This paper is focused on the use of film as data in historical research in education. It takes one particular film extract and uses it to raise questions about the use of film. In this case, it is not the internal aspects of the film [the construction of the film, its symbols, its discourses and objects etc] which is to be studied but the external aspects of the film [its audiences, its designed spectacle, its politics and its selection]. A series of questions emerge from the mid 20thC case to be used: the relation between documentary realism in education and representations of the nation/ state or country; the use of 'world' Exhibitions to display, using educational film, aspects of selected modernist practice and to use them as the basis for international comparisons; the process of production and selection of the film object [funding, evaluation, politics]; the relation between the representation and the 'scientific' context [ did the case on film have any connection with Scottish research and practice in education at the time?] Using film as data in educational research in history is still fairly new and this paper is a contribution to the problems associated with it.

The film extract is from 'The Childrens' Story', one film in a series of seven, produced initially for the Empire Exhibition in Glasgow, Scotland in 1938. These films were produced by John Grierson, probably the most well known of documentary film makers operating in Britain in the 1930s, and illustrated different aspects of life in Scotland at the time. The film was later sent to be used in the 1939 New York Worlds Fair. The extract deals with a class using an intelligence test in Scotland.

The paper is part of a longer discussion in histories of education [and in this Network] and it is not clear yet whether the paper will work [or be useful] and what it will be part of. However, if possible, it is intended to have a further value inside the new EERA Summer Schools in Histories of Education.