3. Why recognizing bias is crucial for you and your students

Because of biases in search engines and databases, research that falls outside the mainstream, yet could be highly relevant for your students’ essays, can be surprisingly hard to find in the common search engines and databases.

Depending on the topic, your students might want to find research that goes beyond the mainstream in terms of:

• Epistemological perspectives, example, e.g. Chinese sources for a paper on Zen Buddhism in China or indigenous research for a paper on lithium mining in Chile
• Authors, e.g. female authors for a paper on feminist theology  
• Country/region, e.g. sources from Brazil for a paper on gender inequality in Latin America
• Language, e.g. Spanish or Portuguese sources for a paper on gender inequality in Latin America