Method in Context- Document

Question 1

Theoretical issue strength- validity

Answer 1

• Provide information that provide insight & understanding for certain meaning, belief and behaviour held by teacher and students.

Question 2

Practical issues- Advantages

Answer 2

• Cheaper and quicker- Access to public documents is quick and easy and cheap, however this may not be true of personal document
• Some documents may be difficult to access if they are produced by pupils or teacher as they may not want to have their personal information put in the spotlight and thus may not allow the researcher to have access to them.

Question 3

Theoretical issue limitation -validity

Answer 3

• Some documents written with an audience in mind, this to be ready by others - provide valid account
• Some document may not provide valid account- e.g school websites and assessment material can be manipulated in a way to present the school in more desirable light that it really is.

Question 4

Representativeness- limitation

Answer 4

Information provided in personal document often be based on personal experience of the teacher or pupil that produced it. This means the findings from such a small and unique sample will make it difficult to generalise.

Question 5

Ethical issue- strength

Answer 5

Historical document- no real ethical issue, there are no ethical issue with public or historical documents because they are already in the public domain which can be accessed by others.

Question 6

Ethical issue- Limitation

Answer 6

Personal documents- issue of consent. With personal documents this can raise ethical issues. The researcher needs to seek consent to use it from those who created the personal documents especially if the research is of a sensitive nature such as pupils or teacher diary or school report.
Personal documents: Issue with confidentiality with personal documents. For example school or students reports are confidential documents the researcher needs to guarantee the anonymity of who they refer to.

Question 7

Documents have been used to investigate number of educational issue such as:

Answer 7

Public/historical documents: ofsted inspection reports, school policies)
-Personal documents: Teachers written reports on pupils, pupils written work, pupil to pupil text messages