Case Study Strategy

This research takes a case study approach to assess PBL in IE in KB. The case study is a secondary girls’ school, which I have given the pseudonym “Amwaj Secondary Girls’ School”. In the whole of the KB there are thirty five secondary, (sixteen male and nineteen female) schools. In this study, this level of education was selected from one of five governorates in KB, in which there are different kinds of primary, intermediate and secondary schools for boys and for girls. In particular, there are six schools within the secondary level (three male and three female schools) in the selected governorate. I selected the Amwaj Secondary Girls’ School as a case study for this research which consists of one thousand and seventy four students, as there is

112 no means by which I as a female researcher can enter a male school due to restrictions of the law and MoE regulations in KB. I selected this particular girls’ school as I live nearby and worked there previously, thus I was acquainted with the staff and this made it more accessible for me to apply my research there.

Punch (2005. p.145) defines the case study as a “bounded system” where the border between the context and the case itself is not always clear, and the researcher needs to clarify the problem of defining these boundaries. For this study, the context of the case study is “Amwaj Secondary Girls’ School” and the fundamental nature of the research is implementing a novel teaching method through the IE PBL module. In particular, it included four classes of grade eleven female students aged 17. Other boundaries are formed through the use of the temporal restrictions as a result of the lessons the students took within the PBL module; a seven-week timeframe covering ten topics.

I have selected a case study approach because it allows for multiple sources of data collection and so provides the opportunity to gain an in-depth understanding of real life situations, which enhances the validity of the research (Denscombe, 2010). Secondly, this strategy enables me to describe and explain issues related to the study that might not be accessible through other methods of inquiry. Rowley claims that “Case studies are one approach that supports deeper and more detailed investigation of the type that is normally necessary to answer how and why questions” (2002, p. 17). With reference to the literature reviewed in this study, case studies were widely used to investigate the application of PBL in many disciplines such as education, maths, sciences and medicine (Samsonov et al., 2006; Closson 2011; Li, 2012; Bessant et al., 2013). However, there is no literature related to teaching IE in KB and employing the PBL module; this also informed my choice to use a case study.

Savin-Baden and Major (2004) have also claimed that case studies remain the most comprehensive means by which to determine the worth of PBL. This influences my choice of employing a case study approach in this research to determine the appropriateness of the IE PBL module and particularly with regard to its educational outcomes as active practice and to reveal how it works in real life situations. Accordingly, mixed methods were required to find out if PBL does or does not work in a new context such as IE in KB. In this regard, utilizing interviews, observations, questionnaires and the student self-evaluation form allowed me to deeply

113 investigate the phenomenon within the study. This is supported by Baxter and Jack (2008) who state that all issues are to be seen through a multitude of 'lenses' in order to determine their multifaceted nature.

The type of case study can be exploratory, explanatory or descriptive (Yin, 2013); this research was exploratory and explanatory. The exploratory type of case study permits a detailed assessment of an exact sample population. The current study is exploratory since it aims to “investigate a little-understood phenomenon” and to “generate hypotheses for further research” (Marshall & Rossman, 1999, P.33). In this type of research, the researcher is concerned with investigating a situation where little or no information is available or known about the phenomenon in question. Patton (2002) stated that exploratory research intends to assimilate exploratory information in order to better comprehend and to understand the study in hand. The current study aims to explore if the IE PBL module will enhance learning to meet the MoE’s learning aims for IE, as this research intends to determine the value of implementing PBL in IE within the school in KB.

Furthermore, the current research can be considered as explanatory because it provides a clear explanation of the implementation of an IE PBL module in a new context. The current study offers a detailed investigation of a particular school and a certain group of students. It is also an illustration of whether the IE PBL module can help students to increase or widen their learning skills within IE. In order to see students interacting with each other, the research needs to observe them, follow the teachers in class, and record their interactions closely (Yin, 2009).

On the other hand, a number of limitations are raised regarding applying the strategy of case study. Yin (2009) claims the lack of rigour in a case study can be avoided by using more than one method in a particular study. This study uses multiple methods to avoid this limitation. Another limitation it that the case study as a research approach is not intended to provide a generalizable conclusion. In general, however, it is generalizable to “theoretical propositions and not to populations or universes” (Yin, 2009, p. 15). Case studies can generate analytic generalizations rather that statistical generalizations (ibid). Nonetheless, the mixed methods approach of the research design of this study allows frequencies to be calculated in order to create statistics for a particular case (Creswell & Plano Clark, 2011). With regard to this research, the study seeks to incorporate the PBL approach into the secondary level of IE in the

114 KB, the findings are more likely to be able to be generalised because the case study is representative. It is possible to generalise the research findings to all 11th grade female students in “Provisions of the family in Islam (201)” in the KB, since their age, grade, gender, physical location, and studied subjects, as well as the applicable education policy, are the same. However, variables affecting generalisation, such as teacher acceptance, other IE subjects and class dynamics must be taken into consideration. So, generalisation is enhanced by representative of the case study but limited by the small number of the respondents and the qualitative data.

Subjectivity is a further limitation of case study research. However, Simons (2009, p. 163) argues that “subjectivity is not something we can avoid whatever methods we adopt, though it is more visible in qualitative inquiry where people, including the researcher, are an inherent part of the case”. Moreover, she claims that research subjectivity can be decreased when you as a researcher “acknowledge its inherent subjectivity and concentrate on demonstrating how your values, predispositions and feelings impact upon research” (ibid). Furthermore, applying the “Mixed method approach” in this research avoids this limitation where the qualitative data in individual interpretations is eliminated by utilizing the quantitative data (Creswell and Plano Clark, 2011).