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Please Note:
If you have any information on other postings of relevant and accessible data, please send a note to the SOE WebMaster.
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AIR Lighthouse: empowers the users to ask their own questions of complex international comparison tables without specialized research or statistical skills.
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Bureau of the Census: American FactFinder: the best source for population, housing, economic, and geographic database.
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Bureau of Labor Statistics, National Longitudinal Studies.
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Center on Education Policy (CEP): CEP is a national, independent advocate for public education and for more effective public schools. The CEP helps Americans better understand the role of public education in a democracy and the need to improve the academic quality of public schools.
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Education Week News - Weekly Changing News on Education Issues. NOTE: Free Registration may be required for access.
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Education Week Research Notes - Frequently changing reports. NOTE: Free Registration may be required for access.
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FedStats: the gateway to statistics from over 100 U.S. Federal agencies.
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The International Archive of Education Data (IAED) is a project sponsored by NCES designed specifically for researchers to access NCES and other data sets and abstracts.
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The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) Survey and Program Areas page offers links to the program areas for data downloads and information.
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Access the National Longitudinal School-Level State Assessment Score Database (NLSLSASD) is funded by the US Department of Education to collect and refine data from state testing programs across the country. The database contains assessment scores for approximately 90,000 public schools in the U.S. up to 2005. This site is designed for easy retrieval of the data and supporting documentation. The navigation bar to the left allows for direct access to the data files, documentation and reports. |
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Public Education Network (PEN) is a national association of local education funds (LEFs) and individuals working to advance public school reform in low-income communities across our country. PEN believes an active, vocal constituency is the key to ensuring that every child, in every community, benefits from a quality public education.
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American Sociological Association: The American Sociological Association (ASA), founded in 1905, is a non-profit membership association dedicated to advancing sociology as a scientific discipline and profession serving the public good. With over 13,200 members, ASA encompasses sociologists who are faculty members at colleges and universities, researchers, practitioners, and students. About 20 percent of the members work in government, business, or non-profit organizations.
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Annual Reviews - Sociology On-line: Sociology On-line is a service of Annual Reviews, Inc, a nonprofit scientific publisher, and the Editorial Committee of the Annual Review of Sociology. Our job is to help you keep up with the vast outpouring of the literature of sociology.
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Electronic Journal of Sociology: The Electronic Journal of Sociology is a refereed outlet for the publication of scholarly research that makes an original contribution to the advancement of sociological knowledge. The Journal encompasses the broad range from macro works comparing societies and cultures to theoretically insightful micro case studies and accepts submissions from a wide range of theoretical traditions and methodological approaches.
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Geniusfind Sociology Links
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Global Social Change Research Project: This site has the World Social Change reports that reviews of major world economic, demographic, social, and political changes and data used to develop the reviews, and a review of theories of change. Recently the site added presentations about global population, economics and other topics.
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Research Engines for the Social Sciences: Hundreds of links to various social science web pages.
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Social Science Information Gateway: SOSIG is an online catalogue of high quality Internet resources. The catalogue offers users the chance to read descriptions of resources available over the Internet and to access these resources direct. SOSIG points to hundreds of resources, and each one has been selected and described by a librarian or academic, making this the Internet equivalent of an academic research library for the social sciences.
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The SocioWeb: The SocioWeb is an independent guide to the Sociological resources available on the Internet and is founded in the belief that the Internet can help to unite the sociological community in ways never before possible.
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Yahoo Directory - Sociology: Gateway to sociology from the Yahoo Directory is a good starting point to launch a search of sociology sites. Provides links to organizations, criminal justice, courses, institutes, journals, papers, social psychology and urban studies. |
| CollegeBoard : The College Board is a not-for-profit membership association whose mission is to connect students to college success and opportunity.
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| Council of Chief State School Officers : The Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) is a nonpartisan, nationwide, nonprofit organization of public officials who head departments of elementary and secondary education in the states, the District of Columbia, the Department of Defense Education Activity, and five U.S. extra-state jurisdictions.
