BACKGROUND AND RATIONALE FOR STUDY
5.3 Case Study Research
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engagement with reading and reading comprehension strategies in science. Therein lies the benefit of triangulating data. In terms of its use in research, the concept of triangulation implies that a researcher can approach research from many different perspectives and angles to gain multidimensional understandings of the phenomenon under study.
Triangulation enables “cross-checking and verifying sources of information” (Heck, 2006:
380). It can be used to “build a coherent justification of themes” (Creswell, 2009: 191), thus contributing to validity of the study. Through triangulation, I was able to obtain
“different but complementary data on the same topic” (Morse, 1991: 122) so that I could get a richer understanding of the research issue. Thus, triangulation not only assisted with the consistency and accuracy of the data collected, but it allowed me to acquire a holistic picture and understanding of the research focus in this study.
The challenge of relying on gathering data from multiple sources was that it was a rigorous and time-consuming process. I had undertaken the data collection single-handedly, i.e.
conducting, transcribing and analysing interviews; engaging with documentary evidence;
and observing lessons, tutorials and laboratory practicals in each of the science modules offered in the FP. This included field research on the campus site (UKZN) and a field trip to the rocky shores and the Ushaka Marine World46 undertaken in the discipline of the foundation biology module offered in the FP. I now turn to the discussion of case study as a research strategy used this study.
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and other contexts that enable boundaries to be drawn around the case. Stake (1995) describes it as a strategy of inquiry in which the researcher explores in depth a program, event, activity, process, or one or more individuals. According to Hitchcock and Hughes (1995), “the case study is particularly valuable when the researcher has little control over events, i.e. behaviours cannot be manipulated or controlled” (322). Indeed, in the context of this study I had no control over the way in which the RPs conducted their lessons or the science-based tasks and activities they had assigned to students in the FP. One of the reasons for this was my status as non-participant observer as the dominant mode of enquiry. In this way, I merely acquired an overview of the observation situation, thus allowing for a sense of objectivity. In any event, except for the outdoor field trip, all the observation took place in the natural environments of the lecture venues laboratories and/or the field within the FP at UKZN. Even when I was collecting data by means of semi- structured interviews, as much as there was a list of pre-determined questions to pose to the RPs, I had little control over their responses; I had to see the research situation through “the eyes of the participants” (Cohen et al. 2011: 293).
As with this study, in case studies, researchers collect detailed data “using more than one tool for data collection and many sources of evidence” (Cohen et al. 2011: 289). This strategy allowed me to grasp a holistic understanding of the phenomenon under investigation (Creswell, 1998; Eisenhardt, 1989). The range of research instruments for data collection used, as explained in the preceding sections in this Chapter, included semi- structured interviews, observation and documentary evidence. The reliance on the various data collection research instruments in this study had enabled me to “collate and synthesize data from different sources, to make inferences and interpretations based on evidence”
(Cohen et al. 2011: 296). The data yielded through various data collection methods can be efficiently used in case studies to “explain, describe, illustrate and enlighten” (Yin, 2009:
19).
In this study, case study has been useful for “descriptive purposes” (Conrad and Serlin, 2006: 378) that provide narrative accounts (Yin, 1984) for acquiring “descriptive and detailed data” (Cohen et al. 2011: 290). The reliance on case study as a research strategy in this study has been consonant with the interpretive paradigm which “sees the situation through the eyes of the participants” (Cohen et al. 2011: 293). The case study is ideally suited to the interpretive paradigm where “the concern is with sense making or the social
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construction of reality” (Conrad and Serlin, 2006: 379). The case study fits in with the interpretive paradigm that allows for the interpretations about a phenomenon.
The data was analysed by searching for patterns and explanations as they emerged. I then had to collate and synthesize these to make inferences and interpretations. These patterns and explanations were identified using the tool of coding which Cohen et al. (2011) describe as the “process of disassembling and reassembling the data” (599). In this study, the “disassembling” involved fragmenting the data (e.g. in the case of the transcripts of the interviews) into lines, paragraphs and sentences. This way of deconstructing the data into little pieces that were easier to engage with, enabled me to code for specific meanings, actions, perceptions, attitudes, experiences, thinking, events and practices in relation to the research problem. By exploring the data in this way, I was able to look for the emerging patterns and explanations; and find links and contrasts. This iterative process enabled me to understand the research issue more clearly.
This “building up (i.e. reassembling) of categories and themes from the bottom up, by organizing the data into more abstract units of information” is what Creswell (2009: 175) refers to as inductive data analysis. Inductive reasoning is associated with qualitative research. Babbie (2001) states that inductive reasoning “moves from the particular to the general, from a set of specific observations to the discovery of a pattern that represents some degree of order among all the given events” (34). Through inductive reasoning, researchers draw conclusions from specific instances or occurrences. In analysing data from the foundation students’ laboratory practical workbooks, laboratory reports, field reports and tests, I had to rely on deductive reasoning which “moves from the general to the specific” (Babbie, 2001: 35). One such example pertinent to this study is the claim by RPs that the use of non-technical and everyday words used in the context of science can be challenging for students in the FP. I had to rely on the data from students’ answers in their tests and observation in the classroom to find out whether such challenges emerge. In terms of this study, I had to engage with data in a manner that enabled me to explore patterns that revealed situations and explanations that illustrated the RPs’ views, understanding and perceptions of the science discipline-specific literacies required by the students in the FP.
This study entailed a personal journal of copious writing related to data collection, data analysis, research writing and reporting. In research, this is referred to as memo writing.
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“Memo writing refers to the analytic thoughts about the codes; they provide clarification from coding to reporting” (Gibbs, 2007: 31). I used the memos to identify the emerging patterns and explanations. Richardson (2004) states that “researcher’s memo writing can be organized into different categories of note taking such as observational notes (what the researcher saw, heard); methodological notes (on how to collect data); theoretical notes (notes to yourself on hypotheses, connections, alternative interpretations) and personal notes (your own anxieties, pleasures, doubts about the research)” (489).