic ebooks, peer-reviewed articles,  country overviews, policy reports, an 18 volume reference “Education Around the World Series”, and links to external data and statistics.

• Go to LibrarySearch 
  
  
• Log in using your CCCU username and password. If you are away from campus, or connecting with your own device over Wi-Fi, you will need to include @canterbury.ac.uk after your CCCU username.
  
  
• Select Find Databases A-Z, then click on B, finally click on the link to Bloomsbury Education and Childhood Studies to open it in a new tab.

Use the main search box to search for information on a topic, you can also select Advanced Search which enables you to specify what content type you want to find and limit by publication year.

If you want to focus on a particular level (e.g. Primary Education) then you can select “Education Level Overview” which gathers together relevant information on this area.

If you want to find out about a particular country you can either select “Country Overviews” for an introduction to a country and its education system (with useful statistics), or click on the interactive World Map to view all relevant books, articles and other content relating to that region.

There are also buttons on the homepage to quickly browse by Education Level, Topic or Country, so it is easy to navigate around the site.

When you have searched for a topic you then have options to refine your results by education level, place, topic, content type or by date range – useful if you want the most up to date information. And you also can sort your results by relevance or date. If you open up an article or book chapter then you have the options to save, print or share it. Be wary of the Citation option though as this does not include Harvard referencing style.

Each item also has a “related content” section next to it, so if you find one really useful piece of research it is easy to find more on the same topic.

You can find a short user guide to the database here (PDF): https://media.bloomsbury.com/rep/files/bloomsbury-education-and-childhood-studies-user-guide.pdf

Try searching Bloomsbury Education and Childhood Studies by following the steps outlined below. You will practice using some of the most common functions and be ready to search for information for your assignments.

1. Search for the topic finland curriculum using the main search box. How many results do you find?
   
   
2. Refine this by Education level – Primary Education. Review your results to see what type of information you have found (e.g. book chapter/journal article). See if you can limit your results by date. Open an article and see how you could save or print it.
   
   
3. Click on Advanced Content at the top of page and on World Map. Select any region then country on the map to discover relevant education sources for that area.
   
   
4. Click on Explore By at the top of the page and select Topic. How many items can you find on the topic of Teaching Methods and Materials? Identify topic areas which you may find useful in your studies.
   
   
5. You may want to search other similar education databases that you can find via LibrarySearch: Australian Education Index; British Education Index; ERIC (Education Resources Information Center); and Child Development and Adolescent Studies.

After you have accessed Bloomsbury Education and Childhood Studies click on Accessibility at the bottom of the page, or go directly to: https://www.becs-bloomsbury.com/accessibility

Your Learning and Research Librarian will be able to help you make the best use of online resources. For detailed guidance, book a tutorial via the Learning Skills Hub.