Searching: Reading the Reading List

When you are given a Course Reading List and asked to find content, you will have to decipher what is a book, a chapter in a book and/or a journal article.  There are some clues that you need to look out for.  For example,

A book will have the place of publication, publisher and date as part of the bibliographic information.  Also, the book title may be in italics:

• Hargreaves, A. and Shirley,  D. et al. (2009). The fourth way: the inspiring future for educational change. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Corwin.

A chapter in a book will usually have two titles, the chapter title first with page numbers and then the title of the book, separated by 'In': 

• Hargreaves, A. (2010) ‘Change from without: lessons from other countries, systems, and sectors.' In Hargreaves, A. ed. et al. Second international handbook of educational change. Springer international handbooks of education: 23. Dordrecht; London: Springer. pp.105-117.

A journal article, on the other hand, will have the volume, issue and page numbers of the article:

• Goodson, I. F. (2010). ‘Times of educational change: towards an understanding of patterns of historical and cultural refraction.’ Journal of Education Policy 25 (6), pp. 767-775.