In order to be published in a scholarly journal, articles need to go through a process called peer-review. If your professor asks you to find peer-reviewed articles, they want you to find articles that were published in scholarly journals.
Scholarly journals are a record of the scholarly conversation in various fields. Researchers will use them to share what they have discovered and to discuss their findings with others who are studying similar things. Because of this audience, peer-reviewed articles tend to assume that their readers already know a lot about the field being discussed. They will use specialized jargon and generally won't describe more basic concepts in the field. They will include long lists of references since their work is building on that of others.
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