What is Bloomsbury Education and Childhood Studies (BECS)?
Bloomsbury Education and Childhood Studies is a comprehensive digital resource, with a global scope, combining exclusive, peer-reviewed articles with eBooks, policy reports and helpful research tools, allowing students to study and build an understanding of education systems, policies, and the nature of childhood and youth experience in different countries throughout the world.
BECS Article Structure
BECS categorises its content into three main sections; topic, education level and country with each of these sections fitting together in the country-specific article content. As you can see below, article titles can be broken down into these three sections.
The articles cover a wide range of carefully selected topics within the six education levels of early childhood, childhood, youth, primary, secondary and higher education.
These articles are consistently structured and templated by subheading to allow users to make seamless and direct comparisons between countries. They enable a comprehensive understanding of education systems as well as childhood and youth experience.
For example, if a user were studying Initial Teacher Education in Early Childhood Education across the world – they could directly compare articles on this topic across countries such as Canada, Australia, Egypt and the Philippines.
To easily find articles to compare, use the clickable image tiles on the homepage to navigate to article browse pages, which are grouped by education level.
You can also access the article browse pages via these quick links:
Your Homepage
The navigation on the top of the homepage provides a variety of options to access content on the site, including Explore and Browse functions.
The basic search bar appears below the main navigation for quick and easy searching across the site.
Below the search bar is an image carousel with a link to the featured content on Bloomsbury Education and Childhood Studies, followed by a brief description of the platform and image tiles and buttons with education levels and topics to browse.
At the bottom of the page there is a carousel that includes recently added titles. Click on the link to view a title.
Search
To search, type your search term in the Search bar at the top of each page. Clicking the magnifying glass button or pressing return will take you to the results page.
The search page will list results in most relevant order and can be reordered by title or date, ascending or descending. The standard results page shows 10 results and can be adjusted to 5 or 20 results. The search results will show the chapter/article/policy report, author(s), and reference or eBook title, with a preview snippet of text that includes the search term with the search term appearing in bold.
Search results can be refined using the left-hand column by Content Type, Education Level, Place, or Topic.
Navigate to the desired results by clicking on the item title at the top of each result.
Advanced Search
To the right of the search bar, click on the Advanced Search button.
Enter your search term in the search bar with the option to refine by Title, Author/Editor/Creator, Summary/Abstract, Category, or Identifier. Enter additional search terms using ‘Add Field’ with search functions of ‘AND,’ ‘OR,’ and ‘NOT’ and the same options listed above.
Further refine results by Date range by year and Content Type, from Article, Book chapter, Country overview, Education Around the World chapter, Education level overview, and Policy report.
Use the same search results functions on the search page to refine results further and access results.
Books pages
Navigate to a specific eBook or Education Around the World volume from Browse Contents. Book pages show the title of the book, author, copyright information, DOI, ISBN, edition, place of publication, and date published online in the left-hand column and the cover and a link to purchase the book in the right-hand column.
The copyright information is followed by a search bar for searching within the book, followed by the table of contents with links to jump to specific sections and chapters of the book. Pagination in the table of contents matches the print edition of books.
Chapter pages
The left-hand column of the chapter page displays the book cover, author(s)/editor(s), copyright year and imprint, and the search within this book function, followed by Subject information and extensive Related Content links.
The main right-hand column shows the chapter title, DOI and page range of the chapter, followed by a linked table of contents for easy movement to chapters within the section, followed by the full text of the chapter. Hovering over the chapter text will show the corresponding page numbers at the appropriate breaks to match print editions of books.
Search within books
Searching within the ‘Search book’ function from the book or chapter page will bring up all references to the search term within the book.
Explore
Explore By in the top navigation menu provides options to access the content by Education Level, Place, and Topic.
Clicking on any option leads to an alphabetical list for browsing. The numbers in brackets next to each term show the amount of content aggregated under each term. Clicking on any term will lead to a results page for all the content on the site that has been tagged with the term.
The results page offers further filter options in the left-hand column.
Browse
Browse Contents offers options to browse by World Map, Articles, Education Around the World Series, eBooks, Policy Reports, Education Level Overviews, and Country Overviews.
World Map leads to an interactive map of the world. Hover over a region to see how many items relate to that area. Click into a region for a country breakdown.
Articles leads to a variety of different articles on education around the world.
The Education Around the World Series leads to the different volumes in the series. Click into a title to view the chapters within the book and to read more.
eBooks leads to a list of eBooks on the site. Click into a title to read more.
Policy Reports leads to a variety of different policy reports. Click into the title or image to read more.
Education Level Overviews leads to six different tiles with links to introductory information on each of the six education levels covered by Bloomsbury Education and Childhood Studies. Each title also provides links to relevant content including articles, book chapters, and policy reports.
Country Overviews lead to a list of countries that we have overview information on. Click into a country to learn more.
Related Content
On each content page, including book chapters, the left-hand column of the page will show Subject information, including Content Type, Education Level, Place, and Topic. All content on the site is tagged using these terms and clicking on any of the listed links will lead to all content tagged with that term.
Under the Subject section, a Related Content section will appear. All content on Bloomsbury Education and Childhood Studies is organized as part of a powerful taxonomy. The taxonomy informs the links that appear in this section, showing content that is similar in nature allowing users to discover new and related content organically while using the platform.
Personal account, Saving, and Folders
Create a personal account using the sign up function to save content and searches in folders. Create an account by clicking ‘Log in’ in the top right-hand corner of the site above ‘Librarians.’ At the bottom of the pop-up window, click ‘Sign up now.’
After signing up or logging in to your personal account, you can save search and content to folders. To save a search, click the ‘Save this Search’ button from any search results page, which appears on the right side of the page above the search results and below the static search bar.
To save content, locate the ‘Save’ icon in the top right-hand corner of any page of the content (directly under ‘Advanced Search’) that you wish to save. Clicking on ‘Save’ will enable you to save the URL of the relevant page into a folder. You can create multiple folders and save different content into each.
Access folders from ‘My Content’ under the welcome message in the top right corner of the site.
Cite
APA, MLA, and Chicago citations are available for all content on the platform. Click the ‘Citation’ button next to the Save and Print links. This will bring up a pop-up window with citation information that you can copy to clipboard or export as a RIS file.
Social Sharing
Clicking the ‘Share’ button on any content page will bring up a form with options to share content via email, Google plus, Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest, with options to personalize the message before posting or emailing.
Librarians
Access the Librarians section of Bloomsbury Education and Childhood Studies using the ‘For Librarians’ navigation in the top navigation bar. The Librarian section provides useful information on the Benefits for Subscribing Institutions, MARC Records, Promotional Materials for the platform, as well as Help and Contact Us information.
