what is a document?Historical and documentary research in education |
CHAPTER 12 |
This chapter is designed to provide an introduction to historical methods in education, and in particular to examine such matters as:
what is a document?
primary documents
in the archive
documentary analysis
ethical and legal issues
(See also McCulloch (2004) for a more detailed treatment of these themes.)
Historical and documentary research methods are intended to provide access to, and facilitate insights into, three related areas of knowledge about human social activity. The first of these is the past, whether that of modern history over the past two centuries or of earlier times. The second is that of processes of change and continuity over time, including the contestation and negotiation that is involved in these and the broader social, political, economic and other forms of context within which they take place. The third relates to the origins of the present that explains current structures, relationships and behaviours in the context of recent and longer term trends.
Education has a significant position in each of these broad areas of knowledge. National age- related systems of mass schooling, which are now familiar around the world, are a comparatively recent invention of the past two centuries. Schools for groups of pupils and students have existed for many centuries, although specific forms and practices such as subject-based curricula, examinations, desks and classrooms have developed to suit particular purposes. Universities and institutions of higher education for elite groups of students have also long been in existence. Informal processes of teaching and learning throughout society and the lifespan have taken place throughout recorded history. In all such cases we may investigate the activities of the past, the processes of change and continuity, and the origins of the present through historical research (see also McCulloch and Richardson, 2000). The history of education itself is a broad, eclectic and contested field of study (Reese and Rury, 2008). It characteristically examines the longer term development of education in relation to the broader society, including for example pertaining to social change and mobility, the economy, national traditions, gender, ethnicity and work (see for example McCulloch, 2005). The study of the history of education draws on historical, educational and social scientific methods and insights (Reese and Rury, 2008; McCulloch, in press), with a duty to both the people of the past and the current generation as well as to search for the truth (Aldrich, 2003).
Historical research in education employs a number of methods and makes use of a wide range of source materials. These include oral sources in relation to the recent past, based on interviews for example with teachers and pupils in which respondents recall their own experiences as historical evidence (for instance Humphries, 1981; Gardner, 2003). There has been increasing interest in such sources over the past 20 years. Nevertheless, analysis of documents has been the most characteristic and traditional method employed in modern historical research as distinct from social research. As John Scott (1990: 1) argued, handling documentary source material is widely seen as the hallmark of the professional historian. The established practices of working historians are therefore a key point of departure in addressing documentary research, although historians have tended not to reflect in detail or depth on this central aspect of their craft. One leading historian, John Tosh, in introducing his own useful contribution to the aims and methods of history, has noted that history students have not in the past generally had formal instruction on the nature of their discipline (Tosh, 2002: xix). At the same time, in educational research, as in other forms of social research, the use of documents has tended to appear less significant than interviews, questionnaires and techniques of direct observation (see for example Burton, 2000).
A document may be defined briefly as a record of an event or process. Such records may be produced by individuals or groups, and take many different forms. Broad distinctions may be drawn between types of documents and it is important for the researcher to observe these, although they are not always rigid typologies. One distinction that can be made, for example, is between the documents created by private individuals and family groups in their everyday lives, and the records produced by local, national and international authorities and small or large organizations (Hodder, 1998). The former class of personal or private documents might include diaries, letters, photographs, blogs, autobiographies and suicide notes (Plummer, 2001). The latter group of public and official records would include committee minutes, reports and memoranda, but also formal items such as birth, marriage and death certificates, driving licences and bank statements (Scott, 1990). Media documents, either printed like newspapers and magazines or visual such as television, operate at the interface of the private and public, and record aspects of both types of domain.
A distinction may also be drawn between documents that are based on written text and other forms produced through other means. Until very recently, most written documents were produced on paper or similar materials, either by hand or mechanically. In the mid-fifteenth century, the invention of the printing press with a movable print type by Johann Gutenberg led to the spread of ‘print culture’ (Briggs and Burke, 2002). The past two decades have witnessed the exponential growth of electronic documents such as electronic mail and data communicated and stored through the internet. This constitutes a contemporary revolution in the nature of documents, albeit that electronic documents may well retain and incorporate elements of the print culture developed over the past five centuries (McCulloch, 2004: 2). Such written, printed and electronic texts might be contrasted with visual documents such as photographs, cartoons, paintings and films (Prosser, 1998; Grosvenor, 2007), although it should be noted that texts in contemporary society have become increasingly multi- semiotic in combining and juxtaposing language and visual forms (Fairclough, 1995). They also differ from oral sources such as sound recordings of speeches. One may also distinguish textual records from material artefacts like fossils, slates, desks and buildings.
