Case study in this research

3.1.4.1. Pilot study

A pilot study can be regarded as ‘a try-out of what you (researcher) propose so that its feasibility can be checked’ (Robson, 2011: 141). Before the main study, a pilot study was undertaken to estimate the problems which could occur in the main study process and to improve the research design.

The workshop for the pilot study was conducted at the Coventry Korean Community School in England. The educational aim of the school is mainly to provide Korean language education for Korean bilingual students who speak English and Korean. This school, in essence, is seeking to follow the Korean National

Curriculum, and while mainly teaching Korean language, Korean culture,

mathematics, and Korean history are also taught with the text-books published by the Korean Ministry of Education.

The reason why I decided to undertake the pilot study in this school is that there are students who have become accustomed to the Korean school curriculum systems and educational culture here and the school has the most similar conditions to schools in Korea. For the pilot project, a three-session workshop was undertaken for five year one students of this school. Pre and post questionnaires for students, observations and student group interviews were used as research methods in conducting this pilot study (see Appendix 1: The Scheme of The Pilot Workshop and Table 3.1: The Chronology of The Pilot Study). What I have learned from the

pilot study will be partly described when recounting the main study in this chapter and in chapter 4.

Table 3.1. The chronology of the pilot study

Date Research Method Duration

12/11/2011 Pilot workshop 120 minutes

12/11/2011 pilot student interview 20 minutes

13/11/2011 pilot observation as a researcher 300 minutes

12~13/11/2011 pilot field note as a teacher and a researcher 60 minutes

19/11/2011 pilot student checklist 5 minutes

Note.Target: Year 1 Coventry Korean School students

3.1.4.2. Main study

In many cases ‘the key’ to doing social research lies in the research question (Robson, 2011:25). The leading research question in the present study is as follows.

 What happens when I try teaching a series of workshops based around story and drama for year one children in Korea?

It was essential that looking deeply into the case which adopts drama and story for an integrated school curriculum to test the hypothesis that drama and story might contribute to the new NC in individual schools in Korea. Thus, I decided to adopt a case study which allowed for an in-depth inquiry into certain issues within its condition and framework, as a research methodology.

Further detailed research questions are as follows.

 Will drama and story be welcomed by individual schools in Korea?

 How might a teacher plan to adopt story and drama within both the nationally prescribed and individual school curriculum?

 How can a teacher be able to implement and provide a simulating curriculum for students?

 How can the educational effectiveness of story and drama be evaluated within the confines of the Korean curriculum?

What I wanted to see through the workshop was the possibility and

contribution of drama and story to the new national curriculum of Korea. Needless to say, these should be considered from various points of view, following multiple levels of analysis. The research questions were answered through an examination of issues from many perspectives, in terms of school/class, teacher/ student, individual school curriculum/ national curriculum, educational and dramatic aspects. In this sense, this research could be seen to be a multiple embedded case study, in which multiple units of analysis existed. In addition, this research was an instrumental case study, according to Stake’s definition. The workshop for the research was done in two slightly different forms of Korean state schools. The coverage of this research was the state school curriculum, so I chose school A, which was an ordinary form of state school, and B, which was a partly adopted innovative school running system as a new form of state school. Schools A and B are representative cases of the state school form of Korea.

The workshop for this research was conducted in five classes of two different primary schools in Korea. The theme of the workshop was community, including the pilot study. After a three session pilot workshop, I realised that three sessions were not enough to deal with the issue of community with year 1 children, so eventually a six or seven session workshop was designed (see Appendix 2: The Scheme of The Workshop). The decision as to how many sessions there would be was decided through communication with each school and class teachers. The details are as follows.

Table 3.2. The number of the workshop sessions in schools

School A School B

Classes A-1 A-2 B-1 B-2 B-3

Sessions 7 6 7 7 7

There are some criticisms of the case study, and these are directly or indirectly connected with issues of validity, reliability and generalizability. To enhance the validity, triangulation which is the means of using more than one method of data collection in the study (Cohen et al., 2000), was used, and what class teachers, drama practitioners and the researcher thought about the workshop was contained in the process of this research analysis. Furthermore, the researcher’s personal hypothesis and assumptions were clarified before conducting the workshop. Using triangulation, and explaining the assumption of this research is also useful for reliability. In addition, the way in which the research was designed and the data were collected, and how the conclusion was drawn, will be described in detail throughout.

The means of pursuing generalizability of this research is very much dependant on readers’ practical understanding, as well as adequate statistical and empirical

evidence being available. I anticipate that as readers read this thesis, the conclusions and findings, which are suggested by statistical and empirical evidence, will be recognized by them, based on their realistic and practical understanding.