Case study as study of an instance

A topic in research methodology

Case study is a methodology which focuses enquiry on one example from another a range of possible examples:

"Case study is an umbrella term for a family of research methods having in common the decisions to focus on enquiry around an instance"

Adelman, Jenkins & Kemmis, 1980, p.48

"The case is one among others. In any given study, we will concentrate on the one….

The case is a specific, a complex, functioning thing…

The case is an integrated system"

Stake, 1995: 2

The case could be

• some aspect of teaching and learning in one of our classes;
• one lesson;
• the teaching of one topic;
• one student in one of our classes;
• an identified category of students (e.g. those labelled gifted) in a class;
• an identified group of students working together in a class;
• an examination paper;
• one teaching activity;
• etcetera

---

Case study research taken to the extreme?

While individual research projects may focus on one instance, here is an example of a research programme centred around one exemplar…

"In 1928, a research institute was established in Moscow for the purpose of studying Lenin [Soviet leader Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov who had died in 1924]'s brain…"
p.220

Reindl, 2001

---

Sources cited:

• Adelman, C., Jenkins, D., & Kemmis, S. (1980). Rethinking case study: Notes from the second Cambridge Conference. In H. Simons (Ed.), Towards a Science of the Singular: Essays about Case Study in Educational Research and Evaluation (pp. 47-61). Norwich: Centre for Applied Research in Education, University of East Anglia.
• Reindl, Josef, 2001, Believers in an age of heresy? Oskar Vogt, Nikolai Timoféeff-Ressovsky and Julius Hallervorden at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Brain Research, in Margit Szöllösi-Janze (Ed.), Science in the Third Reich, pp.211-242. Oxford: Berg.
• Stake, R. E. (1995). The Art of Case Study Research. Thousand Oaks, California: Sage.

---

---