ETHNOGRAPHIC CASE STUDY DESIGN

There are different research designs that can be employed in social research such as a case study, field research and ethnographic research (LeCompte and Preissle 2003). Merriam (1998) views ethnography as a form of qualitative research that studies society and culture. In studying culture, ethnographers pay special emphasis on the patterns of behaviour that are projected by the members of the society under study.

Stacey and Eckert (1999) reiterate Merriam’s (1998) view of ethnography as an approach developed in the social sciences for understanding how a culture or sub-culture of a certain group works by observing it from the inside (Higginbottom 2004, Collingridge and Gantt (2008). In other words, the researcher is interested in understanding the behaviours and attitudes of the group under investigation. For the researcher to understand the research participants’ behavior, he/she needs to spend sufficient time with the group he/she is studying. Walters (2007) defines ethnography as a study that investigates people interacting in natural settings and which also looks for patterns of what people are doing (LeCompte 2003). LeCompte & Preissle (2003) concur with the above definition that ethnography deals with people interaction in their natural settings. Higginbottom (2004) defines ethnography in terms of the data which is unstructured, the sample size which may include one case, the analysis of data which is primarily narrative and data which is not quantified.

Merriam (1998) claims that an ethnographic study is a sociocultural interpretation of the data. In other words, an ethnographic study analyses the sociocultural aspects of the participants and their environment by employing multiple data collection techniques. Stacey and Eckert (1999) claim

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that ethnography represents three aspects of inquiry, namely, intense investigation of people in their natural environment, a process of collecting data and a method of investigation. An ethnographic study enables the researcher to collect descriptions of human behavior (LeCompte & Preissle 2003). This suggests that the researcher has to study the group in question in detail in order to reconstruct the participants’ experiences in the manner in which he/she viewed the group members.

As a process of collecting data, ethnography allows the researcher to use certain ways that are compatible with qualitative research such as observation which is conducted in natural settings and unstructured conversations. Avoiding manipulating data is central to ethnographic work. As a method, ethnography establishes a relationship between the data collection process through spending time in the setting, and the provision of descriptive accounts of participant’s experiences that define the group’s culture in their natural context. As mentioned earlier, I spent five months in the Grade 3 classroom, observing teacher and learner interactions, analyzing print materials which include learner workbooks. I also interviewed the Grade 3 teacher. In that way, I was equipped with information that depicted how literacy was practiced in the Grade 3 classroom I was studying.

This study made use of the ethnographic case study in order to discover the meanings and experiences of Grade 3 teacher and learners. Gerring (2004) views a case study as an intensive study of a single unit over a period of time for the purposes of understanding similar units. Conducting a case study involves a process of explicitly choosing a sample of population that will be studied extensively, and the remaining population in that unit will be implicitly studied. The implicit studying of the remaining population becomes explicit through the triangulation of data. Stake (2005) concurs with Gerring (2004) that a case study focuses on an individual case or an event within a certain context in order to do an in-depth study of the participants in their environment. Stake (2005) goes on to say that a case may be simple or complex but it is characterized by its boundedness or focus. With regard to this research study, I used one Grade 3 isiXhosa classroom to understand how literacy practices of reading and writing in isiXhosa were developed. In other words, the Grade 3 classroom I studied served as a case to understand how literacy was developed at this level, although I could not generalize on the findings due to the small sample that was used. The focus was on literacy practices of reading and writing in

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Grade 3. This implies that there were specific patterns of activities that were expected to be pronounced when the researcher was conducting this case study.

Stacey and Eckert (1999) claim that ethnography represents three aspects of inquiry. Firstly, they view it as a product of intense investigation of people in their natural environment. Secondly, it is viewed as a process of collecting data and lastly, as a method of investigation. An ethnographic study enables the researcher to collect descriptions of human behavior (LeCompte & Preissle 2003). This implies that the researcher studies the group in question in much detail in order to answer the research question. The lapse of time the researcher spends studying the same group allows him/her to reconstruct the participants’ experiences as observed in the research site. In other words, the reconstruction of the participant’s practices assists the researcher to interpret and understand what the participants experienced as revealed in their behaviour and verbal responses.

According to Walters (2007) and Fairhurst & Good (1991) an ethnographic case study is a process where the researcher reserves judgment on the selection of data. In other words, the researcher does not pre-judge which data would be suitable for the study, but the data develops as the researcher interacts with the participants and develops ways to construct questions in order to explore the research site.

I used ethnographic methods of collecting data namely, observations, interviews and document analysis in order to understand the literacy practices in one Grade 3 isiXhosa classroom. The ethnographic techniques allowed me to conduct an in-depth research of a single case over a period of time. They provided me with a holistic perspective of the participants’ behaviours in their natural environment. This research followed the aspects that LeCompte & Preissle (2003) mentioned when studying participants in their natural settings. In this study, I focused on one Grade 3 classroom in order to understand the strategies the teacher used to teach literacy. I also wanted to investigate the quality and kinds of resources that were used in the Grade 3 classroom. In this instance, interviews allowed me to get a better understanding of the teacher’s perspectives about literacy practices and how her instructional methods shed light into the way she used resources to teach and develop literacy in a Grade 3 classroom, as presented in Appendix G.

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Research designs have strengths and limitations. Different scholars above have discussed the strengths of case studies. Merriam (1998) mentions a few limitations of case studies. Firstly, she mentions that novice researchers are not capacitated with skills to conduct interviews and observations. They fiddle their way through the research process. Bias is cited as one of the limitations suffered by case study researchers. In other words, when the researcher becomes biased, he/she compromises the validity and reliability of his/her studies. Bias is also linked to the subjective nature of the research being performed. To avoid this limitation, I triangulated data by using multiple data collection strategies.