A further distinction is between documents produced independently of the researcher, for a range of possible purposes outside the researcher’s control, and those produced by researchers themselves as data for their research. Transcripts of interviews or completed questionnaires are examples of documents prepared by researchers for the purposes of their research (Silver-man, 2001: 119). Electronic technology facilitates the rapid interchange of solicited documents in a wide variety of formats. Documentary research typically makes use of documents produced previously and by others, rather than in the process of the research or by the researcher.
There is also an established difference between primary documents and secondary documents, although this difference is more complex than it may at first appear. Primary documents are produced as a direct record of an event or process by a witness or subject involved in it. Secondary documents are formed through an analysis of primary documents to provide an account of the event or process in question, often in relation to others. However, many documents do not fit easily into this basic dichotomy. For example, autobiographies are primary documents by virtue of the author being a witness or participant in the relevant events, but are often produced years or even decades later, and so may be affected by memory or selective recall. They might also be regarded as secondary documents to the extent that they seek to analyse the changing times through which the autobiographer has lived (for instance Hobsbawm, 2002). Some other documents might also be regarded as both ‘primary’ and ‘secondary’ depending on the way in which they are used. Scholarly works might be a contribution to their field and thus secondary documents, but at the same time reflect attitudes to issues in a particular time or context and so, in this sense, they are primary documents. Fred Clarke’s short book Education and Social Change (1940) was a significant contribution to the sociology and history of education, and also expressed an approach to the social and political issues raised by the Second World War. The book may be read and understood in either or both of these ways, depending on the interests of the reader (McCulloch, 2004: 32–3).
Moreover, some documents are edited and collected versions of diaries, letters and autobiographies. These might be described as hybrid documents. These are more widely accessible than the original primary document, but have gone through an editing process which may alter some their characteristics, whether subtly or substantially. In producing a published work of this kind, editors may tend to emphasize particular types of material to make it more interesting or more or less flattering to the authors of the document, or else to reflect specific interests (Fothergill, 1974). In such cases, one might say that the primary features of the primary document have been compromised by the process of being edited and presented in this way.
Virtual documents, that is primary documents stored electronically for access through the internet, are available through ‘the click of a mouse’ (Guardian, 2003). These are often most valuable for researchers (Crook, 2000), although government and other organizational websites that store documents in this way may seek to cast the government or organization in a favourable light. Many historians are also not fully convinced of the merits of such digital documents, and point out that they lose the immediacy of the original paper document that they represent (for example Schama, 1999; see McCulloch, 2004: 34–42).
In this section we will consider in more detail the kinds of primary documents that may be used as the basis for historical and documentary research in education, and a few examples of how they have been examined in historical and educational research. These include books and textbooks; reports and proceedings; newspapers and other media sources; works of fiction such as novels and plays; and personal documents such as diaries, letters and autobiographies. These are often used in combination, or alongside other types of data collected by the researcher.
Over the past 500 years, books in their modern printed format have been repositories of knowledge and scholarship, besides also being a key means of challenging established orthodoxies. Tracts and treatises are important sources of documentary evidence that often embody the principal themes of debate in politics and society, although they do not always fully convey wider attitudes in a particular context, and their representative nature and influence are often exaggerated. The assumptions and arguments of the authors of such works need to be critically scrutinized rather than being accepted at their face value, while there is also increasing interest in the readership of books. Recent research has highlighted the relationship between books and their readers (for example J. Rose, 2001, 2007; Secord, 2000).
A specific type of book that is often useful for researchers in education is the textbook, produced for schools and other educational institutions since the 1830s when the term itself appeared (Stray, 1994: 2). They are generally used to support teachers, lecturers, pupils and students to follow a syllabus, and are significant partly for the way in which they present information but also for how they project approved values and ideologies. Stuart Foster, for example, has investigated the treatment of ethnic groups in history textbooks in the United States in terms of a struggle for American identity, arguing that such works have represented the views and interests of a white, male, Protestant middle or upper class, and have tended to support the capitalist system, traditional lifestyles, and western traditions (Foster, 1999). Such textbooks have also often been susceptible to commercial pressures, becoming political and economic as well as pedagogical artefacts (Clark, 2009).