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| Education Commission of the States : ECS is the only nationwide interstate compact devoted to education. Our Web site is the nation's most extensive online resource for education policy. Please see our User's Guide for a more detailed explanation on how to use our site, or a complete A-Z listing for a list of all the issues.
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| EdResearch Online : EdResearch Online is a database of over 23500 articles from more than 200 Australian education journals. These records are from the Australian Education Index.
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| Education Policy Analysis Archives : A peer reviewed journal
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| EducationLine : Education-line is a freely accessible database of the full text of conference papers, working papers and electronic literature which supports educational research, policy and practice.
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| ERIC : ERIC provides free access to more than 1.2 million bibliographic records of journal articles and other education-related materials and, if available, includes links to full text. ERIC is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences (IES).
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| Global Education Database : This site is sponsored by the Office of Education of the US Agency for International Development (USAID). The GED is a repository of international education statistics compiled from the UNESCO Institute for Statistics and the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS).
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| Higher Education Research Institute : The Higher Education Research Institute (HERI) serves as an interdisciplinary center for research, evaluation, information, policy studies, and research training in postsecondary education. HERI is housed in the Graduate School of Education & Information Studies (GSE&IS)at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).
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| International Bureau of Education: World Data on Education : First published as a CD-ROM in 1996, the database World Data on Education has regularly been improved and expanded using the information included in the National Reports on the Development of Education, supplemented with data from other sources.
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| Intute: Social Sciences : Welcome to the Social Sciences pages of Intute. We are a free online service providing you with access to the very best Web resources for education and research, evaluated and selected by a network of subject specialists.
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| Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (JAIST): The School of Knowledge Science is the world's first research and education institute established under the theme of knowledge. We investigate knowledge formation and communication processes in organizations from the perspective of the social sciences, investigate group decision-making processes from the perspective of the cognitive sciences to establish information systems that support the creation of knowledge including groupware, and attempt to clarify the nature of knowledge through research on complex systems and genetic information.
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| National Academy Press : The National Academies Press (NAP) was created by the National Academies to publish the reports issued by the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, the Institute of Medicine, and the National Research Council, all operating under a charter granted by the Congress of the United States. The NAP publishes more than 200 books a year on a wide range of topics in science, engineering, and health, capturing the most authoritative views on important issues in science and health policy.
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| National Association of State Directors of Special Education : Welcome to the NASDSE website. For 70 years, NASDSE has been providing dedicated leadership to continuously improve educational services and outcomes for students with disabilities in the states and federal territories. Focusing on aligned policies and practices to improve educational outcomes for students with disabilities is critical to ensure their full participation and contribution in education, employment and society.
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| National Center for Education Statistics : The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), located within the U.S. Department of Education and the Institute of Education Sciences, is the primary federal entity for collecting and analyzing data related to education.
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| National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education : NCATE was founded in 1954. Five groups were instrumental in the creation of NCATE: the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE), the National Association of State Directors of Teacher Education and Certification (NASDTEC), the National Education Association (NEA), the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO), and the National School Boards Association (NSBA).
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| National Council of State Directors of Community Colleges : The National Council of State Directors of Community Colleges is an affiliated council of the American Association of Community Colleges (AACC). The council provides a forum for the exchange of information about developments, trends, and problems in state systems of community colleges.
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| New York Times Learning Network : The New York Times Learning Network is a free service for students in grades 3-12, their teachers and parents. The site is updated Monday through Friday throughout the year.
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| Online RAND Research Documents: Education : RAND's research is commissioned by a wide range of sources. Federal, state, and local government agencies provide the largest share of the funding; however, RAND also conducts projects for foundations, foreign governments, and private-sector firms.
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| Open Access Journals in the Field of Education : AERA SIG Communication of Research
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| Public Library of Science : PLoS is a nonprofit organization of scientists and physicians committed to making the world's scientific and medical literature a freely available public resource.
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| Research Methods Knowledge Base : The Research Methods Knowledge Base is a comprehensive web-based textbook that addresses all of the topics in a typical introductory undergraduate or graduate course in social research methods.
