Critical Multiple Instrumental Case Study Design

I have selected a critical, instrumental case study design within the qualitative paradigm (Guba & Lincoln, 2005) as it best fits my purposes of exploring teachers’ articulated understandings and everyday practice of teaching critical literacy in a particular historical context. In qualitative methodology, participants are afforded explanatory power to identify what is significant for them in their specific locales and realities (Mason, 2002). It allows the researcher to obtain an in-depth understanding of participants’ multiple interpretations and experiences within a specific context and time frame (Merriam, 1998, 2002; Miles & Huberman, 1994). Qualitative research also acknowledges the subjective nature of research both in terms of the participants’ interpretations of experience and the researcher’s data collection process, analytic frameworks and ultimate interpretation, requiring a careful reflexive stance by the researcher. My own positionality (Lather, 1992) is discussed in section 4.8 of this chapter.

The understanding of case study used in this project is “an in-depth exploration from multiple perspectives of the complexity and uniqueness of a particular project, policy, institution or system in a ‘real-life’ context” (Simons, 2009, p. 21). Using case study method allows the researcher to explore a phenomenon of some sort in a particular bounded context (Merriam, 2002; Miles & Huberman, 1994). The phenomenon in focus in this study is the conceptualising and teaching of critical

literacy within a senior curriculum within multiple cases – four teachers in two secondary school sites. Multiple case study methodology links well with the theoretical framing of this study as it enables investigation of the discourses operating in a range of sites, and to reflect on the contextual and historical factors that help to constitute these discourses. It also aids understanding of how these discourses in turn help constitute, sustain and/or reframe certain understandings and ways of teaching in specific contexts.

Internal coherence of this project is further enhanced through the use of a critical case study method (Carspecken, 1996; Creswell, 2008; Hébert & Beardsley, 2001; Patton, 1990). The choice of this methodology is relevant for two reasons. The first reason is that a critical approach to case study complements the theoretical framework outlined in Chapter 3. The study is aligned ontologically and epistemologically with generic critical theory as proposed by Fairclough (1995): “any theory concerned with critique of ideology and the effects of domination” (p. 20). Ontologically, reality is shaped by historical, political, cultural, economic and ethnic values that crystallise over time (Guba & Lincoln, 1994). In terms of epistemology, knowledge is transactional – researcher and researched are interactively linked – and value-laden (Guba & Lincoln, 1994). Critical case study, as a subset of ethnography (Creswell, 2008), fits with this paradigm as it is concerned with advocacy and transformation of social practices in pursuit of more equitable situations. It has “attachments to local knowledges and to illuminating the exercise of power in culturally specific yet socially reproductive processes” (Lather, 2001, p. 478). Table 4.1 provides a summary of the characteristics of critical case study research.

Table 4.1

Characteristics of Critical Case Study Research (adapted from Creswell, 2008; Thomas, 1993, pp. 3-4)

Characteristics of critical case study research

Critical case study researchers speak to an audience on behalf of their participants as a means of empowering participants by giving them more authority.

Critical case study researchers identify and celebrate their biases in research. They recognise that all research is value-laden.

Critical case study researchers challenge the status quo and ask why is it so?; and what could it be? Critical case study researchers seek to connect the meaning of a situation to broader structures of social power and control.

Critical case study researchers use their investigations to assist emancipatory goals.

This study has attempted to address each of these characteristics, as noted in Chapter 8. As a characteristic outcome of critical case study, an emancipatory goal (see Table 4.1) is an ambiguous concept and is worth clarifying. The term conjures up grandiose moments of liberation and large-scale radical change that are unlikely to occur in social institutions such as education systems. However, in Thomas’ (1993) view, emancipation refers to “the process of separation from constraining modes of thinking or acting that limit perception of and action toward realising alternative possibilities” (p. 4). The modes of thinking about critical literacy with EAL/D learners and the modes of acting that arise from those modes of thinking provide the emancipatory impetus for this study.

The second reason critical case study has been chosen is that critical case studies allow researchers to investigate cases that “can make a point quite dramatically or are, for some reason, particularly important in the scheme of things” (Patton, 1990, p. 174). Patton argues that a clue to the existence of a critical case study is the statement: “if it happens here, it is likely to happen elsewhere”; and vice versa, “if it doesn’t happen here, then it doesn’t happen elsewhere” (p. 175). Given that critical literacy was fully endorsed by Queensland education authorities in recent years, the goal in this critical case study is to explore the possibility that if critical pedagogy is not happening in the selected sites (since it is no longer compulsory in English syllabuses, and is explicated in a confusing superfluity of ways in the curriculum documents), then it is likely that it is not happening elsewhere in Queensland. Conversely, if it is happening here in certain ways, then it is likely that it is happening elsewhere in similar schools in Queensland. Either outcome will provide important findings for the development of EAL/D pedagogy in rapidly changing times and either outcome can provide the basis for further research. See Chapter 5 for discussion of the place of critical literacy in the English for ESL

Learners Senior Syllabus (QSA, 2007 amended 2009).

Coupled with a critical approach, this project incorporated a multiple instrumental case study design (Creswell, 2008; Merriam, 1998). It is instrumental in that it illuminates a particular issue using multiple cases to do so. The issue is the way in which critical literacy is understood by teachers of EAL/D and how it is enacted in the classroom, in relation to the shifting policy terrain and EAL/D pedagogy. This approach can help shed light on an issue as it is observed and

understood in a particular place and time. Figure 4.1 illustrates the way each of the four cases (four teachers) in this study relates to the issue under investigation.

Figure 4.1. Multiple instrumental case study design (adapted from Creswell, 2008, p. 477).