Published reports are a further significant source of research evidence in this area of study. Governments as well as organizations and pressure groups produce reports in order to examine particular defined problems and to propose solutions. The information that they provide is often very helpful, although it cannot be assumed that this is always accurate, and it should be checked against other sources. Policy reports are also important for revealing the kinds of assumptions that underlie policy reforms. They represent an outlook or ideology (Scott, 2000: 27), and also embody the contradictions and tensions that are inherent in state policy (Codd, 1988). Some reports are voluminous, taking up several volumes including appendices of oral and written evidence provided by witnesses, whereas in recent decades reports have tended to become shorter in length, more limited in focus and more reader-friendly in format to promote their public appeal. Again, care needs to be taken to resist assuming that such reports reflect educational practices in a straightforward manner.
The proceedings of parliamentary debates and committees provide another kind of official publication. In Britain, these are known as Hansard, after Thomas Hansard, who began publishing the debates of the House of Commons and House of Lords in 1812, and are now available online (www.parliament.the-stationery-office.co.uk; see also www.parliament.uk). In the USA, the Congressional Record provides a similar service, also available on the internet (www.gpoaccess.gov/crecord/index.html). This was first published in 1873, and provides up- to-date and complete proceedings of debates in the House of Representatives and the Senate. Many datasets produced by governments, organizations and research project teams are also readily accessible, and these lend themselves to secondary analysis. Hakim (1982) has defined this in terms of the further analysis of existing datasets which develops the original interpretations and findings of the enquiry in a different way. These include population census reports and datasets specially related to education such as that of the National Child Development Study in Britain (see for example www.esds.ac.uk).
The printed press embodies a further important source of primary documentary evidence. This provides a day- to-day public record very soon after the event being studied (Vella, 2009: 194), albeit one that caters for particular kinds of public taste and interest and by no means comprehensive in its coverage. Peter Cunningham (1992) has made interesting use of newspapers as a documentary source by examining the development of the image of the teacher in the British press from 1950 to 1990. Cunningham’s work compares newspaper coverage of teachers in 1950, 1970 and 1990, using The Times in its unofficial capacity as a newspaper of record as well as major mass- circulation newspapers of the political left and right. This has been taken further in other work that examines political cartoons involving teachers in the British press since the 1970s (Warburton and Saunders, 1996). Other particular features of newspapers also offer interesting and useful material for researchers, including leading articles, letters columns and advertisements. More specialist magazines provide information and commentary, including in the case of Britain for example the Times Educational Supplement and Times Higher Education, both published weekly, and also the monthly magazine Punch (see Smith, 1998).
School magazines have a limited circulation in and around their own institution, but constitute a significant record on behalf of the institution itself, with detailed information on everyday life and interests as well as transmitting the received values of the school. J. A. Mangan’s (1986) research on English public schools in the late nineteenth century demonstrated the role of school magazines as the official record of school life, reflecting in many cases an emphasis on games and sports as opposed to examinations. Nevertheless, unof-ficial magazines may also provide important clues to debates and differences within the school (see for example McCulloch, 2007, chapter 6).
Another source of evidence for historical and documentary research is that of fiction. Although this is not intended to convey the literal truth about particular events, it may represent deeper realities about social experiences. In relation to education, in particular, it can provide insights into everyday life from the imagined viewpoints of pupils and teachers, notwithstanding the dramatization and stereotyped forms that it generally depends upon for plots and characterization. The realist novels of the nineteenth century attracted many historians, although there has also been much scepticism about the use made of novels as a historical documentary source (Reid, 2009). In the area of education, many works of fiction since the work of Charles Dickens in the nineteenth century may be analysed as documentary sources (Collins, 1963). Novels and plays have been especially useful for their depiction of teachers and teaching. James Hilton’s Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1934), for example, is a classic account of the life story of a male veteran teacher in an elite English boarding school, while the plays of Alan Bennett such as Forty Years On (1969) and The History Boys (2004) have evoked resilient cultural images (Weber and Mitchell, 1995; see also McCulloch, 2009). Susan Ells-more (2005) has also explored representations of the teaching profession in films, including the film of Goodbye, Mr. Chips produced in 1939.
