The essence of a case study

I chose to follow a case study approach because the events in two particular classes over a limited period of time were being investigated. Although it is not easy to define the term ‘case study’, it has generally come to mean those research methods which focus on a field of inquiry involving a specific instance (Babbie 2004: 293; Brown and Rodgers 2002: 21; Adelman, Jenkins and Kemmis 1976: 3) in its natural environment. Case study is furthermore “an intensive, holistic description and analysis” (Merriam 1998: 34). It is possible to study more than one case at a time, but the number must remain small because the “essence of the case-study approach is a careful and holistic look at particular cases” (Johnson 1992: 75, 76). Furthermore, any instance which is the subject of case study research is always a study “in action” (Adelman et al. 1976: 3). Case study, therefore, involves “an in-depth, intensive and sharply focused exploration of ... an occurrence” (Willig 2001: 70).

Case study research may be framed in one of two ways. In the first instance a hypothesis is posed and a bounded system selected from a class. In this way, generalisations may be made from the instance to the class (Nunan 1992: 75, 77). An example would be the case of an English classroom being investigated for a specific period so that generalisations could be made to other English classes or even to other learning area situations or completely different learning situations (Adelman et al. 1976: 3). In the second instance, the bounded system is selected and then studied in detail in order to try and understand the case as fully as possible (Merriam 1998: 19, 27; Adelman et al. 1976: 3), providing a greater understanding of the variables, parameters and dynamics of the case (MacDonald and Walker 1975: 7).

All cases are unique and, as such, “uniquely embedded in their real world situations” (Adelman et al. 1976: 4). The strength of case studies is its strong focus on a particular case and its descriptive discourse (Merriam 1998: 34). The “specific and limited nature” of a case study also makes it much more accessible to the practitioners of a profession such as teaching (Wallace 1998: 163). A case study will probably have achieved its goal best when the reader experiences the “shock of recognition” at the similarity between his/her situation or case and the case (s)he is reading about (Adelman et al. 1976: 4). For this to be possible, there need to be “thick descriptions” which give sufficient detail about the particular case so that the reader not only understands the case being discussed better (Seale 1999: 41), but may also possibly provide “transferability” to other similar situations as a result of the “thick descriptions” (Walford 2001: 15).

It is possible that the participants in one case study are typical of the members of a larger population (Wallace 1998: 161), bearing in mind that generalisations from a case study can never apply to other unexplored cases directly. Case study is more concerned with particularisation and an emphasis on the uniqueness of the case than with generalising to a wider group (Stake 1995: 8). Thus a case study considers the case within its context and takes place over a period of time. Because a case study can lead to the development of theory, research in case study “can give rise to explanations which potentially apply to new cases and the results of the research into one particular case may therefore be applicable to a wider context” (Willig 2001: 70, 71, 82, 86, emphasis in the original). It is with this in mind that the case being investigated in this study will be described in detail later in this chapter and the next, and will include the views of the learners who participated in this study. The conclusions reached in this study therefore have the potential to be applicable to many other language classrooms across the country.

Conducting a case study normally entails three distinct operations: generating and recording the information; organising the information; and writing the report or disseminating the information in some other way. The usual components of fieldwork are: collecting or evoking documents, observing, interviewing and measuring or collecting statistics to provide multiple sources of data. All this is done so that understanding is enhanced (Babbie and Mouton 2001: 282, 293; Stenhouse 1981: 10). Data in a case study are generated by means of naturalistic observations, elicitation, interviewing, verbal reports, using existing information and multiple sources for data in order to arrive at the clearest possible meaning of such data (Babbie and Mouton 2001: 282, 293; Johnson 1992: 86 – 90). It must be borne in mind that any empirical work is “selective, partial, positioned”, which makes “self-reflexivity” very important as the researcher tries to find out more as (s)he interacts with the data and tries to elicit meaning from what is happening (Lather 1991: 79). This was addressed by means of the notes that both the teachers involved in this study made, sometimes during the course of the period when there was time, and also later in the day.

