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The Strengths and Limitations of Case Study Research
Phil Hodkinson and Heather Hodkinson
University of Leeds
Paper presented to the Learning and Skills Development Agency conference
Making an Impact on Policy and Practice
Cambridge, 5-7 December 2001
Correspondence:
Phil Hodkinson
School of Continuing Education
University of Leeds
LEEDS, LS2 9JT
UK
Heather Hodkinson
School of Continuing Education
University of Leeds
LEEDS, LS2 9JT
UK
Tel: (0) 113 233 3223
Email: p.m.hodkinson@leeds.ac.uk
(0) 113 233 3598
h.d.hodkinson@leeds.ac.uk
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Introduction
In the current educational climate, there is considerable pressure from a variety of sources
to develop and emphasize scientific approaches to researching educational practice.
Thus, Reynolds (1998) called for a science of teaching, and the evidence-based practice
movement appears to regard the ideal form of research as the experiment, or randomized
controlled trial (Oakley, 2000). The search is on to discover significant truths about
teaching and learning that are ‘safe’ to share with practitioners, and generalisable across
all relevant settings. This dominant approach raises older doubts about the value of
qualitative case study research. It is argued that such studies cannot be generalised from,
and are unlikely to produce findings that have predictive value.
Yet a significant proportion of the better recent research in the learning and skills sector
has taken the form of small scale investigations. In addition to our own work, of which
more below, there are, for example, studies of sample FE colleges (Ainley and Bailey,
1997; Gleeson and Shain, 1999; Shain and Gleeson, 1999) of workplace learning (Lave
and Wenger, 1991; Engestrom, 2001) youth training (Lee et al., 1990) and transitions
from school to further education, training, employment unemployment etc (Ball et al,
2000). Furthermore, for many researchers based within the learning and skills sector,
small scale case study work is one of few types of research that is viable, with the limited
resources available.
So in this apparently paradoxical context, what is the place and value of case study
research? In particular, why have we chosen to conduct two different case study
investigations into learning and teaching, within the Economic and Social Research
Council’s (ESRC) Teaching and Learning Research Programme (TLRP)? One of these
studies, conducted by both of us, focuses on the significance of school and departmental
cultures in school teachers’ learning. The other, where Phil Hodkinson is working with
others focuses on Transforming Learning Cultures in Further Education. We will say a
little more about each of these, later.
This paper is not concerned either with how to conduct case studies effectively (see
Stake, 1995, Yin 1994), or with presenting a details analysis of the literature that
addresses this complex question (See Gomm, et al., 2000). Rather, we draw upon our
own past and current research investigations to examine the strengths of case study
research, and then the limitations. We then address directly the problematic question
about the extent to which more generalized lessons can be learned from idiosyncratic
case study research. We conclude by arguing that case studies are a valuable means of
researching the learning and skills sector but that, as with all research, interpreting case
study reports requires care and understanding.
The Strengths of Case Studies
In identifying some of the strengths of case study research, we have focussed our analysis
around six themes. In what follows, we address each of them separately.
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1) They can help us understand complex inter-relationships
One of the inherent characteristics of case studies, is that they operate with a severely
restricted focus. One of the prime reasons for so restricting the scope of the research, is
that it facilitates the construction of detailed, in depth understanding of what is to be
studied, be it an FE college, a particular learning site, or even the career of an individual
learner or worker. Furthermore, because of the depth that is possible, case studies can
engage with complexity. We illustrate this point by drawing upon a case study
investigation we conducted into a fairly short-lived variation on youth training in the UK,
originally called ‘Training Credits’ (Hodkinson et al., 1996).
The essence of this scheme was the use of vouchers, intended to give trainees, working
with their employers, control over their own training programmes, by purchasing the
training that they needed. When this scheme was introduced, it was immediately
apparent that it depended on the mutual cooperation of a fairly large number of people
and organisations whom we termed ‘stakeholders’. These included the trainees, their
employers, their training providers, their parents, and the careers officers and teachers
who helped them enter the scheme. The national evaluation of the scheme (Sims and
Stoney, 1993) examined the perspectives and experiences of some of these major groups,
such as trainees, employers and training providers. But, because of the need for national
coverage and for fairly large samples, there was no way, in their data, of examining the
complex interrelationships between these different players.
Instead of that broad brush type of approach, we focussed upon the experiences of 12,
eventually dropping to 10, trainees, all working within one of the pilot schemes. Because
of the small number, we were able to follow the trainees over an eighteen month period,
and to interview the various stakeholders with whom they actually came into contact.
This gave us the opportunity to examine the complexity of the interrelationships between
these different stakeholders, not only with each other, but also with the varying contexts
within which the scheme was situated. These contexts included the local (home, place of
work, place of training) but also wider issues of gender and social class, and of the
contemporary policy climate for youth training, with its emphasis on marketised
approaches. As well as revealing that different types of stakeholder had different needs
and interests, this allowed us to go on and see how those differences impacted upon the
progress of the individual trainees they were engaged with. In order to emphasize this
particular strength of the approach, one of the dominant methods we adopted in writing
up the research was to present multi-faceted stories of aspects of the trainees’ progress
(Hodkinson et al., 1996).
