Sociology-RM-Secondary sources in context Flashcards
Why are secondary sources used to investigate education?
Education is one of the key services provided by the state and so is closely monitored. As a result, schools, colleges, local authorities and Department for Education collect a wide range of official statistics on education
What issues in education are investigated using official statistics?
Ethnicity, class, gender and educational achievement, school attendance, truancy and inclusion, league tables, marketisation and school performance, gender and subject choice, education work and training
What are the practical issues of using official statistics to investigate education?
Data is published so is quick and cheap. Allow comparisons between achievements of different groups. Allow comparisons over time. Similar interests of sociologists and the government such as curriculum, subject choice, raising standards and reducing inequality. Governments collect stats for own policy purposes so may not match sociologists aims of research. Definitions of key concepts may differ. State may not collect stats on pupils’ social class but only on pupils who are entitled to free school meals but due to stigma and bullying some pupils entitled for FSM do not claim them. Stats cannot tell sociologist about interaction processes in school which may lead to under-claiming. FSM used as indicator of low class position but not all entitled to them are working class and not all working class children are entitled to FSM
How does representativeness evaluate the use of official statistics to investigate education?
Some official stats on education are highly representative, eg all state schools have to complete school census 3 times a year. Collects info on pupils’ attendance, ethnicity and gender, amount receiving school meals etc. These cover virtually every pupil in the country so are highly representative
How does reliability evaluate the use of official statistics to investigate education?
Positivists favour official stats due to reliability which can be used to test/re-test hypothesis and discover cause-and-effect relationships eg stats on exam results of social classes may correlate with stats on parental income so may conclude poverty causes under-achievement. Possible for errors in production of official stats on education but still very reliable due to government imposing standard definitions and categories enabling replication year to year allowing comparisons. However definitions and categories can change, eg change of league tables
How does validity evaluate the use of official statistics to investigate education?
Interpretivists question validity of educational statistics. Argue they are socially constructed eg see truancy stats as outcome of series of definitions and decisions made by variety of social actors such as parents, teachers and pupils. Schools may manipulate attendance figures by re-defining poor attenders as being on study leave or additional work experience. May be tempted to do so due to education market putting pressure on schools to present themselves in the best possible light in order to maintain funding and parental support, but this undermines validity of educational statistics
What issues in education are investigated using documents?
Ethnic, class and gender differences in achievement, the curriculum, gender stereotyping in school books, racist incidents in schools, special educational needs
What are practical issues of using documents to investigate education?
Public documents are easily accessible partly due to government policies emphasising parental choice. Gillborn could access wide range of school documents for his study of racism and schooling, giving the ‘official’ picture of what was happening. He then compared this with data collected from interviews and observations. Gewirtz et al used school brochures and prospectuses when studying marketisation and education. Personal documents can be harder to access eg Hey used notes passed by girls in class to understand friendship patterns though these weren’t easy to obtain as they were hidden from teachers. Also some educational documents are confidential such as personal files and disciplinary records, so sociologists may be unable to gain access
What are ethical issues of using documents to investigate education?
Few ethical concerns with using public documents produced by schools. They are public so permission is not required for their use. More problems with personal documents. Eg Hey who collected notes passed between girls in class was sometimes offered them freely but in other cases she collected them from desks at the end of the lesson or out of the wastepaper bin. In some cases, informed consent for their use had not been obtained
What are representativeness issues of using documents to investigate education?
Some official documents are legally required of all schools/colleges such as records of racist incidents making it more likely to form a representative picture of racism in schools across whole country, however not all incidents may be documented. Personal documents are often less representative eg Hey collected about 70 notes but the unsystematic way in which she came by them makes it likely er sample was unrepresentative
What are reliability issues of using documents to investigate education?
Many public documents are produced in systematic format enabling researchers to make direct comparisons of absence rates of pupils in different schools. However deliberate falsifications or accidental mistakes when filling registers reduce reliability because teachers are not applying measure of attendance consistently. Some educational documents can also be used in ways that other researchers can replicate. Eg Lobban examined 179 storied from 6 school reading schemes to look for gender stereotyping and analysed content of each story using same set categories, counting number of times images fell into each category. Future researchers can easily apply systematic content analysis of this kind to create comparative data from educational documents
What are validity issues of using documents to investigate education?
Documents can provide important insights into meanings held by teachers/pupils so can be high in validity eg Hey’s research when she decided to study the notes after observations and interviews to gain valuable insight because they were spontaneous expressions of the girls’ feelings and attitudes. However all documents are open to different interpretations, and for example, in Hey’s research as some of the notes were handed to her freely, they may have been written with her in mind and may not have been spontaneous
