Parents have educational aspirations for their children and it is within their rights to participate in drawing up educational objectives rather than to respond to predetermined objectives. When the latter happens, the parents’ input in shaping their own reality is undermined. Parental involvement in enhancing learner achievement cannot be conceptualized without the subjective contribution from all relevant stakeholders. Berger (1987) supports this view and insists that human beings have the right to create their own world. Parent participation in enhancing learner achievement is based on the anti-positive stance believing it is the right of all stakeholders to recognize, create and develop their social reality within the education system.
The interpretive perspective leads to naturalistic research. Naturalistic research is conducted in natural, uncontrived real-world contexts with the researcher not being intrusive (Cohen et al., 2000). This means that social research needs to examine a situation from the view point of the participants. In this research, I used a case study to capture comprehensively the feelings, views, thoughts and emotions about parental involvement in the life of rural primary schools in order to determine whether their involvement enhanced learner achievement.
Wellington (2000) advises that case studies derived from research can be of great value in teaching and learning. They can lead to subsequent quantitative research by pointing to issues which can or should be investigated over a wider range. They can also follow on from a broad survey or a quantitative approach by going about it in an exploratory, explanation-seeking fashion, thereby enriching them.
According to Nisbet and Watt (1984), a case study provides a unique example of real people in real situations, enabling readers to understand ideas more clearly than simply by presenting them with abstract theories or principles. Case studies fall under the umbrella of ‘naturalistic’
research, which is conducted in a real world context. They are a style of research that is often used by researchers in the interpretivist paradigm. In this study, I aimed to capture the reality of the participants’ lived experiences of and thoughts about the involvement of parents from rural communities in the lives of the schools attended by their children
Cohen et al (2007, p 255) argue that case studies “…provide fine-grain detail and can be used to complement other, more coarse-grained, often large-scale, kinds of research.” Robson (2002) suggests that there are: an individual case study; a set of individual case studies; a social group study; studies of institutions; and studies of events, roles and relationships. All these, he argues, find expression in the case study method.
Further, Robson (2002) adds to these the distinction between a critical case study and an extreme or unique case. The former, he argues, is when your theoretical understanding is such that there is a clear, unambiguous and non-trivial set of circumstance where predicted outcomes will be found. Finding a case which fits, and demonstrating what is predictable, can give a powerful boost to knowledge and understanding (Robson, 2002).
However, Cohen et al. (2007) cite Shaughnessy, Zechmeister and Zechmeister (2003) who suggest that case studies often lack a high degree of control and treatments are rarely controlled systematically; yet they are applied simultaneously and with little control over extraneous variables. This, they argue, renders it difficult to make inferences to draw cause and effect conclusions from case studies and there is the potential for bias in some case studies as the
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therapist is both the participant and observer and, in that role, may overstate or understate the case.
Moreover, it has been argued that case studies may be impressionistic and that self-reporting may be biased. In this regard Cohen and Manion (1994) argue that the case study researcher typically observes the characteristics of an individual unit, a child, a class, a school or a community. The purpose of the case studies employed in this project was therefore to “probe deeply and to analyze intensively the multifarious phenomena that constituted the life cycle of each unit with a view to establishing generalizations about the wider population to which the unit belonged”, as advised by (Cohen et al., 1994).
I was further enticed by Hitchcock and Hughes (1995, p. 322) who suggest that “the case study approach is particularly valuable when the researcher has little control over events.” They argue that a case study has several hallmarks, namely:
• It is concerned with a rich and vivid description of events relevant to the case.
• It blends a description of events with the analysis of them.
• It focuses on individual actors or groups of actors and seeks to understand their perception of events.
• It highlights specific events that are relevant to the case.
• The researcher is integrally involved in the case.
• An attempt is made to portray the richness of the case in writing up reports.
I therefore carefully planned and executed the case studies to ensure that they provided valuable information and insights. I conducted them in three rural primary schools in Ixopo in the Ixopo Circuit, in the District of Sisonke, KwaZulu-Natal, to establish the perceptions of parental involvement in enhancing learner achievement in schools. I chose primary schools because that is where the foundation of academic excellence is laid. The schools were located approximately fifteen kilometres apart with a similar population distribution, learner enrolment and geographical setting. A case study of each school was conducted.
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