It is important that biographical details be given in the study because biographical factors can affect the reliability and validity of the research (Nunan 1992: 149, 150). This I will do in section 4.9, later in this chapter. Therefore, it is vital that researchers elicit relevant information from the subjects. In order to do this they must be trusted by, and have the confidence of, the subjects; they must speak their language and be able to penetrate their world, and they must be highly conscious of psychological dynamics (Ball 1982: 19). Interviews are often conducted with only one participant, but group interviews provide an ideal opportunity to probe a matter in greater depth while affording an opportunity for reciprocal feedback (Lather 1991: 77).

Qualitative studies are concerned with trustworthiness, in other words the extent to which the findings of the research represent reality, giving no reason to doubt the truth of the findings (Meadows and Morse 2001: 188, 197) or the data (Bernard 2000: 46). This ensures the trustworthiness of the research, which can be scrutinised by other researchers (Babbie and Mouton 2001: 276, 277; Meadows and Morse 2001: 188, 197). This kind of validity or trustworthiness (Denzin and Lincoln 2000: 158) is as important for a case study as for other forms of study.

Any study must establish the correct measures for the concepts being studied. Certain conditions must lead to other conditions. The population to which the findings can be generalised must be established. The study must be replicable with similar results. All these factors are problematic in case studies (Nunan 1992: 80); whereas experimental research, by referring its findings to formal theories, seems to ‘guarantee’ its results and the results are handed over to the reader intact. Case study research, on the other hand, offers a ‘surrogate experience’ to the reader and invites the reader to identify with the experience. As in literature, the truth of the case study is “guaranteed” by the reader’s “shock of recognition” (Adelman et al. 1976: 4). In a case study “thick detailed descriptions” give the reader a sense of “being there ... so that they can use their human judgment to assess the likelihood of the same processes applying to other settings which they know” (Seale 1999: 118). I will include as much participant response as possible in order to render as trustworthy an account as possible with as much “thick description” (Seale 1999: 41) as possible.

In case studies final proof is rarely obtainable and the researcher should rather strive to increase understanding of the variables, parameters and dynamics of the study (Macdonald and Walker 1975: 7). If documented thoroughly, such studies may become archives which can be subsequently reinterpreted (Adelman et al. 1976: 8, 9).

One of the ways of generating data in case studies is by means of observation (Stenhouse 1981: 10; Babbie and Mouton 2001: 282), the focus of the next section.

4.5.3 Observation

Observation is an integral part of case study and researchers can approach their role in observation in a variety of ways (Ball 1982: 4, 5, 6).

4.5.3.1 Centrality of observation

Although there is wide agreement on the merits of observing teacher and learner actions in classrooms, there is less agreement on the suitable methodology to be used to implement classroom observation. There are two main approaches, viz. qualitative observational techniques and systematic observation (Croll 1986: 1).

4.5.3.2 Qualitative observation

The first approach to classroom observation is associated with ethnographic or qualitative observational techniques. In this approach the observer, who may or may not be a participant in the actual classroom events, observes the subjects and then tries to understand the “meaning of social relations and social processes” in the classroom (Wallace 1998: 105, 106). In this study the observation was done by two teachers and the focus of the observation was on the learners during the implementation of the selected classroom material (Wallace 1998: 105, 106), thus they were observed at close range (Seliger and Shohamy 1989: 162), with the teachers reporting by means of field notes and verbatim accounts of certain aspects of the classroom events (Wallace 1998: 106; Croll 1986: 1).

