Chapter Eleven - Additional Resources

EDUCATIONAL CASE STUDY EXAMPLES

There are several kinds of case studies as set out in the grid below, and we illustrate them here.

Cell 1: Acker (1990) - ‘Teachers’ culture in an English primary school’

At the outset of her study of one inner city primary school’s responses to government legislation directed towards its teachers, Acker describes her orientation as ‘a fairly open-ended search for themes of interest related to teachers’ work’, a declaration redolent of Wolcott in his seminal account, The Man in the Principal’s Office (1973). There, readers will recall, Wolcott described his participant observer role as, ‘a process of waiting to be impressed by recurrent themes that reappear in various contexts’.

During the first seventy hours of her ethnographic study, Acker adopted a ‘waiting role’. Later, some 600 hours were spent with four teachers involved in a school-based innovation. Observing, interviewing, engaging in informal social contacts, maintaining a written record of events and happenings, scrutinizing staff-meeting agenda and minutes, Acker’s investigator role is very reminiscent of Wolcott’s tactics as he shadowed Ed Bell, the school principal, both in the school and in the local community.

‘Searching for themes’, and ‘waiting to be impressed’ do not, of course, imply an atheoretical orientation on the part of researchers. King (1979), it will be remembered, in his study of infant school culture, talked of his ‘vaguely anthropological model of trying to understand life in classrooms’. Acker is more explicit. How, she asks, shall we ‘con­ceptualise the process by which [a welter of governmental, educational initiatives] is translated into school practice?’ Drawing on the literature of educational innovation, she explores three perspectives (House, 1979), the technological, the political, and the cultural, opting for the last as her modus operandi. Specifically, Acker proposes, implementing the requirements of the 1988 Education Reform Act in an inner-city school is contingent upon the various teacher cultures that predate and mediate any governmental initiatives. Those teacher cultures influence the ‘technical process of implementation and the extent to which teachers define innovations as deskilling or professionalizing their work’ (Acker, 1990).

From her participant observation of the warp and weft of everyday life at Hillsview Primary School, Acker charts the changes in teachers’ perspectives and practices as they react to legislative requirements governing their work in classrooms. A variety of evidence is adduced to support her interpretation of those changes:

1   Staffroom discussions of the National Curriculum and assessment featured more prominently; discussions became more critical, academic, analytical, reflective.

2   Interviews revealed changes over time in the extent to which people were informed and eager to discuss government initiatives.

3   Staff appointments brought a more cosmopolitan view to their teaching.

4   Staff meeting agenda and the time devoted to certain issues revealed changes of focus; quality of interactions and debate suggested ‘bounded professionality’ (Nias, l989).’

5   Inquiries were made to the researcher about university courses and applications for Advanced Diploma/MA courses.

6   The acting headteacher’s liaisons with other schools included piloting records of achievements and assessment innovations.

7   Changes in role orientation and the stress level of the headteacher; the head’s emphasis on reassuring her staff.

Acker concludes her research report with the observation that primary school teachers do perceive a threat in the governmental initiatives and are anxious about their ramifications. They are not, however, experi­encing these outside pressures as destructive or deskilling. In part, says Acker, this is because for them, education is a child-centred process rather than a product. They are not simply transmitting a cognitive curriculum.

Cell 2: Boulton (1992) - ‘Participation in playground activities’

Located in the ‘natural settings’ of school playgrounds, Boulton’s research, in contrast to that of Acker, was predominantly a highly-structured, non-participant observation of children’s activities, conducted in eight middle schools over a period of five years.

Eschewing previous studies of playground activities that derive from pupils’ accounts of what they do, Boulton was determined to use direct observation, employing what he terms, ‘focal individual sampling’ as his principal technique of data collection. Focal individual sampling involved the researcher in identifying a target child and observing him/her for the whole duration of a playtime session (on average, thirty-five minutes), recording that individual’s behaviour by means of a running commentary spoken into a portable tape recorder. In this way, data were gathered of what the child was doing, the number and relative age (older, younger, the same age) of male and female playmates. Each observation period began when a target child, selected in a predeter­mined random order, entered the play area, and terminated at the end of the playground session.

