Case Study

The main idea in a case study is that it is conducted in a real life context and it aims to capture all of the details of a particular group which are relevant to the purposes of the study (Yin, 2003). Yin further recommended the case study approach for descriptive, exploratory purposes and to those studies which seek answers to “How” and “Why”

questions.

There are multiple aspects in a case study that need to be considered for it to be reliable. In all cases there has to be a subject which, in the present study, is comprised from the lectures in the Master’s Program. In addition to the subject, there has to be the object, i.e. the theoretical focus of the study. In the present study the object is, firstly, students’ perception of lectures within the Master’s Program, and, based on students’ perceptions, the interactional features in the lectures.

In order not to over-extend the case to be too broad, it is essential to bind the case (Baxter and Jack, 2008). With binding these authors mean limiting the scope of the study in some aspect, such as in regards to time or place. The present study includes the Master’s Program lectures within the academic year 2005-2006. Therefore, the case study is bound in three aspects: time, place, and activity (Creswell, 1998; Stake, 1995). Furthermore, the present study, though the case includes lectures within a full academic year, cannot be seen as a

longitudinal study since the lectures were all different and by different lecturers. Since the data was processed simultaneously during the data collection, the present study is not a retrospective study either, but a snapshot of a Master’s Program (Flyvbjerg, 2011).

Another issue which needs to be determined is the type of a case study used. According to Stake (1995), there are two types of case studies: intrinsic and instrumental. Intrinsic is the type of case which interests the researcher as a whole while in an instrumental case study certain phenomena are the focus of the study. Yin (2003) viewed the different types of case studies as explanatory, which links the case with its effects, and exploratory, which may not have very predictable results, but describes a phenomenon within real-life context. The present study type is an exploratory, descriptive case study.

In order to define the case study even further, i.e. how the case or cases are viewed needs to be considered. The most typical case study examines a single case, for example a language learner (Duff, 2008), and explores that case holistically to obtain as comprehensive a picture of the case as possible. In a multiple case (Yin, 2003) or collective case (Stake, 1995) study, several single case studies are combined and compared. Neither of these views was completely applicable to the present study.

Yin (2003) further described a single case study with embedded units and that was chosen as the definition of the present study in respect to the multiple vs. single issue. In this case, the single case is the Master’s Program with lectures as its embedded units. The benefit for choosing this approach is that these embedded units can be studied individually and compared while still obtaining a holistic, cross-case view on the case itself.

According to Flyvbjerg (2011), the case or the cases in a case study strategy are not selected randomly. The selection is based on an informed selection. The selection can be the key cases, outlier cases, or local knowledge cases. The key cases are those cases which are seen as interesting in reference to the research questions. The outlier cases are those which either represent the extremes or otherwise do not match the “norm” within the cases.

The local knowledge cases are known to the researcher: their setting and circumstances are

so familiar to the researcher that the study can be conducted based on this information in a manner which would not be possible without such knowledge (Flyvbjerg, 2011).

The case selection in the present study was based on practical issues: the lecturers’ English within this Master’s Program was to be evaluated; therefore the Master’s Program was selected as the case. The embedded units, i.e. the lectures (for further details on lectures, see Section 3.2 on data), were those which I was able to attend, record, and collect students’

feedback. I would, consequently, define the selected case as a key case as it represents a case within which it is possible to obtain answers to the research questions.

For research to be reliable, it needs to have both internal and external validity. Internal validity is increased through the selection of the examples within the case: if they are randomly selected, the validity is high; if there is evidence of bias in the selection, the validity is low. The internal validity influences the external validity by resulting in a more generalizable outcome in those cases with solid internal validity. However, Yin (2003) also pointed out that sometimes, when the goal is to increase the case validity through focusing, it may also limit the generalizability of that particular case study results, as they are, perhaps, too restricted in their perspective.

Based on Bassey’s (1999) description of a case study in an educational setting, the present study aims to investigate specific characteristics of a program within its natural context.

These definitions of a case study are met through focusing on actual lectures, recording them, and collecting feedback from students who attended the recorded lectures. The multiple sources of data allow avoiding superficiality of the results (Yin, 2003).

There are several studies where the informants have been asked to give feedback, write summaries, or complete tests on prerecorded lectures which were played to the informants (Rost, 1994; Chaudron et al., 1994). The setting in these types of studies is more artificial.

The goal of the present study was to keep the data and the situation in which it was collected as authentic as possible to heighten the construct validity of this case study. (Duff, 2008). The authenticity of the lecture situation was maintained through no other interference but the video recording.

In order to provide a conceptual framework (Miles and Humberman, 1994), Yin (2003) suggested using propositions while Stake (1995) discussed issues. These are items which the researcher has a notion of prior to the actual study. The propositions in the present study are listed in Table 3.1. In order to incorporate the linguistic features in the propositions, they had to be included after the preliminary investigation of the data. However, they do precede the actual study of the features themselves.

Table 3.1 Propositions and their Sources for the Present Study

These propositions were considered when designing the present study. Selecting an explorative case study as the approach meant that at first the Master’s Program was reviewed as a holistic entity and as many of its aspects as possible were examined simultaneously. These included the work place expectations as well as students’ perception of the lectures. This type of approach was necessary as not to restrict the observations until the focus of the more in-depth study and the knowledge of what was pertinent in this study was found.

Data collection in case studies is discussed by all authors of case studies. The main aspect of data collection in case studies is the use of multiple sources. The collected data needed to be organized and stored in an orderly fashion and the chain of evidence needed to be reported (Baxter and Jack, 2008; Duff, 2008; Flyvbjerg, 2011; Stake, 1995; Yin, 2003).

The first of these principles refers to triangulation of evidence. To adhere to the suggested principles of the case study data collection, this study is based on several triangulations: the

Proposition Source

x Lecturers’ English interferes with lecturing/comprehension

x Students’ view on lecturers’

English (Pynnönen, 2005) x English is used daily or weekly

with mostly NNSs of English in anticipated future working life of the students

x Working life view on English (Suviniitty, 2007)

view on English in the lectures by the students and the researcher as well as the view on it in the working world (Figure 3.2 below).

Figure 3.2 Triangulation on English

The triangulation on English is realized through two different surveys as well as my own view on how English is used today.

Focusing on the case itself, I was able to obtain the students’ view, my own view as a participant observer as well as the view acquired through discourse analysis of the transcribed data, as illustrated in Figure 3.3.

Figure 3.3 Triangulation on Lectures

The latter triangulation, thus, includes the student perception through questionnaires, researcher perception in field notes, as well as the transcriptions of the video-recorded lectures, the analysis of which is based on discourse analysis. Triangulation and multiple sources of information increase the trustworthiness of the investigation.

When considering generalization, some researchers (e.g. Bassey, 1999) have seen case studies as able to provide only fuzzy or best estimate of trustworthiness (BET). In this type of estimate, the researcher draws a tentative conclusion based on his/her professional expertise when definitive research data is missing. Flyvbjerg (2011) argued against the common notion regarding the results of case studies as ungeneralizable. He further commented that in any method all aspects of the study influence its reliability and, therefore, also its results and their generalizability. The present study aims at descriptive, exploratory results which, since the study considers multiple triangulations as well as multiple perspectives, are seen as generalizable to similar situations.