Methods in Context

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Methods in Context

• Using secondary sources to investigate education

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Examples of documents in education

• Public
• School websites
• Dfes guidance to schools
• School prospectuses
• Government enquiries
• Novels about school life
• School textbooks
• Playground songs and games
• Media reports, films about education
• Ofsted inspection reports

• Private
• Pupils written work
• School reports
• Pupils and teachers diaries
• Pupils and teachers autobiographies
• Graffiti on school buildings, desks
• Notes passed in lessons
• Absence letters
• Text messages between pupils

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Using official statistics to investigate education

• Practical issues- much of this data is published
  and thus available to the sociologist, saving
  both time and money
• Statistics allow sociologists to make comparisons
  between different groups and also over time
• However governments collect statistics for their
  own purposes which may not be relevant to the
  sociologist
• Government definitions of key concepts may differ
  to that of the sociologist

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• Representativeness- All state schools have to
  complete a school census every 3 years, because
  these statistics cover every pupil in the country
  they are highly representative

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• Reliability- Positivists favour official
  statistics because their reliability means they
  can be used to test and retest hypotheses
• However, governments may change definitions and
  categories, e.g. when the conservatives brought
  in league tables they were solely based on exam
  results, in 2006 Labour brought in CVA which
  takes into account exam results and also the
  level of deprivation pupils suffer

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• Validity- Interpretivists question the validity
  of statistics. They argue that such statistics
  are socially constructed. E.g. they see truancy
  statistics as the outcome of a series of
  definitions and decisions made by a variety of
  social actors
• Do schools deliberately distort their figures?

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Using documents to investigate education

• Practical issues- Public documents on education
  are often easily accessible to the researcher.
  For example, David Gillborn (1995) in his study
  of racism and schooling was able to access a wide
  range of school documents
• Personal documents can be more difficult to
  access. Valerie Hey (1997) made use of the notes
  girls passed to each other, however girls were
  experts at hiding them from their teachers

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• Ethical issues- Few ethical concerns with public
  documents, however there are some concerns with
  personal documents. For example with Hey, in some
  cases the notes were offered freely but in others
  she took them out of the waste paper bin so
  informed consent was not obtained

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• Representativeness- Some official documents are
  legally required of all schools and colleges,
  such as records of racist incidents. This makes
  it more likely that we can form a representative
  picture of racism in schools across the land.
  However, of course, not all racist incidents may
  be documented

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• Reliability- Many public documents, for example
  attendance registers, are produced in a
  systematic format. This enables researchers to
  make direct comparisons of the absence rates of
  pupils in different schools
• However mistakes when filling in registers may
  reduce their reliability because teachers are not
  applying the measure of attendance consistently

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• Validity- Documents can provide important
  insights into the meanings held by teachers and
  pupils and can therefore be high in validity. Hey
  found that the notes offered valuable insights
  into girls feelings and actions
• However all documents are open to interpretation.
  For example, we cannot be sure that Heys
  interpretation of the meanings of the notes was
  the same as that of the girls

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Task p-g 226-228

• Create a Power Point on the issues surrounding
  using secondary sources to investigate education
• Official statistics
• Documents