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| Research Papers in Economics : RePEc (Research Papers in Economics) is a collaborative effort of hundreds of volunteers in 63 countries to enhance the dissemination of research in economics. The heart of the project is a decentralized database of working papers, journal articles and software components. All RePEc material is freely available.
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| Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography : The Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography (SEPB) was published by the University of Houston Libraries from 1996 to 2006. The current version of SEPB is available at the author's Web site:
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| Scirus : With over 450 million scientific items indexed at last count, it allows researchers to search for not only journal content but also scientists' homepages, courseware, pre-print server material, patents and institutional repository and website information.
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| Scout Report Archives : The Scout Report Archives is a searchable and browseable database to over nine years' worth of the Scout Report and subject-specific Scout Reports.
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| Test Reviews Online : Test reviews from the Buros Institute.
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| UNESCO Official Information Sources on Education : UNESCO's Education Sector comprises some 400 staff members worldwide. They are based at UNESCO's headquarters in Paris, in field offices and UNESCO's institutes and centres specialized in education.
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| What Works Clearinghouse : The What Works Clearinghouse was established in 2002 by the U.S. Department of Education's Institute of Education Sciences to provide educators, policymakers, researchers, and the public with a central and trusted source of scientific evidence of what works in education.
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| White House Social Statistics Briefing Room: Education : The purpose of this service is to provide easy access to current Federal social statistics. It provides links to information produced by a number of Federal agencies. All of the information included in the Social Statistics Briefing Room is maintained and updated by the statistical units of those agencies. All the estimates for the indicators presented in the Federal Statistics Briefing Rooms are the most currently available values.
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| World Bank: Education : Education is central to development and a key to attaining the Millennium Development Goals. It is one of the most powerful instruments for reducing poverty and inequality and lays a foundation for sustained economic growth
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| WorldCat : WorldCat.org lets you search the collections of libraries in your community and thousands more around the world. WorldCat grows every day thanks to the efforts of librarians and other information professionals. |
How Instructors Are Using the World Wide Web
In Teaching the Sociology of Education
By Caroline Hodges Persell and Floyd M. Hammack
One of the biggest changes since we compiled the fifth edition of the Syllabi Sets in 2000 is the vast expansion of the world wide web. Faculty and students are gaining easier access to the web, either through their own computers or via college labs and networks. Reflecting on some of the ways we and others are using the web for teaching, we found at least five major ways that faculty members can consider:
- making a wide range of content available to students,
- making data available to students,
- facilitating the conduct of a courses,
- conducting simulations, and
- assessment on the web. Here we give examples of each of these categories so others can explore some of the rich resources that are already available. Since the real advantage of this material is being able to make it available on the web, some of these links are posted on the American Sociological Association Sociology of Education Section web site, so that others can click on and explore them.
Web availability is particularly valuable in a hybrid field like sociology of education that draws on both sociological and educational sources and materials. Search engines allow the rapid searching of vast amounts of material when we have even a very small clue (a name of a person, institution, or something else). Some of the most useful search engines that we have found are www.Google.com, AltaVista: http://www.altavista.com and Yahoo: http://www.yahoo.com
Gateway sites contain references to many other web sites, and are well indexed themselves. For example, in "WebSite Review Essay: Targeting Sociology on the Internet using Gateway Directories," Annette Haines reviews several major ones (1999. Teaching Sociology 27: 296-299). Examples include:
For those considering using the web, Susan Polyson, Steven Saltzberg and Robert Godwin-Jones have written "A Practical Guide to Teaching with the World Wide Web" at: http://tecfa.unige.ch/staf/staf-e/sun/staf14/ex6/summary.html
For those seeking to learn more about how they might develop their own instructional web site, see Anne B. Keating and Joseph Hargitai. 1999. The Wired Professor. New York: New York University Press. This book discusses ways of incorporating the World Wide Web into one's college classroom. It includes a short history on communication networks and the Internet; definitions of parts of the Internet: e.g., UNIX, FTP, Archie, Gopher, and so forth. It includes faculty experiences at New York University, with web pages from their courses, including web addresses (urls); basic information for putting together a website; more advanced website ideas (including audio, animation, movies); a discussion of distance learning and some distance learning colleges; and a valuable set of references.
