Kimberly Aultman 
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Excerpt from the Education Resources Information Center (ERIC) "ERIC is an online digital library of education research and information. ERIC is sponsored by the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) of the U.S. Department of Education. ERIC provides ready access to education literature to support the use of educational research and information to improve practice in learning, teaching, educational decision-making, and research" (2011). While not all of the journals on ERIC are open-access, there are many that provide access to free peer-reviewed journal articles. There is a search option (under advanced search) that allows you to search for only free full-text articles. This is the feature I most frequently use as it makes my search much easier and efficient. An example of an article I recently accessed is Social-Emotional Environments: Teacher Practices in Two Toddler Classrooms which outlines a study of teacher's daily interactions with children and how those practices impact the social-emotional environment and the child's development of emotion regulation (Gloeckler & Niemeyer, 2010).

There are a plethora of resources available on ERIC, too many to list here, but all apply to education in some form or another. The ease of the search features allows you to search by keyword, author, and/or journal title. This is a great resource for accessing data and research related to all areas of education, which can be applied to teaching practices and professional development.

References
Education Resources Information Center website. 2011. http://www.eric.ed.gov/

Gloeckler, L., & Niemeyer, J. (2010). Social-emotional environments: Teacher practices in two toddler classrooms. Early Childhood Research & Practice, 12, 1-9. Retrieved from http://www.eric.ed.gov/PDFS/EJ889720.pdf