Diaries, letters and autobiographies are generally regarded as personal documents, although they can often reveal a great deal about public issues and debates. In some cases, they may provide commentary on contemporary social developments, and they often record meetings or other events in which the author has been involved. Diaries are generally produced soon after the event, although this varies, and may give detailed and intimate evidence of individuals and daily life for women no less than for men (Blodgett, 1988). Political diaries, such as those of the British politician Tony Benn, can be highly revealing about policy changes, as in the case of the self- styled ‘Great Debate’ on education in Britain in 1976 (Benn, 1990). They also reveal much, often unintentionally, about the diarists themselves (Pimlott, 2002). School log books have an official function in that they are generally required to include specific information about the pupils, teachers and management of the school, but in some cases they may reveal the everyday life and interactions of the headteacher concerned (see for example McCul-loch, 1989, chapter 8).
Letter writing as a means of communication has generated a further type of documentary source, one that has been rivalled in recent times by devices such as the telephone and transformed through electronic media. They are interactive in character, forming explicitly part of a dialogue, and may again be both personal and formal in their style and substance (Earle, 1999; Dobson, 2009). Many letters relating to education, such as those from parents to a school or to a newspaper or to a Minister of Education, reflect the interaction between the personal or family domain and the concerns of an established institution (see for instance Heward, 1988). By contrast, autobiographies and memoirs are essentially introspective, and provide an inside account of lives and relationships. They often give particular emphasis to the early life and schooling. For example, David Vincent’s (1981) major study of working- class autobiographies in nineteenth- century England, based on 142 accounts of this kind, demonstrates the nature of their involvement in a social network of family, friends, colleagues and acquaintances.
As we have seen, many documentary records are available quite readily through research libraries or the internet. In other cases, they are stored in organized format, usually numbered files for identification, in archives and record offices. These are the most recognized and characteristic source for historical and documentary researchers. Archives are repositories of accumulated knowledge, in many ways the institutional memory of modern societies, and they exist in a number of forms.
National archives preserve the official records of government departments, and local record offices those of the particular location where appropriate, and in many countries around the world these are preserved carefully and methodically to store the collective memory. In some cases they date from the nineteenth century or even earlier, and they often reflect the specific national and social characteristics (Joyce, 1999; Tyacke, 2001). The French Archives Nationales, set up in 1790, developed with a strong focus on the centralized state (Sheppard, 1980). The Kenya National Archives in Nairobi, established in 1956, have been described as ‘a reservoir and living example of historical and ethnographic knowledge’ (Carotenuto and Luongo, 2005: 445), offering more than ‘dusty documents’ but ‘history in its very space and structure, in the aims and ideas of its users, and in the various forms of popular and professional practice carried out within its walls’ (Carotenuto and Luongo, 2005: 446).
National and local archives contain much primary source material relating to education policy and administration. Education department files are naturally the principal focus for this, but often other government departments such as those responsible for public finances, employment, social services, health and the central coordinating authority may hold relevant material (Gosden, 1981). As an example of these official records, in New Zealand files held at the Northern Regional Office of the Department of Education in Auckland included papers of an investigating committee established in 1970 to examine the spread of juvenile gangs (files 26/1/88 and 26/1/89). File 26/1/88 contains a full and detailed set of the minutes of the committee, and 26/1/89 includes correspondence, reports and memoranda, with a draft of the final report. Such records are most useful in understanding debates and tracing processes behind the scenes as it were (McCulloch 2004, chapter 4). They also in many cases provide evidence of interactions between rival interests, private individuals and the state relating to education, for example on policies of school zoning (see for example McCulloch, 1986). The papers of key politicians and policy makers can also shed much light on educational policy making. The diaries of the British Labour Party politician James Chuter Ede, covering his time at the Board of Education during the negotiations that led to the Education Act of 1944, are housed at the British Library in London.
Other archives, often based in institutions of higher education, maintain personal and institutional documents that have been donated to them. Examples of these include the Modern Records Centre based at the University of Warwick near Coventry, England, and the archive collection of the Institute of Education at the University of London. In other cases, the archive is not in an organized repository such as this, but has been kept by the individual or institution involved. Collections retained by an educational institution may be fully referenced and easily accessible, but in many cases may have been neglected and are not straightforward to research. Those pertaining to individuals are often the most difficult to locate but may be especially fruitful when encountered by the researcher, perhaps in an attic, cupboard or garage, awaiting discovery. For example, the archive of Jane Johnson, an English eighteenth- century educator, was left in a shoebox that was discovered in a cupboard in the United States in 1986 (Heath, 1997).
