RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
4.2 CASE STUDY RESEARCH
Case study research is useful in understanding “complexities connecting ordinary practice in natural habitats to abstractions and concerns o f diverse academic disciplines” (Stake, 2010, p. 142). This reference to case studies, points to my intention to identify the structural emergent properties (SEP), cultural emergent properties (CEP) and personal emergent properties (PEP) giving rise to teachers’ identities and their expression through the teaching o f FP mathematics.
Case study research is described as “a research method that involves investigating one or a small number o f social entities or situations about which data are collected using multiple sources of data and developing a holistic description through an iterative research process”
(Easton, 2010, p. 119). Put differently, it focuses on complex ‘bounded systems’ (Easton, 2010;
Stake, 2010), as studying a single phenomenon in-depth supports the generation o f ‘rich data’.
The single phenomenon I studied was teacher identity as expressed while teaching, therefore I spent an extended time on site, observing teachers and learning about their life and mathematics histories. In addition, I conducted interviews in which they reflected on their teaching. Based on these data generation methods, and by asking transfactual questions I was able to identify the structural, cultural and agential preconditions giving rise to the teachers’ identities and the expression o f their identities through the teaching o f mathematics.
I chose the case study methodology for my research as it is particularly useful in studying a complex phenomenon such as teaching. It enabled me to examine the phenomenon o f teacher identities in teaching FP mathematics in context (geographical, social, economic, political, local, national and global) with all the complexity that that entailed (Baxter & Jack, 2008;
Easton, 2010). Two key perspectives on case study research I drew on, were those o f Robert Stake (2010) and Robert Yin (2003). Both Stake and Yin base their case study methodology on a constructionist orientation. In other words, they argue that persons’ understanding o f the world and their experiences in the world are constructed. They thus give importance to human subjective experiences and meanings. However, neither o f the two authors propose a complete rejection o f objectivity, as radical constructivists do, rather, they embrace pluralism, with its
“focus on the circular dynamic tension o f subject and object” as opposed to relativism (Baxter
& Jack, 2008, p. 545). Stake (2010) and Y in’s (2003) view o f the case study appears to be well suited to interpretive research, which is research underpinned by a constructionist orientation.
My initial analysis o f the data was interpretive and based on the level o f the empirical, namely, that which can be perceived and observed. However, this was not sufficient for identifying the SEP, CEP and PEP at the level o f the real (Chapter Three). I thus turned to the work o f Easton (2010) who examines the use o f the case study from a critical and social realist position.
For Easton (2010), the case study is also well suited to critical and social realist research as it provides an opportunity to study a phenomenon in-depth and comprehensively, in order to ascertain “why things are as they a re ” (p. 119). The intensive nature o f case study research has enabled me to tease out complex relationships during the process o f my research. The research was thus an iterative process which “implies a continuous moving back and forth between the diverse stages o f the research project” (Verschuren, as cited in Easton, 2010, p. 119). I refer to the challenges I experienced with this later in the chapter, both in terms o f the benefits and limitations related to the enactment o f this iterative process in my research.
Social realist research thus attempts to move beyond description and interpretation typical of hermeneutic research. It “explicitly addresses the theoretical constructions that the researcher brings to, or develops during, the study” (Maxwell, 2012, p. 140). However, this research goes beyond describing concepts and theories, be they academic or every day, and sought to provide explanations o f the events in the research. Social realist explanations generally include
“meaning, behaviour, social structure and the interactions amongst these in a specific context”
(Maxwell, 2012, p. 182). The social science researcher has to move between abstract theorising and empirical work related to a concrete reality.
Flyvbjerg (2011) suggests that case study methodology foregrounds temporality as cases develop over time. In this research, the concept o f temporality was particularly significant, as structure, culture and agency are viewed as temporally distinct, in that the structural and cultural systems predate the social and cultural (inter)actions o f actors and that elaboration or reproduction o f structures, culture and agents postdates the (inter)actions o f actors (Archer, 1995). Likewise, as mentioned in Chapter Three, my research worked across two distinct time periods. In Chapter Five I focus on the deliberations o f the research participants to become teachers, and in Chapter Six I focus on the participants as teachers.
The phenomenon o f study in my research was the emergence and expression o f FP teachers’
identities through their mathematics teaching. The research recognised that this phenomenon was located within the context o f the classroom, the school, the local environment, the education system, and the social and cultural systems. In other words, context impacted on the emergence of teachers’ identities and what happened in the classroom.
Stake (2010) suggests that this research is an instrumental case study as it serves to provide insights into something other than the case itself (Stake, 2010). For me, the main interest was the surfacing o f the SEP, CEP and PEP that had given rise to the case. The reason I chose four participants was to identify mechanisms that pertained to all four cases that could possibly lead to better theorising and be generalised across the four. The possibilities o f generalising from case studies, despite their low representativeness, is explained later in the chapter. Although the research context was four Grade 3 classrooms in two schools, signalling some difference in the micro context, the overall context remained the same, as both schools were situated in Lwandle Township, an area characterised by extreme poverty. This specific research context, which impacted on the unit o f analysis, is described later in this chapter and in detail in Chapter Six.