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MIC - documents in education (secondary sources) (Disadvantages (Practical…
MIC - documents in education (secondary sources)
Advantages
Practical issues
Documents easily accessible. Government make them available to the public. Eg, David Gillborn 1995, studied racism and schooling. Access to wide range of documents. Gave Gillborn the 'official' picture of what was happening.
Gerwitz et al, study of marketisation and education, school brochures/prospectuses.
Representativeness
Schools and colleges legally required to be on some official documents, such as records of racist incidents. More likely to form representative pictures of racism in schools. Not all racist incidents may be documented.
Validity
Documents can provide important insights into meanings held by teachers/pupils, high in validity. Eg, Valerie Hey 1997, used interviews/observations to investigate girls' friendships, but in using secondary documents (the notes they passed in class) she gained a more valuable insight. Spontaneous expressions the girls' feeling/attitudes.
Reliability
Public documents, eg attendance registers, produced in a systematic format. Enables researchers to make direct comparisons of the absence rates.
Some educational documents can also be used in ways that researchers replicate. Eg, Lobban examined 179 stories from six school reading schemes looking for gender stereotyping. Future researchers can easily apply systematic content analysis to create comparative data from educational documents.
Disadvantages
Practical issues
Personal documents more difficult to access. Eg, Hey 1997, used girls' notes to investigate friendships. notes not always easy to obtain, girls hid them from teachers.
Some educational documents are confidential. Eg, teacher's personnel files, pupils' disciplinary records. Sociologists unable to gain access to them.
Ethical issues
Personal documents have more ethical problems, Eg, Hey collected notes, some girls offered them freely, she had to collect some from desk, or fish some out the bin. Informed consent had not been obtained.
Public documents less so, as the organisation produced them to be publicised or knew they were going to be publicised
Representativeness
Personal documents less representative. Eg, Hey collected around 70 notes, but the unsystematic way she came by them makes it likely the sample was unrepresentative.
Reliability
Deliberate falsifications/accidental mistakes made when filling in registers reduce their reliability as teachers not applying the measure of attendance consistently.
Validity
All documents are open to different interpretations. Eg, cannot be sure that Hey's interpretations of meaning of the girls' notes was the same as that of the girls.
The notes were handed to Heys after the class, possible they were written with her in mind and may have not been spontaneous.