ABSTRACT
This chapter brings together historians, life history methods and archive stories to focus on research using historical and documentary materials. More precisely, it starts by offering a very brief history of the study of history and the essential social purpose of history. Moving on, it considers the various kinds of evidence which human beings have left of their past activities which may be available for educational research using a historical perspective. The emphasis here is on the historian’s role as interpreter, to offer insight into the mentality of historians and the content and purpose of history. Providing numerous illustrations, the chapter traces the requirements and process of analysing historical materials in time and space and discusses some problems surrounding the use of documentary sources of all kinds – texts and testimonies. The chapter ends with a worked example of research using a biographical approach to the history of education.
