Case studies

The research design uses case studies to group, analyse and evaluate data and compare outcomes between the main research site and two supporting research sites. This allows me to look at contemporary issues with the aim of illuminating and understanding them as well as seeking ‘to answer focused questions by pro- ducing in-depth descriptions and interpretations’ (Hays, 2004, p. 218); it is also about studying a social phenomenon (Cohen et al., 2007). In my case the social phenomenon under observation is the construction of the concept of giftedness and talent amongst the teachers and how this is reflected within the school culture and routine practices in an English secondary school.

Hays (2004) highlights further characteristics of a case study which makes it well suited for this study. One of them is that a case study, unlike ethnographic studies,

‘seeks to answer focused questions by producing in-depth descriptions and interpre- tations’ (Hays, 2004, p. 218). Cohen et al. (2007) generalised the questions which are intended to be addressed by a case study as the following three:

• What are the characteristics of a social phenomenon?

• What are the causes of the social phenomenon?

• What are the consequences of the social phenomenon?

(p. 169)

different secondary schools including sixth form as well as that of a specialist sixth form college. I wanted to know who is really shaping the culture of the schools and what could the culture be described as. And lastly, I was interested in finding out about the impact the phenomenon school culture had on the personal development of the gifted and talented students in the individual schools (Cohen et al., 2007).

Other reasons for choosing a case study approach were access and feasibility. To be allowed into school settings can be very difficult as daily life in a school is extremely busy and teachers mostly have enough on their plate already without taking part in research. Being a teacher myself, access is slightly easier to manage but feasibility is difficult as I am working during normal school hours. Due to these circumstances I made the decision to use my own school as one research school, even though this comes with certain difficulties, and found another school close by which was very willing to take part. Lastly, I was also able to gain access to a specialist sixth form college which focuses on A-levels (further educational qualification post-GCSE, normally a two year course) in the domains of mathematics, further mathematics, Information and Communications Technology (ICT), and physics. The latter was especially useful to triangulate my findings from the other two schools as well as looking at an educational setting which was aiming at educating the very able and thus had a different stance to teaching the young people in their care (Bryman, 2016).

If one wants to observe real situations and understand about causes and effects the most obvious approach is a case study (Gross, 2004). It also is a good opportunity to emerge oneself in a situation in order to really understand it. This is also important in this study as I am already part of St. Paul’s Secondary School and cannot entangle myself fully from being a teacher and tutor there as well as a researcher. A further advantage is it presents outcomes in an easier to understand form:

readers to understand ideas more clearly than simply by presenting them with abstract theories or principles.

(Cohen et al., 2007, p. 253)

Further advantages are that case studies are taken from practice and can easily feed back into the same system by sharing insights and findings which can be used as feedback within the setting, an evaluation or be used for future policy-making. This, of course, links back to the transformative mixed methods design discussed above (Creswell, 2014). As a case study offers differing points of view it can also help to gain an overview and look for alternative interpretations (Cohen et al., 2007).

Lastly, a case study allowed me to explore the social phenomenon over a prolonged period of time which led to a more in-depth understanding as well as opportunity to observe trends and patterns (Bryman, 2016; Gross, 2004; Warin, 2010). Given my part-time study mode I had 4 years to gather data which I used and therefore conducted the case studies in a longitudinal manner. As mentioned above this allowed me even better to draw conclusions about causes and effects and draw an even better and more in-depth picture about the cases and the developments of the participants (Cohen et al., 2007; Gross, 2004; Warin, 2010).

Some weaknesses which have been pointed out repeatedly in the literature are the following (Bryman, 2016; Cohen et al., 2007; Gross, 2004; Hays, 2004):

• The trustworthiness of case studies is sometimes questioned as outcomes are often not generalisable. Hays (2004) argues that this can be turned around when multiple cases are used to study the same phenomenon. Further, tri- angulation of methods and sources strengthen the acceptance of case study outcomes.

and subjectivity.

• Lastly, as a vast amount of data is gathered it is solely down to the re- searcher to decide which information and events to include and which ones to exclude. This makes it a very subjective process in which the reflexivity of the researcher is strongly needed.

As for the first point, I have addressed this by adopting the mixed methods ap- proach as well as triangulating my findings from one research site with those of the other two (Bryman, 2016). Points two and three ask for a thorough and transparent data analysis which I will come to later in this chapter.

To finish off this section I am now going to highlight the different methods I used to generate data throughout the study.

The basis for all the case studies was a questionnaire which was administered on a whole school level involving, wherever possible, a representative sample of students from each research site. Questions were a mixture of scaled answers, open-ended questions including illustrations, as well as the identification of a certain number of characteristics of the school (see Appendix C). The scaled questions were based on Hargreaves’s (1999) school typology to allow for clear comparison between the different research sites. It also enabled me to use the same questionnaire in all schools which increases reliability and compatibility. This also enabled me to compare findings and use statistical analysis (Cohen et al., 2007). (For further details regarding the data analysis see section 3.3.) As parts of the questionnaire were also based on open-ended questions and asked for reasons for certain choices it still gave participants the opportunity to raise their voice and shed a bit more light on why they chose this illustration rather than the other.

The outcomes from the questionnaire then informed the next steps which included semi-structured interviews as well as observations.

As a means to gather further qualitative data, I used semi-structured interviews with members of staff and very able students to follow up questionnaires and observations to illuminate certain points as well as to get a deeper insight. The semi-structure allowed for comparability on the one hand as I covered the same areas with all interviewees but also freedom to explore issues which surfaced during an interview on the other (Cohen et al., 2007).

Parallel to interviewing very able students as well as members of staff I also ob- served lessons in all 3 schools. This allowed me to see how gifted and talented students were taught in the different schools, what practices prevailed, and how the students were socially integrated (Gross, 2004). Before each lesson observa- tion I identified the gifted and talented students wherever applicable and observed their interactions with their peers as well as the kind of work they were given. The lesson observations were again semi-structured: I observed interactions in 10 minute intervals and focused mainly on the gifted and talented students in the room, but was also able to get a general idea of how the classroom was set up and how the lesson worked. Thus, data generated did not only include numbers but also parts of conversations between students and teacher, phrases used in the educational setting as well as pure impressions I as an observer had. This approach allowed for comparison as well as exploration of specifics within individual schools and lessons. This allowed me to observe situations linked to my agenda as well as picking up other happenings which often clarified situations and dynamics within a certain setting (Cohen et al., 2007; Francis et al., 2012). The latter also gave a clearer picture of how things were done in an educational setting opposed to what is written in official documents and thus highlighted what the culture of the place was like or what the underlying rules of an institution were (Hargreaves, 1994; Nunn, 2014).