Topics Covered in this Session

• Definition and Characteristics of Historical Research
• Appropriateness/Limitations

Historical Research

Historical research is descriptive research that involves describing and interpreting events, conditions, or situations of the past. As with all history, the purpose is to study the past in order to understand the present, and maybe to plan for the future.

A common characteristic of historical research is an in-depth analysis (case study) of source documents (student transcripts, policy statements, memoranda, etc.) and oral histories (if individuals are still available from the period). It is possibly the least popular form of educational research in terms of the number of studies produced on an annual basis. Grant and other types of educational research funding tend to favor current issues and conditions. Historical research also can be difficult if the period is far enough back in time that records are not readily available and individuals associated with the event are no longer alive. However, if done well, historical research can be most interesting particularly if a connection is made to a present issue or situation.

Basic characteristics of historical research are:

• Rich descriptive narrative.
• Mostly qualitative data presented.
• Broad research questions are frequently used rather than narrowly defined hypotheses.

Data Sources

• Persons such as former teachers, students, parents.
• Historical Documents such as policy statements, curricular guidelines, etc.
• Records such as student transcripts.
• Relics such as desks, writing instruments, equipment.

Research Tools

• Structured interviews.
• Visits to historical sites and buildings.

Procedural Considerations

• Hypotheses generally not used.
• Research questions/Sub-questions generally stated.
• Statistics used tend to be descriptive and show measures of central tendency or measures of spread (dispersion) such as: frequency distributions; mean, median, mode; standard deviation; Chi-square.

Report Presentation

• Reports tend to rely on qualitative rather than quantitative presentations.
• Statistical data, if presented, is usually in simple descriptive form (i.e. frequency distributions, mean, standard deviations, etc.)