From the transcribed tape recordings, each focal child’s activities were classified into discrete behavioural categories, using the classificatory system thus:

Molar categories of behaviour

Sociable: child, together with at least one other, engaged in one or more of the following actions that are not part of r/t, role play or a rule game: talk with peer, walk with peer, run with peer, sit with peer, stand with peer, groom peer, swop collector cards with peer.

Rule games: child, together with at least one other, engaged in one of the following rule-governed games, or the preliminaries to a rule-governed game, such as picking sides or deciding on the rules: skipping, french skipping (i.e. with elastic), tiggy, delavio (team chase game), other team chase games with rules, hide and seek, clapping songs, chanting, marbles, rounders, football, queenie-o, queenie-o, who’s got the ballie-o? (and other ball games with rules), hopscotch, tennis, cricket.

Rough-and-tumble play: child, together with at least one other, engaged in playful fighting and chasing games without explicit rules (playful fighting and chasing distinguished from aggressive fighting and chasing by means of the criteria outlined by Boulton (1992).

Fantasy play: child, together with at least one other, engaged in a fantasy game in which they take on a non-literal role such as ‘He man’ or ‘Mother’.

Solitary: child alone.

Other: any activity that does not fall into one of the above categories such as child with adult, aggression, play with ball, piggyback, dance.

Source: Boulton, 1992

Analysis of variance techniques were used to explore age and sex differences in the proportion of time that pupils spent on rule games, rough-and-tumble play, sociable activities and solitary play. Thus, older children spent significantly more time than younger children in games involving rules, and younger children spent significantly more time alone than older children. Elsewhere in the study, Boulton computed absolute amounts of time spent in particular playground activities (football, tiggy, skipping, rounders, clapping/singing etc.) and these data were subjected to statistical analysis to reveal, not surprisingly, that ‘proportionally more boys than girls engage in football, and propor­tionally more girls than boys engage in skipping’ (Boulton, 1992). Where the research report becomes particularly interesting, in our view, is where Boulton conducted in situ interviews with target children in order to ascertain their views as to why, for example, girls and younger boys are excluded from the football games of older boys, and why barriers exist to prevent mixed age and mixed sex playground activities.

Readers may well agree that data such as the following put flesh on bare, statistical bones:

Investigator   Do you ever play football with girls?

Errol   Are you joking, they can’t play!

Investigator   How do you know if you never play with them?

Errol (laughing)   Watch this. (Takes football over to group of 11-year-old girls in his class and, as he rolls it at the feet of one of them, shouts, ‘Hey, Lola, kick this’. She attempts to do so, but misses the ball, he retrieves it and comes back.) See what I mean?

Investigator   She wasn’t ready for that. That’s not fair.

Errol   OK, I’ll do it again. (Rolls ball at Lola’s feet. She makes good contact and kicks ball across playground; her friends give loud cheer.)

Investigator   That’s not a bad kick.

Errol   She was lucky, and in a real game nobody gives you the ball like that. Girls are no good. (Retrieves ball and goes back to friends.)

(Boulton, 1992)

Cell 3: Wild, Scivier and Richardson (1992) - ‘Evaluating information technology’

The purpose of the case study was to evaluate a set of audit tools deve­loped at Loughborough University as a way of identifying facilitators and barriers to the acceptance of new information technology systems in schools. Those IT systems were to do with local management and administration. The audit tools, as a whole, focused on users, tasks, context variables and specific technologies. This particular case study, however, dealt solely with users’ acceptance of a new information tech­nology system in sixteen larger secondary schools in an East Midlands Local Education Authority.

Participant observers used interviews in their assessments of the efficacy of the IT system. Those interviews were loosely formulated around four criteria of acceptance set out thus:

Acceptability criteria of IT systems

   1   Ease of use       assessing the effort, difficulty or strain

           involved in using the system.

   2   Task match       assessing the degree to which services from

           the system match the task needs experienced

           by the user.

   3   User support       assessing whether help is available when and

           where it is needed and in the form that is

           required by the user.

   4   Perceived consequences     assessing a range of organizational and job-

           related aspects which are affected by the

           computer system.