If such discoveries can be the most productive for historical and documentary researchers, there are also many potential frustrations along the way. Much documentary evidence has been lost for a number of reasons, whether due to being discarded by the original owners, or failing to survive changes of location, or for lack of space or resources. Thus the researcher is left with only the documents, whether recent or from earlier periods of time, that remain to be examined today. There are many silences in the documents that do survive, as Alison Andrew has noted: ‘There is the frustration of events reported without follow up, individuals not clearly identified, ambiguous accounts or those which provide a wealth of detail except that which is desperately sought’ (Andrew, 1985: 156). The experience of working in an archive can also be a challenge. Beyond the costs and the time that may be involved in reaching an archive, it is often difficult to anticipate the amount and quality of documentary material that is available on a particular topic. As Carolyn Steedman has observed, ‘You sit all day long, reading in the particular manner of the trade, to save time and money, and in the sure knowledge that out of the thousand lines of handwriting you decipher, you will perhaps use one or two’ (Steedman, 2001: 29).
At the same time, the establishment and spread of online archives over the past ten years have transformed the nature of archival research. In many cases the archive catalogue or inventory of holdings is available in searchable form on the internet so that the researcher is able to check in advance before travelling to the archive. Increasingly also the documents themselves may be researched digitally. For example in Britain the results of the census up to and including 1901 (www.1901censusonline.com), and more than 150 years of the newspaper the Guardian (www.guardian.co.uk/archive; see also the Guardian, 2007) have been made available online. Cabinet minutes and discussions are also accessible by this means (www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/documentsonline). For example Cabinet discussion of the Conservative government on education policy in the early 1970s (Cabinet file CAB.128/50/55) may be consulted in this way. However, there are some restrictions in terms of coverage and a subscription or other cost may often be applied.
Documents once located and examined do not speak for themselves but require careful analysis and interpretation. There are preliminary issues around ascertaining the authenticity of the document; that is verifying the author, place and date of its production. In some cases the document may have been forged, or the authorship in doubt. The researcher also seeks to take into account the reliability of the document, for example the credibility of the account of an event in terms of the bias of the author, the access to the event and the interpretation of the observer. The differential survival rate of documents creates a further issue of reliability, and raises questions about how representative, typical and generalizable the surviving documents may be (Scott, 1990: 7).
The reliability of documentary evidence raises particular problems in relation to education. Such sources tend in the main to record the approaches adopted by policy makers and administrators, and so may privilege a top- down view of education. This has often tended to undermine consideration of working- class children and youth, girls and women, and ethnic minorities (Timutimu et al., 1998). Moreover, documentary sources have often been criticized for failing to engage with the classroom, the learning context, and the interface between teachers and learners. Goodson (1988), for example, has argued that documentary sources have encouraged too great an emphasis on ‘Acts and facts’.
Ascertaining the meaning of a document is a further important issue. This involves understanding the information relayed and the underlying values and assumptions of the author, as well as any arguments developed. In doing so, it is necessary to comprehend both the text and its wider context. So far as the text is concerned, increasing attention has been given to its language and form in determining a deeper meaning, following the principles of hermeneutics and influenced by literary criticism (Reinfandt, 2009). Some historians of education have made creative use of the ‘linguistic turn’, based on this recourse to detailed study of the language and discourse of the document. For example, Sol Cohen has proposed that documents should be understood in relation to ‘the semiotics of text production, how meaning is made in text, how readers take meaning from text, the status of authorial intention versus the reader’s interpretation, the role of the community of discourse in the reception of text, and so forth’ (Cohen, 1999: 81).
The context of the documents being examined also requires close examination. This includes taking account of broad educational, social, political, economic and other relationships that help explain the contemporary meaning of the documents, that is, how they are to be understood in the context of their time. This is especially important for historical documents that engage with the issues of their own time, and it is anachronistic to consider them without an understanding of these. An appreciation of this external context also facilitates addressing three specific aspects of a document that are commonly at issue. The first of these is about the authorship of documents in a broad sense, which includes consideration of their origins, the processes by which they were created, and individuals and groups directly involved in this. The second relates to the audience of the documents – who is being addressed, and the constituent parts and dynamics of this group. The third concerns the outcomes of the document, and an assessment of its impact on debates, ideas and policies as well as of its longer term influence. Understanding an education policy document, for example, might mean addressing one or more of these broad issues about how it has related to its wider context.
