Identity-related keywords:
“ethnic identity”
“racial identity”
“gender identity”
“cultural identity”
Indigenous
Race
LGBTQIA+
Ethnicity
Intersectionality
Feminist
**You can also search for a specific identity group, such as: "African American", "Asian American", transgender, Latinx, etc.
Concepts/systems/issues keywords:
Bias/”implicit bias”/”racial bias”
“white privilege”
“male privilege”
Intersectionality
Feminism
Racism
Sexism
“white supremacy”/“white nationalism”
“social injustice”/”social justice”
“culturally responsive teaching”
“cultural competence”/“intercultural competence”
This page contains information about how to search for resources related to diversity and inclusion. Use the tabs in the 'sample searches' box below to see screenshots and instructions demonstrating various search strategies. You will also find suggested keywords on the left side of this page.
Some of these sample searches use special syntax to make them more efficient. You can access a search tip cheat sheet created by the library by clicking here.
Remember that Fielding's librarians are always glad to provide reference assistance and research support. Please feel free to contact us any time: library@fielding.edu.
In this example, we'll look for works related to intersectionality in the JSTOR database.
Here's a screenshot of one way to search for this content:
So what did we do here? On the advanced search page of most databases you have the flexibility to change your 'search field' (where in the document the database looks for your search terms).
In the example above we are asking JSTOR to search for the keyword intersectionality but only in the 'item title' field. This means it will only retrieve results (articles/chapters) with the word intersectionality in the title. This is an easy way to try to find some of the most relevant works.
Here's a screenshot of the first few results this search returns:
Here we will walk through a sample search to identify resources related to feminist pedagogy in the classroom. In this example we will use the SAGE Premier database, but remember you can apply the same strategies using other resources.
First, let's look at a screenshot of the search and then we will break it down below:
If you connect to SAGE through one of our library collections, scroll down to the bottom of the advanced search page and select 'only content I can access' to only see works included in our subscription.
How did we build this search? A line by line explanation...
Line 1: Feminis*
Adding an asterisk to the end of a word's root tells the database to find all possible endings (this is called truncation). You want to place the asterisk at the point at which you might see variations in spelling. For example: feminis* would find feminism, feminist, feminists, etc. The variation occurs after the 's'.
Line 2: Pedagog*
Just as with the first line, we truncated this term to find any endings. This will let us find pedagogy or pedagogical.
Line 3: classroom
This is a straightforward keyword search. We are asking the database to make sure the term classroom is included in any results we see.
Here's a screenshot of some of the first results this search returns:
In this example, we'll consider how to find resources about implicit bias in higher education. Since not everyone has access to subscription databases we'll demonstrate this example using Google Scholar.
Here's a screenshot of a proposed search:
How did we build this search?
All research databases, including Google Scholar (and yes, even Google) recognize the use of quotation marks. If you enclose a multi-word search term in quotes, the search tool knows you want to find those words, together, in that order as an exact phrase.
Searching for "implicit bias" AND "higher education" tells Google Scholar that both the phrase implicit bias and the phrase higher education must be present in a result in order for it to be a match.
Here's a screenshot of some of the results this search returns:
