CHAPTER 4: DESIGNING THE CASE STUDY: REACHING THE VOICES OF
4.3 Section 1: Qualitative case study design
4.3.3 Case study methodology
methodology that would enable me to study power structures and systems, by allowing the women to narrate their stories; something critical for feminist research.
single instrumental case study, the collective or multiple case studies, and the intrinsic case study. Stake (1994, p. 291) identifies three major kinds of case studies:
(i) “Intrinsic case studies” (studying only one female engineering student);
(ii) “Instrumental case studies”; (examining a specific female engineering student to gain insights into gender regimes); and
(iii) “Collective case studies” (studying groups of female engineering students to gain a broader picture of gender regimes).
Of these, the variant that I chose for the study is in line with what Creswell (2007, p.
74) refers to as the singly instrumental case study where the researcher focuses on a problem that exists and then chooses one bounded case to showcase the problem.
Adding to the above insights on a case study approach, Silverman (2010) states that a bounded case is a case that has boundaries, which must be recognised at an initial stage of the research (for example, whether it included students’ behaviour if the study is in an educational context). Creswell’s (2007) and Silverman’s (2010) writings on a single instrumental case study reflect my study as it concerns only one bounded case: studying experience in a bounded higher educational space.
Participants’ experiences are framed within the single bounded context.
In the study, the methodology was instrumental in enabling a universal comprehension of the complexities of the social phenomena under exploration, that is the gender regimes within a self-contained system. A case study research methodology assisted me in exploring how gender regimes within a self-contained system influence the learning experiences of female engineering students. The case study methodology “entails the detailed and intensive analysis of a single case”
(Bryman, 2012, p. 66). Bryman (2012, p. 67) declares that the most popular use of the term ‘case’ links the case study with a specific location. The case in my study is firstly, the higher education institution where the research took place which was chosen because of its specificities and secondly, the main participants. Within a case study, there could be multiple cases. This framework was relevant within the context of my research because the institutional case provides the context to frame the individual experience.
4.3.3.1 Selecting the ‘case’ – the higher education institution
I consulted the official list of the public and private higher education institutions in Mauritius to apprise myself of the different fields of study that each of them offers. I observed that there was only one public higher education institution that offered engineering programmes. There was no other higher education institution offering engineering programmes at that time. For ethical reasons, the real name of the higher education institution was not revealed. The Mauritian public higher education institution is thus named Fly University throughout this study. In this feminist research, I found that ‘fly’ was the appropriate word to relate to the freedom of women.
In line with Creswell (2014, p. 239), for the proposed study, I identified purposefully Fly University and the participants to enable me as a researcher to identify the problem and the research question. Fly University is the largest public university in Mauritius in terms of student enrolment, programmes offered and varied profile of academic teaching staff. It offers undergraduate and postgraduate programmes including doctoral programmes in a variety of specialities.
Fly University has been offering engineering programmes since 1976, with the first batch of students graduating in 1980. On average, the university produces some 200 engineering graduates per year. The Faculty of Engineering comprises six departments: Applied Sustainability and Enterprise Development; Chemical and Environmental Engineering; Civil Engineering; Computer Science and Engineering;
Electrical and Electronic Engineering; and Mechanical and Production Engineering.
The institution best fits this study, as it is a pioneer in offering engineering programmes in Mauritius.
Fly University made history in Mauritius when it appointed the first woman as Vice- Chancellor in 2013, for a period of three years. The latter became the first woman in the history of Mauritius to occupy such an important position. This shows that there has been some gradual progress at the university to encourage transformation. It is important to take note of that, in Mauritius, all recruitment, whether in public or private organisations, are based on merit. However, although the promotion systems of staff at Fly University are based on the merit principle as per Section 6 of the Act
of Fly University and on the Equal Opportunities Act 2012, men occupy all senior management positions. Of the university’s Council members, only 11% are women.
Although, from 2013 to 2016, the Vice-Chancellor of Fly University was a woman and recruitment and promotion are based on the Equal Opportunities Act 2012, women still represent a minority at the Council, at senior management level and in the Faculty of Engineering.
The case study methodology allowed participating female engineering students to build on their own truths in line with their lived experiences. The case study methodology drew on narrative interviewing techniques to elicit and allow voice and also provide an opportunity for the complexity of experiences to come to the fore, which primarily involved allowing women to relay their experiences through interviews during the data production process. This made sense of events and actions as told by the female participants. While I understand that case studies may not necessarily be perceived as feminist, given their focus on the “case” instead of the
“narrative” as supported by feminist scholars (Latherby, 2008), I intentionally drew on the narrative interviewing technique during the interview process so as to address this shortcoming as elaborated below in the discussion on data production methods.
It is important to stress that this however does not mean the adoption of narrative enquiry as my methodology. Rather, my methodology remains the case study methodology, with interviews taking the form of narratives to address the power issues and “voices” of the young women under study.
This study involved five cases of individuals within a case of an institution. The study thus draws on the strength of this double layer (one institutional and one individual) exploring how institutional forces/factors interact with personal/individual factors to produce unique experiences. While the concern was to allow for a range of experiences to emerge, I present five cases using four methods of generating data to get to the depth required in qualitative research. The expectations were to draw from the intricacies of each case. However, at an initial stage, I considered the possibility of not necessarily reporting on all cases, depending on the ‘canvas’ of experiences that were emerging. A case study was chosen as it yields the thickness of the explanation of context, life and education in the study that encompass the learning experiences.