Judging Reliability When Sources Conflict
A student is analysing three sources about the 1917 conscription plebiscites in Australia. Source A is a speech by Prime Minister Billy Hughes in 1916 urging a 'Yes' vote. Source B is a pamphlet by the Australian Workers' Union opposing conscription. Source C is a letter from a serving soldier at the front describing conditions and expressing a personal view on conscription. The student writes: 'Source A is unreliable because Hughes was biased. Source B is reliable because it represents workers. Source C is the most reliable because it is a personal letter.' The teacher must give feedback that moves the student from labelling sources as 'biased' or 'reliable' toward evaluating them in relation to the question asked. The task question is: 'How useful are these sources for an historian investigating public attitudes to conscription in 1916-17?'
1. Explain why the student's reasoning about reliability is flawed, and reframe what 'usefulness' means for this question.
Read the worked answer
The student's reasoning commits three errors.
1. Bias is not the same as unreliability. Every source is produced for a purpose. Hughes's speech is evidence of pro-conscription rhetoric and the arguments the government deployed; it is highly useful for that question even though it is not a neutral account.
2. 'Represents workers' does not make a source reliable. The AWU pamphlet is a partisan advocacy document. It is useful as evidence of organised labour's arguments and the intensity of opposition, not as a neutral measure of public opinion.
3. 'Personal letter' is not automatically most reliable. A soldier's letter is a single, situated perspective, often shaped by censorship, the desire not to worry family, and limited vantage. It is useful as evidence of one soldier's experience and of how the war was represented to those at home.
Reframing 'usefulness': a source is useful when it provides evidence relevant to the question, given its origin, purpose, and context. Usefulness is judged in relation to the specific inquiry, not as a fixed property.
For 'public attitudes', the student should ask: what does each source reveal about the arguments, emotions, and divisions of the period? Combined, the three sources show a contested public sphere. None gives a neutral poll, but together they are useful evidence of how the debate was conducted. The student should also note limits: all three are elite or organised voices and none measures mass opinion directly.
2. Draft the key feedback sentence you would give the student, and explain why this phrasing is more effective than 'you need to be more critical'.
Read the worked answer
Feedback sentence: 'You have identified each source's perspective well. Now push further: for each source, state what question it can answer and what it cannot, then explain how its origin and purpose shape that. For example, Hughes's speech cannot tell us what the public thought, but it can tell us what arguments the government believed would persuade them.'
Why this is more effective than 'be more critical':
- It names the cognitive move (question-source fit) rather than a vague disposition.
- It uses the student's own work (they already identified perspectives) as the starting point, so the feedback is specific and achievable.
- It models the reasoning with a concrete example, giving the student a template to apply to Sources B and C.
- It redirects from judgement of the source to judgement of the question, which is exactly the shift the task requires.
Follow-up: ask the student to rewrite one paragraph using the template 'Source X is useful for investigating ___ because ___, but limited for ___ because ___'. This converts feedback into practice and gives the teacher evidence of whether the shift has occurred.