Source: Adapted from Wild et al., 1992

Data generated by the interviews were cast into simple counts in reporting users views on the success or otherwise of the information technology system. No details were included in the case study report of verbatim commentary by participants. Thus, under the first criterion, Ease of use, the majority of users (fourteen out of a total of sixteen) affirmed high levels of satisfaction in using the system. Task match elicited only one expression of concern, whereas User support identified five users who found the system difficult and seven who experienced problems in learning to use the new technology. Under criterion 4 (Perceived consequences) only three users’ overall ratings indicated that perceived ‘costs’ outweighed ‘benefits’. In addition to these rather crude assessments of the efficacy of the IT system, the audit generated specific and detailed information about areas of risk. These potential dangers were prioritized. Thus, by far the most crucial area of risk was error handling. This, the case study revealed, had both immediate and long-term consequences, causing increases in work loads for direct users participating in the study, and, in the longer term, potentially serious problems for LEA auditors working, in all likelihood, with inaccurate accounts. The researchers concluded the case study with the observation that the user-acceptance audit tool could form the basis of a vital evaluation process both for schools and LEAs intent on enhancing the success of IT systems in support of local management of schools. 4

Cell 4: Blease and Cohen (1990) - ‘Coping with computers’ (an evaluation of the drill and practice computer program, ‘The Inhabitant’)

In contrast to Wild, Scivier and Richardson’s approach, (Cell 3) this case study of school technology was highly structured by its non-participant observers in order to obtain precise, quantitative data on the classroom use of a computer program.

As part of a longitudinal study in primary school classrooms, Blease and Cohen conducted a number of small case studies to identify in some detail, the demands of time made by specific computer software on both teachers and pupils, and the typical profiles of individual behaviour and group interaction that those programs demanded of learners.

Categories for Observing Microcomputer use in Classrooms (COMIC) is an observation instrument specifically designed to describe children’s behaviour when working at the computer. It was used in the study to obtain a systematic record of the actions of the keyboard operation both in an individual, one-to-one situation and when groups of children were working together. Twelve categories of behaviour are further differen­tiated depending on whether they relate to on-task or off-task activities, system management, using software, performing computer-related tasks, interaction with others and performing non-computer-related tasks. Data are treated in exactly the same way as those obtained using the Flanders Interaction Analysis Categories (see Flanders, 1970), and are entered on a twelve by twelve grid to reveal an overall profile of the types and frequencies of behaviour. The table below sets out the complete matrix and results for ‘The Inhabitant’, a simulation/drill and practice program. The 5,761 tallies represent approximately sixteen hours’ observation in all.

COMIC classification of the program, ‘The Inhabitant’.

Source: Blease and Cohen, 1990

Similar COMIC profiles to the one shown in Box 9.9 were undertaken for six other computer programs. Pie charts of summary information made visual comparisons easy and provided some surprises for the investigators. Thus, the proportion of time spent operating the key­board when using ‘The Inhabitant’ and another drill and practice program called ‘The Explorer’ was quite different, even though one might have expected these to be similar. However, there was a close parallel in respect of talking to child (on-task), where per­centaged times were ‘The Inhabitant’ (15 per cent) and ‘The Explorer’ (17 per cent), a finding that might have been expected when one considers the way in which teachers encouraged pairs of children to share ideas and discuss their responses to the programs’ demands.

Cell 5: Antonsen (1988) - ‘Treatment of a boy of twelve’

Unhappiness and failure at school, lack of friends and playmates characterized Jimmy, a twelve-year-old who was referred through a Social Welfare Department for psychotherapy at a Child Psychiatric Unit, with a recommendation that he and his younger sister be removed from their home environment and fostered. The family background was one of parental violence, attempted suicides by the mother and a general neglect of the two children. Antonsen took responsibility for Jimmy at the request of the psychiatrist at a team meeting of clinical staff. From the outset of her sessions with Jimmy in a small classroom at the Clinic, the therapist offered no structural set of categories to the boy as a way of helping him with his difficulties. Rather, Jimmy was the one who structured the situations that governed the on-going therapy. Jimmy had expressed great dissatisfaction with his handwriting and had agreed that he would like help to write better. Antonsen’s approach was, in her own words, ‘to be a mirror’ to the boy and thereby to ‘make him face the consequences and take responsibility’. The case study is a record of her non-directive approach.