4.5.3.3 Participant observation

Researchers can act as observers and not be involved in the activities at all (where others are not aware of their research role), or be complete observers (with no interaction with the subjects and they are not taken into account at all). They can also participate in the activities as participant-as- observer (where others are aware of the observers’ research functions) or as observer-as-participant (involving one-visit interviews). They can also be fully involved as complete participants and only take up their role as observers again later (Bernard 2000: 321; Ball 1982: 4, 5, 6). In this regard the two of us were complete participants, as we were completely involved in the classroom activities as active teachers during the implementation of the module in the two classrooms, but at other times we were participant observers who were observing events around us, while being insiders. In order to keep classroom activities and learner responses as natural as possible, the learners were not told that the module was being implemented for research purposes. An ‘independent’, non-participating observer could not be included in the research design for the same reason. Keeping the information about the research from the learners was easy because the other Grade 8 classes also used those modules in the course of the year.

At times, especially when there was little interaction between the teachers and the learners since the learners were working on their own, we were complete observers, simply recording the learner actions around us, with little if any interaction between teachers and learners.

Although it is certain that the participant researcher will have an effect on the events being observed (Babbie 2001: 278), our role as observers was important for the purposes of this investigation. At the same time, our role as participants was equally important, because we were directly involved in the classroom activities as the teachers responsible for classroom events, even if there had been no investigation. We were thus participants and observers in equal measure, which does not fit neatly into the categories (see also Merriam 1998: 101) one normally associates with case study.

4.5.3.4 Systematic observation

The crux of systematic observation is that one or more observers devise “a systematic set of rules for recording and classifying classroom events” (Croll 1986: 1).

It must be granted that there can be no such thing as a definitive and ultimate description of the social events and processes in any depiction of classroom events. All reports of these events involve an abstraction of certain aspects from the world of the classroom which are deemed worthy of investigation for particular purposes (Croll 1986: 3-4). In addition, observation always involves sampling (Lee 2000: 44). It is in this sense that the observations by the two participant-observer teachers were recorded. The decision to focus on certain aspects must be seen in this light.

Another perspective is that systematic observation itself involves the rigid selection of categories and criteria for classifying the classroom events into selected categories (Croll 1986: 5). Because of the pre-defined categories for systematic observation, its techniques can be criticised as giving only a partial view of classroom events and therefore being inflexible, because of the constraints which they impose on the researcher. Furthermore, rigorously systematic observation techniques have also been accused of decontextualising the events in the classroom, which results in atomistic data, but this need not be the case if the observations are contextualised (Croll 1986: 162).

In the final analysis, it is not the technique to be followed that is important, but that the researcher confronts the research question “with a self-critical knowledge of the consequences and

implications of decisions about research methods and research design” (Croll 1986: 184). Because classroom events are so complex, it follows that there can be no single generally accepted theory which explains this or any other kind of social action (Stubbs and Delamont 1976: unnumbered Preface). Because of this very complexity, there can be no single methodology for observing social events either and therefore different modes of data production such as direct observation, note- taking, prepared observation schedules, questionnaires and interviews with teachers and learners have to be used.

4.5.3.5 Observation in this study

As has already been stated, the purpose of this study was to explore the extent to which the teaching of English would have to change in an OBE approach and to what extent existing OBE teaching material fulfils the purpose for which it has been designed. In this case quantitative measures did not seem appropriate and the learners were not observed systematically in the sense that there was a complete observer whose sole task was recording certain events according to a predetermined timing sequence in the classroom.

Observation in this study was, however, systematic in the sense that the learners were being observed all the time that they were in the English class with the teachers who described events briefly as the learners interacted with the material, and made notes of a more reflective nature after the lesson. In that way the two teachers involved were able to observe certain predetermined aspects of the classroom events; I reasoned that extensive descriptions of what was happening in the classrooms, together with learner feedback, would best generate appropriate data. Because there had to be a coordinated system of observation to be used by both teachers, I decided to use certain elements of systematic observation. I therefore designed an uncomplicated observation schedule (discussed in 4.6 below) which would focus on certain key factors forming the core of this investigation. Some measure of systematic observation was necessary in order to provide trustworthy accounts as opposed to what could be seen as unreliable impressions of classroom events (Allwright 1988: 44).