hi I'm Marilee Burchfield a reference
librarian and Thomas Cooper library at
the University of South Carolina and the
liaison to the College of Education if
you're viewing this you are probably in
the online EDD program and looking to
find action research problem of practice
dissertations hopefully maybe even
something closer to your own topic
here's how to search the dissertations
and theses global database to do that to
get into the database from the
University library's home page and you
can simply use SC edu slash libraries as
the URL click on the word databases from
the A to Z databases page change the all
database types box to dissertations and
theses to see a list of databases for
this type of material select
dissertations and theses global to
search for dissertations completed at
institutions beyond just the University
of South Carolina think about what it is
you want to find brainstorm possible
words and phrases for your topic but
here's some advice for finding
dissertations similar to the kind you'll
be completing type EDD in the first
search box the default is to search
anywhere change the drop-down box to
degree there isn't a consistent term
that's been given to find just problem
of practice dissertations you're
depending on the author to have
described it if you can think of more
add them to the search but to get you
started in the second search box type in
action research or problem of practice
or practice based or dissertation and
practice or case study if you want terms
searched as phrases put them in quotes
type or between your search terms to
tell the database to search for all of
them at least one must be found unless
you change it your terms will be
searched for anywhere including each
individual page of the dissertation if
the full-text is
available that may bring back more than
you expected and they might not all be
very relevant an easy way to control
that is to change the drop-down box to
anywhere except full text that searches
the abstract the title along with key
words and subject terms assigned to the
dissertation places where you expect to
find terms that really describe the
content of the dissertation even doing
that will bring back a lot so add a row
or rows and enter terms for your topic
concentrate on the most essential terms
think of synonyms use and between the
search boxes type or between terms in
the same search box row most but not all
results will include the entire
dissertation