Alongside the work with writing, Antonsen agreed with Jimmy’s request to use playroom equipment adjacent to the clinical setting, taking advantage of this opportunity to comment on the boy’s activities and to engage with him in some of the play activities. As the therapy continued, Jimmy introduced further opportunities for the therapist to listen to and to react to his concerns. A knife that Jimmy brought to show her had associations with his mother’s attempted suicides; prob­lems with his grandmother and aunt about pocket-money and bedtime were explored. At this phase of the therapy treatment, the boy wanted to play card games in which the loser wins. He also wanted to be the teacher, the therapist, and the pupil. In that setting he gave Antonsen very difficult tasks and was quite severe, she reports. This led them to talk about how it felt not to be able to succeed or to influence situations. Jimmy’s quarrels and conflicts with other children and his agreeing to talk matters over with the therapist resulted in her drawing the situa­tions involved or writing up a full account of them in the boy’s own words which he then corrected until he felt they were an accurate version of events. After a series of such exercises, Antonsen recounts, he began to realize how he could influence social situations.

After a year of therapy, Antonsen believed that the treatment had achieved its goal: ‘Jimmy had more self-confidence, self-esteem and self-respect. He was adjusted to his new secondary school, and he could write well.’ Sadly, that was not the end of the affair. Interested readers might wish to follow up this case study report, which we have cited as an example of a relatively unstructured encounter in the artificial setting of a psychiatric clinic.

Cell 6: Houghton - ‘Mr. Chong: a case study of a dependent learner’

Set in a counsellor’s office, this case study of an overseas student’s dependent approach to learning drew its data from structured sets of test materials and focused interviews with the client, his course tutors and his Director of Studies.

Mr. Chong’s problems presented themselves in his frequent visits to the English for Academic Purposes tutor (that is, Houghton, the case study researcher) and to individual lecturers in a desperate search for high marks through discovering, in his own words, ‘what the lecturers want of us’. To some extent, Houghton opines, this may be particularly problematic for some overseas students like Mr. Chong, located in disciplines such as the humanities and social sciences where lecturers emphasize the open-ended nature of many academic issues to the consternation of those students anxious to find one ‘correct’ answer in order to succeed by ‘pleasing the teacher’.

Houghton sees the case study as consisting of four stages:

1 individual sessions in study skills and writing

2 structured explorations of Mr. Chong’s learning styles, personality and skills in the work environment

3 taped interviews with Mr. Chong and interrogation of his responses to the test results obtained in stage 2

4 taped interviews with two of Mr. Chong’s lecturers and his Director of Studies.

The individual sessions (approximately an hour every two weeks) involved discussions of the client’s prepared course texts, help with essay writing, discussions about the minutiae of Mr. Chong’s courses and discussions about his employment applications. In preparing for stage 3 of the case study, Houghton obtained Mr. Chong’s responses to three structured inventories, one to do with study habits (Entwistle and Ramsden, 1983), one concerned with vocational personality and work environ­ments (Holland, 1985) and an identification of team-roles and personality types associated with organizational success (Belbin, 1981). On the basis of his responses to these typologies, the researcher explored the implica­tions of the profiles with her client. For example, both agreed that Entwistle and Ramsden’s orientation towards reproduction best des­cribed Mr. Chong’s ways of learning. On the Holland schedule, Mr. Chong saw himself as intellectual, conventional and artistic, his counsel­lor agreeing with the first two descriptors. On Belbin’s classification of team-roles in an organization, Mr. Chong had selected the roles of company-worker, monitor-evaluator and team-worker, characterized by Belbin as conservative, dutiful, predictable, hard working and self-disciplined, attributes applicable to Mr. Chong, as was that of monitor-evaluator - a sober, prudent person, somewhat lacking in inspiration or ability to motivate others.

From her carefully-structured enquiries, Houghton realized that the unique context of Mr. Chong’s upbringing (not reported here because of pressures of space) helped illuminate his present state of dependency. Interviews with lecturers and the Director of Studies confirmed Mr. Chong’s difficulties on the management courses for which he was enrolled. We leave interested readers to follow up the full report of Mr. Chong and its successful ending. More important are the implications of the study set out by the researcher in her concluding remarks. EAP tutors facing ‘dependent’ overseas students such as Mr. Chong could do well to concentrate on helping them develop group interaction skills. Seminars and group discussions that bring out a variety of viewpoints on a common theme and a variety of solutions to a common problem could be recorded and re-examined to help dependent students see the ways in which successful group interactions in British higher education may differ from those in their home countries. Such an approach would call for close co-operation between academic lecturers and EAP tutors.