Quantitative sources for the history of education

Abstract

This paper proposes a critical reflection on the use of quantitative sources for the historian of education. It identifies and discusses key promises and challenges related to the construction and interpretation of historical statistics in education, drawing on a number of British and some French historiographical examples. Ultimately, the article encourages, where possible and appropriate, a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods in order to identify trends and patterns in education and facilitate their contextualisation in terms of processes and meanings.

Keywords:

• history
• education
• quantitative
• policy
• interdisciplinarity

Acknowledgements

I am most grateful to Richard Aldrich, Peter Cunningham and Jane Martin for their comments on earlier versions of this paper.

Notes

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