RESEARCH METHOD COHEN ok

198 HISTORICAL AND DOCUMENTARY RESEARCH
Life histories
Thomas and Znaniecki’s monumental study, The
Polish Peasant in Europe and America (1918), serves
as an appropriate introduction to this section, for
their detailed account of the life and times of
Wladek Wisniewski is commonly held to be the
first sociological life history.
The life history, according to Plummer (1983),
is frequently a full-length book about one person’s
life in his or her own words. Often, Plummer
observes, it is gathered over a number of years,
the researcher providing gentle guidance to the
subject, encouraging him or her either to write
down episodes of life or to tape-record them.
And often as not, these materials will be backed
up with intensive observations of the subject’s
life, with interviews of the subject’s friends and
acquaintances and with close scrutiny of relevant
documents such as letters, diaries and photographs.
Essentially, the life history is an ‘interactive
and co-operative technique directly involving the
researcher’ (Plummer 1983).
Accounts of the perspectives and interpretations
of people in a variety of educational
settings are both significant and pertinent, 4 for
they provide valuable ‘insights into the ways in
which educational personnel come to terms with
the constraints and conditions in which they
work’ (Goodson 1983). Life histories, Goodson
argues, ‘have the potential to make a far-reaching
contribution to the problem of understanding the
links between ‘‘personal troubles’’ and ‘‘public
issues’’, a task that lies at the very heart of the sociological
enterprise’. Their importance, he asserts,
‘is best confirmed by the fact that teachers continually,
most often unsolicited, import life history data
into their accounts of classroom events’ (Goodson
1983).
Miller (1999) demonstrates that biographical
research is a distinctive way of conceptualizing
social activity. He provides outlines of the three
main approaches to analysis, that is to say:
the realist, focusing upon grounded-theory
techniques
the neo-positivist, employingmorestructured
interviews
the narrative, using the interplay between
interviewer and interviewee to actively
construct life histories.
Denzin (1999) suggests that there are several
varieties of biographical research methods
including:
biography
autobiography
story
discourse
narrative writing
personal history
oral history
case history
life history
personal experience
case study.
This is addressed further by Connelly and
Clandinin (1999) who indicate several approaches
to narrative inquiry:
oral history
stories
annals and chronicles
photographs
memory boxes
interviews
journals
autobiography
letters
conversations
documents.
In exploring the appropriateness of life history
techniques to a particular research project, and
with ever-present constraints of time, facilities
and finance in mind, it is useful to distinguish life
histories both by type and mode of presentation,
both factors bearing directly upon the scope and
feasibility of the research endeavour. Box 8.2 draws
on an outline by Hitchcock and Hughes (1989).
Readers may wish to refer to the descriptions
of types and modes of presentation contained
in Box 8.2 in assessing the differing demands
that are made on intending researchers as they
gather, analyse and present their data. Whether