Education Resources Information Center Thesaurus

"The Thesaurus of ERIC Descriptors (Thesaurus) is a controlled vocabulary – a carefully selected list of education-related words and phrases assigned to ERIC records to organize them by subject and make them easier to retrieve through a search. Searching by Descriptors involves selecting relevant terms from this controlled vocabulary to locate information on your topic. While you can also search ERIC using keywords of your choosing, you will get more precise search results if you use Thesaurus terms. That's because searching by keywords requires matching the exact words found in a record, while searching by Descriptors allows you to locate records indexed by subject, regardless of the terminology the author may have used. The ERIC Thesaurus will allow you to conduct systemic searches and save time by reducing guesswork and trial-and-error methods."