Ethnographically-informed Qualitative Case Study

Working within the interpretivist paradigm, this study applied an ethnographically-informed qualitative case study approach to explore the situated and complex process of classroom participation in intercultural classrooms at a UK university. The philosophical underpinning of interpretivism influences my interpretation of knowledge and facts (Curtis, Mark, & Sam, 2013). Following the nature of qualitative research, this study reflects an interpretivist epistemological stance that recognises the importance of personal experiences and individual perspectives on the examined issue. The interpretivist paradigm relies on “participants’ views of the situation being studied” (Creswell, 2003, p. 8) to understand the subjective world of human experience. Researchers in this paradigm do not seek objective answers but rather to approach the reality through people who own the experiences and people of a particular group or culture (Thanh & Thanh, 2015). This study focused on individual international students’ lived classroom experiences, subjective feelings and perspectives to reach a better understanding of their classroom participation.

Because of the exploratory nature of the research questions and the socially and culturally complex context of classroom, this study was informed by the

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ethnographic approach as I was immersed in the classroom and social activities of the international students researched (Bryman, 2012). Ethnography is a holistic study of a particular social context through examining “what people say and what people do in a given context and across contexts in order to arrive at a fuller representation of what is going on” (Hornberger, 1994, p. 688). Characterised by the application of twin methods of participant observation and in-depth interviews, ethnographic research is known for one of its most widely cited strengths, in- depth and extensive findings about cultural and human behaviours (Robinson & Schulz, 2009). The ethnographic nature of this study is reflected by the close examinations of the participants’ changing perspectives, classroom behaviours and feelings in different cultural contexts and by the way it presented what was going on in the naturally occurring settings with detailed narratives of both the contexts and participants.

However, limited by the time available and the scope of the fieldwork, this is not a traditional ethnography (O’Reilly, 2012). The fieldwork lasted for one academic year. There is debate surrounding the definition of ethnography (Hammersley, 2018) and the necessary duration of ethnographic studies (Suryani, 2013). As a traditional ethnographer, Lutz (1981)distinguishes ethnography from ethnographic studies by emphasising the holistic, interactive and recurring nature of ethnography; he categorises those that are ‘narrowly focused’, ‘previously specified’ and ‘briefly encountered’ studies as ethnographic, such as a case study or a field survey. Zaharlick (1992) argues that one year is a minimum for an ethnographic study as he states that it is necessary for ethnographer to commit to long-term involvement and observation to delve into the participants’ beliefs, behaviours and activities. However, Wolcott (1990) claims the feasibility of short- term immersion, terming it “micro-ethnography”, because he argues that it is effective to examine a topic from a certain perspective and that the growing tendency toward multiple ethnographic case studies also results in short immersion duration. Hammersley (2006) argues that the duration of a study should

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be dependent on the research objectives and purposes. He also shows that it is a recent trend that ethnographers in the field of social sciences, including educational research, mainly concentrate on what is happening in the research context and do not have to stay with the focal subjects for a certain period of time. Rather than following the traditional sense of ethnography, this ‘narrowly focused’ and ‘micro-ethnographic’ study was informed by its exploratory nature and process while focusing on the culture of intercultural university classrooms and students’ behaviours within this context.

There is a common agreement in the literature that a case study is an effective research strategy in educational research to enhance our understanding of contexts, communities and individuals through capturing the complexity of teaching and learning practices and the contexts surrounding them (Cohen, Manion, & Morrison, 2017; Hamilton & Corbett-Whittier, 2013; Yin, 2009). Examining it from an interdisciplinary perspective, Merriam (1998, p. 34) suggests the term “ethnographic case study”, which is often employed in educational research focusing on the culture of institutions, particular groups and behaviours. Corresponding to the theoretical framework of ‘community of practice’, an ethnographically-informed case study is an effective approach for this study to explore the community of the classroom and the behaviours and beliefs of its members, allowing for data analyses on both individual and group levels. Instead of regarding it as the international students’ responsibility to adjust or to change, a case study could provide a full picture of how community members interact and adjust to each other. However, Hamilton and Corbett-Whittier (2013) remind new researchers that in order to make constructive use of a case study, it is significant to be critical about the definition, selection and analysis of the case or cases. Schweisfurth (1999) argues that selectivity is an essential dimension of case studies for researchers, who should consider “what and who to be studied, and the boundaries of each case” (p.333). This study started with choosing

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international students as the case unit and intercultural classrooms at a UK university as the context in which to study them. However, the boundary between the case and its context is blurred (Yin, 2009) because a case study will only make sense in its particular context. Following Chong and Graham’s (2013, p. 24) “Russian doll approach”, this study examines individual international students as micro-level cases within bounded meso- and macro-contextual levels of classrooms and institutions. Chong and Graham suggest that using this nested approach to illustrate the understanding of a micro-level case requires an understanding of the meso- and macro-level contexts in which it is nested. Taking individual students’ experiences in different classes as the units of analysis, this study carried out cross-case analysis to explore potential patterns synthesising the commonalities while also maintaining the uniqueness of individual cases. As Cohen and Manion (1991, p.125) state, case studies enable researchers to “probe deeply and to analyse intensively the multifarious phenomena that constitute the case study unit, with a view to establishing generalisations about the wider population to which the unit belongs”. A case study is an appropriate choice to provide insights into international students’ classroom participation, which is complicated by cultures, pedagogical practices and classroom communities. However, generalisation is not the aim of this study; rather, through multiple in-depth case studies, this study aims to move beyond the micro level to make implications for the macro level and similar contexts.