Methods in Context Using secondary sources to investigate education

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 Pupil’s written work School reports Pupils and teacher’s diaries Pupils and teacher’s autobiographies Graffiti on school buildings, desks Notes passed in lessons Absence letters Text messages between pupils

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

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

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

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?

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

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

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

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

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 girl’s feelings and actions However all documents are open to interpretation. For example, we cannot be sure that Hey’s interpretation of the meanings of the notes was the same as that of the girls

Task p-g Create a Power Point on the issues surrounding using secondary sources to investigate education Official statistics Documents