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CASE STUDIES Case study research has been one of the most popular choices among composition researchers because it allows close observations and insights into the mind of the writer. Janet Emig's case studies of the composing processes of twelfth graders set the tone for dozens that followed. She and a colleague ( Emig and Birnbaum) cite Oliver Sacks' book The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat in their history of case study research; the nineteenth century, according to Sacks, was a high point for writing "richly clinical tales," and he cites Freud and Luria, among others, as examples of authors of such narratives. While most current case studies in research are narratives or qualitative descriptions, we could easily produce more quantitative case studies (e.g., an analysis of all the textual revisions a student makes over a term ). Emig and Birnbaum (see also Asher and Lauer; Bissex and Bullock; and North for other discussions of case study research) suggest six advantages of case study research, borrowing from the work of Lincoln and Guba. Case study research | 1. | builds an "emic" reconstruction of the respondents' constructions, in contrast to an "etic" one that would reinforce a positivist's a priori inquiries; | | 2. | builds on the interaction between the reader and the research; the narrative is presented as holistic and lifelike descriptions of events, not unlike those the reader would normally experience; | | 3. | exposes the interactions between the inquirer and the respondent (i.e., case study subject); | | 4. | allows the reader to challenge the work by searching for internal consistency, trustworthiness; | | 5. | provides "thick description" or triangulated data (see Geertz), thus improving the likelihood that the reader can see implications for new settings; | | 6. | provides a grounded picture of context. |
Other important characteristics of good case study research include careful selection of the subjects so that they will stand as representatives for some larger class and the use of multiple sources of data.The chief disadvantage, from an experimentalist's point of view, is the lack of generalizability. The events reported about an individual may or may not reflect the patterns that might be found across large groups. The solution to this problem lies in careful selection of the subjects and in careful detail and documentation within the study. Like clinical studies in the health sciences, the advantages lie in the ability to see multiple possibilities for understanding the case. Much responsibility is placed on the reader, who must look for the analogies and differences between the case study and any new contexts where insights from the case study might be relevant. In sharp contrast, little is supposedly left to interpretation in experimental studies. Other problems with case studies also arise when a "clinical" setting for observation is too artificial to have much bearing on writing or composing in more natural surroundings or when practices such as "talk-aloud protocols" color the findings. ETHNOGRAPHIES In an extraordinarily helpful overview of ethnography in the language arts, Zaharlick and Green describe ethnography as a "deliberate inquiry process guided by a point of view or cultural theory." They stress that ethnographers must be concerned about how the parts (pieces of a culture) relate to the whole culture, how the differing views, methods, theories, and data interact as the study progresses, and how ethnography fits into the larger context of ethnology, the comparative study of cultures. They provide a useful list of the possible data that ethnographers can collect, such as accounts of everyday events, norms for these events, artifacts, roles, and relationships, particular cultural practices such as schooling and their connections to the social group being studied. They also supply a most helpful outline of necessary features of thorough ethnographies: | 1. | A complete overview, including the purpose and rationale, a description of the population, a brief summary of the means the ethnographer used to gain access to the group, the roles of the ethnographer, the tools and techniques, the methods of data collection and analysis. | | | 2. | A detailed statement about access, including all the negotiations the ethnographer used to gain access to various members of the social group. | | | 3. | The role of the ethnographer ("emic" or insider, versus "etic" or observer, outsider). | | 4. | A thorough description of the tools used (e.g., field notes, tapes, photographs, diaries). | | 5. | A complete outline of data collection procedures, including schedules and changes over time. | | | | | |
In composition research, in particular, we might want to add careful analyses of texts, placed in the context of the larger ethnography. The actual narratives in ethnography differ according to the audience, the theoretical premises and style of the ethnographer, and the type of ethnographic study, but Zaharlick and Green recommend Van Maanen Tales of the Field: On Writing Ethnography as a useful source. The advantages of ethnography over quantitative, large-scale studies, like those for case studies, are due to the ease with which the reader can understand the context and the possible interpretations of the data. Multiple interpretations are possible and encouraged in ethnographies and in case studies. Although multiple interpretations are possible in experimental research, they are less likely because the experimentalist's rhetoric is limited to discussions of carefully defined variables. Ethnography introduces larger social and cultural interpretations that may or may not be possible in a narrow case study, particularly if the researcher in a case study limits the field of vision to a few subjects isolated from social interaction. (See also North; Lauer and Asher; Kantor, Kirby, and Goetz; and Calkins for detailed descriptions of ethnographic advantages and methods.) Lauer and Asher, drawing from Sadler, also offer a list of ten potential pitfalls in naturalistic research (e.g., data overload, availability of information, uneven reliability of information, confusion between cooccurrence and causality). These are important concerns for any ethnographer to address, but they also stem largely from a research paradigm that stresses external truth, leading to the existence of reliability and objectivity. The ethnographer might argue that her or his work exists to challenge such notions and to provide alternative readings of individuals, social groups, and cultures. TEACHER-RESEARCH Marian Mohr and Marion Maclean, who describe themselves and many others (see also Goswami and Stillman, Myers) as "teacher-researchers," were among the first to argue for classroom-based, highly contextualized research. About their methods, they write: "What teachers have to add to educational research is the sorely missed context of the classroom." Arguing for qualitative, hypothesis-raising, and descriptive methods, they make it clear that "traditional educational research, based on the experimental, hypothesis-testing model with its limited variables, has not always served teachers well" (4). Granted, teachers are not the single or even the primary audience for much academic research on writing; nevertheless, they are an important, and often ignored, set of readers. On the effects of more naturalistic approaches to research on literacy, Louise Phelps comments, "This approach has been so productive and its research so integrated with classroom practice that its theoretical principles are filtering into pedagogy much mom rapidly and easily than usual" (114). Her views are also shared by Lucy Calkins, who calls for "research communities among naturalistic researchers." While Phelps and others might include teacher-research in the category of ethnographic or naturalistic research, Mohr and Maclean are clear that their work has unique benefits and that it is not the same as ethnography: "Teacher-researchers deal with the same participant-observer role tension, but for them the starting point is one of participation, not observation--immersion, not distance. Distance is for teacher-researchers the ultimately unachievable condition, just as participation is for an ethnographer" (55). These advantages for research are clear; the chief disadvantage of teacher-research is that the traditional research community may question the research credentials or the "objectivity" of those they perceive as mainly "practitioners" ( North).
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