Documentary sources have become increasingly neglected in education and the social sciences. This book seeks to emphasise their potential value and importance for an understanding of modern societies, while also recognising their limitations, and explores their relationship with other research strategies.
This up-to-date examination of how to research and use documents analyzes texts from the past and present, considering sources ranging from personal archives to online documents and including books, reports, official documents, works of fiction and printed media.
This comprehensive...

The process of curriculum development is highly political, as Goodson shows in this enlarged anniversary third edition of his seminal work. The position of subjects and their development within the curriculum is illustrated by looking at how school subjects, in particular, geography and biology, gained academic and intellectual respectability within the whole curriculum during the late 1960s and early 1970s. He highlights how subjects owe their formation and accreditation to competing status and their power to compete in the provision of worthwhile knowledge and considers subjects as...

Much has been written on the styles, strategies and tactics associated with educational research and evaluation, but relatively little on the social processes associated with the methodology. Few books consider the relationship of research and evaluation to policy and practice and this book opens up key debates in that field. It identifies, through contributions from the USA and Britain, some of the major processes involved, examines the problems of conducting research and evaluation and the ways in which they can be overcome, and details case studies in which problems and processes are...

In addressing a variety of significant social issues, the authors of this book show ways of communicating effectively and successfully with powerful policy making bodies in their overall efforts to improve the world in which we live. Ethnographic insights and research findings by qualitative researchers throughout the world cover such diverse topics as environmental health and safety, the dropout problem, educational reform, AIDS education, homelessness and the education of gifted children. This book then details how these socially vital findings are presented qualitatively and quantitatively...

In this fully revised and extended edition, Tony Edwards and David Westgate continue to examine methods of investigation for use in classrooms and ways in which researchers and teachers may advance their knowledge of classroom talk. They have taken the opportunity to add material on oracy and the importance of spoken language in the curriculum.; All research evidence and bibliographic material has been revised and updated. This book should continue to be an important text for a new generation of students and researchers in language and linguistics, social science and education studies.

The concept of understanding in mathematics with regard to mathematics education is considered in this volume, the main problem for mathematics teachers being how to facilitate their students' understanding of the mathematics being taught.

The methodology researching of educational policy is the subject of this book. It takes a behind the scenes look at the conducting, the analysis and the interpretation of research carried out into educational policy issues revolving around the 1988 Education Reform Act.

Inadequate public funding means that governments in developing countries are continually working to find ways of expansion to meet the growth demand for higher education.; This book considers the effectiveness of government funding methods in developing quality and efficiency in higher education systems in developing countries, and looks at policy measures taken to widen the funding base including raising tuition fees, student loan programmes, graduate taxes, industry-education links and national service programmes.; Taking information from around the world and drawing on successful practice...

In 1991 the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) published Postgraduate Training Guidelines. Throughout the document emphasis is placed on the need for universities to make postgraduate students aware of the methodological issues that affect their work. This text explores the relationship between knowledge, methodology and research practice across the broad spectrum of the social sciences in langage that is accessible to researchers at all levels of their research careers. It follows the themes that there is no single practice or correct methodology, and that the diversity and variety...

In 1991 the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) published Postgraduate Taining Guidelines. Throughout the document emphasis is placed on the need for universities to make postgraduate research students aware of the methodological issues that affect their work.