Indisciplines of inquiry: the Scottish Children’s Story, documentary film and the construction of the viewer

Abstract

The starting point for this article is a film about Scottish education, Children’s Story. Children’s Story was one of a group of seven documentaries made for the 1938 British Empire Exhibition in Glasgow, under the supervision of John Grierson. The film was an official entry into the Exhibition and is a formal display of key ideas and elements of Scottish education – past, present and (especially) future. The film will be used to raise questions for researchers in the histories of education about using moving film as research data, or within the research process. Questions related to the use-value of film in educational research are central to our article. The article is organised in three parts, and followed by a conclusion; they are the film as a record, the documentary film movement and the visual as the object of research.