Finally, the theorization of the document (or documents) also requires attention. Jupp and Norris (1993) suggest that there are three general traditions in documentary analysis – positivist, interpretive and critical – within which particular types of theoretical approach may be framed. A positivist approach asserts the objective, systematic, rational and quantitative nature of the study. For example, Halstead (1988) examines the case of the English headteacher Ray Honeyford and the debate over multicultural education through an exhaustive study of well over 1,000 articles in local and national newspapers, magazines and journals, but does not develop an analysis addressing differential power relations. An interpretive outlook argues for social phenomena such as documents as having been socially constructed. A critical approach involving for example Marxist, feminist or critical discourse theory would emphasize social conflict, power, control and ideology. Codd’s (1988) discussion of educational policy documents includes interpretive and critical elements. It argues in favour of theories of discourse relating the use of language to the exercise of power, and seeks to deconstruct the official discourse of policy documents in the light of these. Purvis (1985) also demonstrates a critical interpretation of documents from a feminist standpoint. She presents her research as a challenge to male notions of knowledge, and seeks to make use of documentary evidence that has been ignored to promote greater awareness of the experiences of women both in the past and in the present.
In much historical and documentary research in education there is little direct interaction with those being researched, and so there can be a temptation to overlook ethical issues. However, these may arise for example when a prominent school or other educational institution is being named in the research or the reputation of particular teachers and headteachers is questioned. Insider research based on documentary sources may also raise ethical dilemmas, for instance where the material appears likely to cast an unfavourable light upon the institution which may have commissioned it in the first place (McCulloch, 2008).
Legal questions should also be borne in mind. The laws of copyright, freedom of information and data protection as they operate in different countries are highly relevant to historical and documentary research. In Britain, the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988, the Data Protection Act of 1998 and the Freedom of Information Act of 2005 regulate the use of documentary material, personal information, and government and institutional records. Until recently, access to official records in Britain was restricted through a ‘Thirty Year Rule’ under the Public Records Act of 1967 (it was previously restricted for 50 years), but this has been relaxed to some extent and the time period further reduced. In other countries such as New Zealand the restrictions on access have been much less onerous, making it possible to examine more contemporary records in many cases. Another area involving both ethical and legal issues relates to working in archives. Cases of theft of original and sometimes highly valuable documents from archives have led to greater security restrictions being put in place for researchers. Careful handling of fragile documents in archives is a matter of ethical and professional conduct for historical and documentary research.
This chapter has discussed and illustrated a range of approaches to historical and documentary research in education. Such research has the capacity to illuminate the past, patterns of continuity and change over time, and the origins of current structures and relationships. A number of types of document have been discussed, and their uses for historical and documentary research in education explored. Much research employs one or two of these kinds of document as the principal source of data, but different combinations may be applied depending on the problem being studied. For example, an education policy report may be examined through the study of the report itself, of the files of the committee that produced it, and of newspapers relating to its reception after publication. The changes in the curriculum at a university might be appraised through institutional records, lecture notes and student diaries where these exist (see for example Slee, 1986; Soffer, 1994). Moreover, documentary research may frequently be allied to good effect with other research methods in education (see for example Saran (1985) on combining archive and interview research). Interviews with teachers about their curriculum and pedagogic practices may be compared with documentary evidence of changing policy in these areas over the past 30 years, as in the case of research by McCulloch et al. (2000). Thus historical and documentary research offers a means of promoting methodological pluralism which seems especially appropriate in a field as diverse and challenging as education.
www.1901censusonline.com: British census
www.esds.ac.uk: Economic and Social Data Service, Britain
www.gpoaccess.gov/crecord/index.html: US Congressional Record
www.guardian.co.uk/archive: the Guardian newspaper
www.parliament.the-stationery-office.co.uk: British parliamentary debates (Hansard)
www.parliament.uk: British parliamentary committee proceedings, evidence and reports
www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/documentsonline/: British official records online
Companion WebsiteThe companion website to the book includes PowerPoint slides for this chapter, which list the structure of the chapter and then provide a summary of the key points in each of its sections. In addition there is further information in the form of 20 questions to ask when using narrative and documentary sources. These resources can be found online at www.routledge.com/textbooks/cohen7e.