Skip to Main Content Library Homepage College Homepage
Research Guides

Special Education: Types of Articles

Types of Education Articles

In the field of education there are three types of articles that you will come across:

  1. Trade journal articles
  2. Practitioner peer reviewed articles
  3. Scholarly peer reviewed articles

All three are important but they each serve vastly different purposes.

Trade Journal Articles

Education trade journals offer articles that serve to alert educators and researchers of new developments in the field

Articles in trade journals are similar to those that appear in popular magazines like Forbes, Atlantic Monthly, and The New Yorker in that they do not contain original research. Instead, they provide articles about personal experience or issues important to educators.

Professional Peer Reviewed Journal Articles

Professional peer reviewed journals offer articles meant for a professional audience. They differ from scholarly peer reviewed research articles in subtle but important ways.

  1. Professional peer reviewed journal articles present classroom-tested teaching strategies and activities that are based on, or supported by, scholarly peer reviewed research.
  2. They serve to communicate to practicing educators classroom ideas and techniques that are proven to be effective in a classroom setting. In this way, they combine research with professional practice.
  3. Most likely, they will not contain a research methodology, a comprehensive literature review, and/or data points.

Scholarly Peer Reviewed Research Article

The purpose of a scholarly peer reviewed research article can vary but in general they attempt to solve a problem or present the findings on a very specific study. The article contains a rigorous literature review, is built upon a solid research methodology,  and presents data that has been meticulously collected and analyzed.

They contrast from practitioner peer review research in that they connect practical applications to the existing body of scholarly research and then examine that same application through rigorous data collection and analysis.

Elements of a Scholarly Peer Reviewed Article

A scholarly peer reviewed journal article presents original research that has been performed by the author(s) of the article. A scholarly peer reviewed article will contain:

  • an abstract
  • a substantial literature review
  • specialized vocabulary
  • a methodology section
  • a results section
  • data collected during the study
  • a conclusion/discussion section
  • a long list of works cited