Before you develop your research topic or question, you'll need to do some background research first.
If you are choosing a topic for an honors thesis, master's thesis, or doctoral dissertation, you should be looking for gaps in existing research around topics that interest you. You may also want or need to meet with your advisor or other professors in your area of Education to identify starting points for major research projects like these.
Some good places to find background information:
Try the library databases below to explore your topic. When you're ready, move on to refining your topic.
Now that you've done some background research, it's time to narrow your topic. Remember: the shorter your final paper, the narrower your topic needs to be. Here are some suggestions for narrowing and defining your topic:
Describe and develop your topic in some detail. Try filling in the blanks in the following sentence, as much as you can:
I want to research ____(what/who)____
and ____(what/who)____
in ____(where)____
during ____(when)____
because ____(why)____.