Syllabi are one part of a course that can be posted, but a course web-site can include much more than just the syllabus. A web site can make considerable amounts of content available to students, it can facilitate communication among students and faculty, and it can empower students to publish their work.
I. MAKING CONTENT AVAILABLE TO STUDENTS
Instructors may post material they have written or make the writings of others more accessible to students. A good beginning point for new users is material that discusses how web materials can be assessed. Examples of sources that help users to evaluate materials found on the web include:
Paula Hammett, 1999. "Teaching Tools for Evaluating World Wide Web Resources." Teaching Sociology 27 (January: 31-37). Her article provides an exercise students may use, including questions and criteria for evaluating such features of web resources as authority, purpose and coverage, accuracy, timeliness, integrity of the information, and objectivity or point of view. She also raises the issue of judging when to turn to the Web for information and when more traditional library materials may be preferable.
Sources of information on schools
Research Literatures
- ERIC can be searched on-line to find research and reflections on a wide variety of educational topics: http://www.eric.ed.gov
- Jstor: http://www.jstor.org (Found at college and university libraries that subscribe.)
- Jstor contains electronic versions of journal articles more than several years old in such
- journals as Sociology of Education, American Journal of Sociology, American
- Sociological Review, and others.
- National Library of Education: http://www.ed.gov/NLE/index.html
On-line journals and/or abstracts include:
On-line news sources
Professional Associations
On-line journals and/or abstracts
Research Organizations
National Research and Development Centers
Educational Reform Organizations and Information
Higher Education Resources
International Materials
II. MAKING DATA AVAILABLE TO STUDENTS
Besides writings, syllabi, and organizational materials, a great deal of data are available on the web, and some sites provide ways for users to perform simple data analyses on-line. Others permit the downloading of major datasets, or parts of them, for analysis with SPSS, STATA, SAS, or other statistical packages.
III. USING THE WEB TO FACILITATE THE CONDUCT OF A COURSE
Two types of course activities can be usefully distinguished: administrative ones and intellectual ones. Everyone who has taught knows the problem of trying to get messages to students in a course, for example, about a change in dates or readings, an upcoming planned event or activity, and so forth. Not everyone comes to every class, and only small colleges have student mailboxes that can be stuffed with notes. As most students are on email, it is possible to get a listserv for each class. The result is that everyone can be instantly notified. Moreover, certain references or other information (including web addresses) are best communicated in this way. If only to facilitate administrative matters, we have found that simple listservs can be very helpful for faculty and students.
The real power of a listserv, however, is to continue discussions begun in class and to provide a forum for raising additional questions and comments. For example, students may be told that another way of "participating" in a class discussion can be on the electronic forum. Some shy students have told us that they would rather post a message electronically than speak in class (especially a large class of 50 or more). Some instructors say that students need to post a certain number of comments or responses to posted questions during the term. If students were working on a class (or group) project, the web would be a great way for the material to be made available for all in the class to see.
Most of us have had students who asked if they could produce their final paper/project on the web; this can be used to facilitate student research groups and individual students who prepare materials on the web as part of their course work.
IV. SIMULATIONS
Some web-based simulations can be found on-line. For example, William F. Massy published "Virtual U: The University Simulation Game" in CAUSE/EFFECT journal (Volume 21, Number 3, 1998). He describes the Virtual U Project as a simulation created to help improve the management of the nation's university systems. Virtual U simulates running a university or college and assists management in allocating resources within the university. It is a powerful and user-friendly software tool that models the attitudes and behaviors of an academic community. The tool is driven by a powerful simulation engine that draws on an extensive compilation of data concerning the U.S. higher education system. Players determine policies for resource allocation, faculty hiring, enrollment management, and consider other decisions that college and university administrators face. Virtual U is an interactive tools for educational systems.
The journal, Teaching Sociology, reviews software from time to time, for example:
"Software Reviews: SimCity 2000 Software," by Michael Manocchia. (1999. Teaching Sociology 27: 212-215).
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