ABSTRACT
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.
