Secondary Sources to Investigate Education

What are the main secondary sources that sociologists use to investigate education?

• Official stats

• Personal documents

• Public documents

What areas of education are sociologists likely to use official stats to investigate?

• Ethnicity/class/gender + achievement

• School attendance/truancy/inclusion

• League tables/marketisation/school performance

• Gender + subject choice

• Education/work/training

What are the practical strengths of using secondary sources to investigate education?

• Lots of data is published + readily available- saves time/money (govt collects stats on 30,000 primary + 4,000 secondary schools

• Can make comparisons between achievement of diff social groups using official stats

• Can make comparisons over time as stats collected at regular intervals (e.g. annually gathered exam stats)

• Govt gather stats on curriculum, subject choice, raising standards + reducing inequality to monitor policy reform = readily available to sociologists

• Public documents are easily accessible

What are the practical limitations of using secondary sources to research education?

• Official stats collected for policy purposes- not same as sociologist areas of interest

• State definitions diff to sociologist definitions (e.g. official definition of class based on parental income, Marxists: based on property ownership)

• Some documents are confidential so sociologists cant gain access to them

• Mistakes can be made when filling out documents like registers

What are the theoretical limitations of using secondary sources to investigate education?

• Secondary data cant tell a sociologist about interactions process in schools = lack of meaning

• Govts can change definitions to suit policy

• Lack of validity in education stats- socially constructed, e.g. truancy = outcome of definitions/decisions made by various social actors

• Schools manipulate attendance figures by re-defining poor attenders as on study leave = less valid

• Not all racist/sexist incidents may be documented

• Personal documents not representative- only represent individual/group

• Personal documents are open for interpretation

What are the theoretical strengths of using secondary sources to investigate education?

• Official stats are representative (e.g. all state schools have to do census 3x with info on ethnicity/gender/class)

• Reliable- official stats are collected regularly + can be easily compared, standard definitions

What areas of education are sociologists likely to use documents to investigate?

• Ethnic/class/gender diff in achievement

• Curriculum

• Gender stereotyping in school books

• Racism in schools

• SEN

What did Gillborn use public documents to investigate?

Racism and schooling

What are the ethical strengths of using secondary sources to investigate education?

• Placed in public domain so permission not required to use them

What are the ethical limitations of using secondary sources to investigate education?

• Informed consent may not be gained before using private documents (e.g. Hey, girls notes)