Case Study

Case study in a common methodology used in educational research, and there a are many published studies in education which are considered by their authors to be case studies.

Characteristics of case study:

Case study is by its nature idiographic work, and usually tends to be interpretive.

"Studies such as these build upon the analysis of single settings or occurrences. They treat each case as empirically distinct and, in contrast to survey analysis, do not automatically presume that different instances can be thrown together to form a homogenous aggregate." (Hamilton, 1980, p.79.)

Hamilton, David (1980) Some contrasting assumptions about case study research and survey analysis, in Simons, Helen (ed.) Towards a Science of the Singular: Essays about Case Study in Educational Research and Evaluation, Norwich: Centre for Applied Research in Education, UEA, pp.78-92.

“Case study is a methodology used to explore a particular instance in detail …The instance has to be identifiable as having clear boundaries and could be a lesson, the teaching of a scheme of work in a school department, a university teaching department, a group visit to a museum by one class of students, etc. … Although case study looks at an identifiable instance, it is normally naturalistic, exploring the case in its usual context, rather than attempting to set up a clinical setting - which would often not be viable even if considered useful, as often the case is embedded in its natural context in ways that influence its characteristics (so moving a teacher and a class from their normal setting, to a special research classroom in a university, for example, is likely to change behaviours that would be exhibited in the ‘natural’ setting).”

Taber, K. S. (2014). Methodological issues in science education research: a perspective from the philosophy of science. In M. R. Matthews (Ed.), International Handbook of Research in History, Philosophy and Science Teaching (Vol. 3, pp. 1839-1893). Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands.

So:

Case study focuses on one instance among many - the scale of what counts as a case therefor varies considerably.

The instance may be selected for its own special inherent value (intrinsic case study), or may be studied as a representative of a wider class of cases (instrumental case study).

Case study is a naturalistic form of research

Case study explores a bounded system

Case study involves collecting in-depth data, to support thick description. This is required to support any kind of generalisation from the specifics of a case study.

“...the authors opt for a 'qualitative case-study analysis'. However, quite in line with the large sample size, the analysis has been quite shallow: the fragments of student discourse are presented without any contextual interpretation, which makes it impossible as a reader to assess the validity of the given interpretations.”

Critical comments for a peer review report of an article submitted for publication

Multiple case study

Sometimes researchers carry out and compare across multiple cases. In multiple case study research each case has to be studied in its own stead, before an attempt to look across cases.

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