2) Case Studies are grounded in “lived reality”
It is an truism that all social research simplifies the phenomena investigated. However,
case studies can do this in ways that strongly relate to the experiences of individuals,
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small groups, or organizations. They retain more of the “noise” of real life than many
other types of research. Indeed, other forms of research, such as the experiment or a
carefully structured questionnaire survey, base their success on the ability to exclude such
noise, and focus precisely upon the particular phenomenon or possible causal relationship
that is to be investigated. There are good reasons for doing much research in this way,
but an unavoidable problem with it is that in some circumstances, the excluded noise may
be a highly significant part of the story. This particular facet of case study research
brings it closer to the experiences of teachers and trainers than is possible with some
other forms of research. For teachers always work with ‘noise’. Their contexts and
conditions are always complex. Just like case study researchers, they cannot exclude
unwanted variables, some of which may only have real significance for one of their
students.
In our study of teacher training, this enabled us to explore the significance of micropolitics in the progress of some students. We had not anticipated this in drawing up the
research. Furthermore, despite the fact that there is an established literature on the
significance of micro-politics in teaching, there was nothing else that examined this
particular topic in relation to initial teacher training. Yet, during the first of two school
experiences for a student called Luke, it was difficult relationships firstly between the PE
department where he was working and the deputy head in the school who was in charge
of the students, and secondly between both of these and the university organising the
school experience, which proved to be significant factors in his progress (Hodkinson and
Hodkinson, 1997). To cut a long story short, his final report was partly contradictory,
and the student and the PE staff felt it was very unfair to him.
Because we had interviewed all the significant players in this story before the crisis
materialized, we were able to revisit our data and construct a feasible interpretation of
what went wrong, and why. In other words, we could represent some of the real lived
experience of Luke’s teaching practice, in order to examine the significance of what, at
the outset, might have been termed background noise. In passing, it is worth pointing out
that having prior data was especially important. When conflicts like this arise, it is
human nature to reconstruct the past, partly to justify the position a person has adopted.
This often makes it very difficult to get close to any real sense of what happened, or why.
Admittedly with hindsight, we were able to track back through our data, and identify
pointers to the root causes of the problem. None of the other students in our study had
that particular problem, and without the detail of our case study approach, Luke’s report
might just have seemed like evidence of a poor teaching practice or, alternatively, a
poorly constructed report. Based upon our data, we would argue that it represented much
more than either of these things. His story then alerted us to look for micro-politics in the
experiences of other students, where its manifestations were often more subtle.
Eventually, we went on to see micro-politics as a small part of a much larger issue, about
the significance of the school culture where entrants to the teaching profession were
trained (Hodkinson and Hodkinson, 1999). This, in turn, led to the focus of our current
project examining the cultural dimensions of school teachers’ learning, as part of the
TLRP.
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3) Case studies facilitate the exploration of the unexpected and unusual
Because of (1) and (2), case study research can throw up significant issues that were
unexpected when the research commenced. One example of this, Luke’s story, has
already been alluded to, but our work contains other significant examples. For example,
in the Training Credits study we had not been intending to focus on the career decision
making process, but it surfaced as a significant issue. The particular scheme that we were
investigating was constructed around some complex action planning procedures. Early in
our data-gathering process, two things became apparent. Not only were these procedures
hardly being used in the scheme at all, but the ways in which decisions were made about
work placements and training programmes bore very little relationship to the scheme’s
assumptions about what would happen. Consequently, we refocused our investigation to
examine the ways in which these sorts of decision were actually made. This refocusing
took two forms. Firstly, as with Luke’s story, we revisited data that we had already
collected, in order to see what the inter-related perceptions and experiences of our
different stakeholders could tell us about this issue. Secondly, as this was a longitudinal
study, we were able to ask about aspects of the process more explicitly, in the later
rounds of data collection.
Case study investigations also permit the examination of the exceptional, as well as the
typical. Such cases are often excluded from other forms of investigation, which
concentrate upon common patterns and themes in the data. But unusual stories can be
valuable, in at least two ways. Firstly, the practice of teaching has to engage, on a regular
basis, with ‘non-standard’ students and trainees. It is of very little help to a practitioner if
research says that ‘normally, this type of student will want/do x’, if they are faced with an
individual, apparently of that type, who wants/does ‘y’. Secondly, examining the
exceptional case can itself throw valuable light on the nature of more normal processes.
A case study that Phil Hodkinson conducted with Martin Bloomer illustrates both these
benefits.
They followed about 50 16-year old school pupils into, through and out of FE (Bloomer
and Hodkinson, 1997, 1999), interviewing each of them twice a year, for at least three
years. We know, from other research, that one of the best predictors of academic success
in FE is the prior educational achievement of a student, linked to the equally well
documented benefits of a middle class background (e.g. Roberts, 1993; Banks et al.,
1992). For many of our subjects, this pattern was clearly demonstrated. But Daniel was
different. His middle class background gave him an abiding interest in learning for its
own sake, and a sense of inner self-confidence that things would be alright. He treated his
A levels studies as a journey of personal exploration. He had no interest in passing
exams, and for most of his time in FE, did little assessed work. As a result, he dropped
out midway through the second year of his A level programme. We were able to use his
story, with those of others, in two ways. Firstly, in constructing our conceptual model of
learning careers, we were able to check that our thinking could account for exceptional
cases, like him, as well as the more standard and predictable stories of others in our
sample, though we chose to write about this conceptualisation using a different story, that
of Amanda (Bloomer and Hodkinson, 2000). Secondly, when we placed this unusual
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story alongside those of other students who had dropped out, we discovered that there
were more similarities between them than we expected, even though all of the other drop
outs were of working class origin, and some faced real personal hardships that Daniel did
not.
This analysis of dropping out, based on the detailed stories of all the seven students in our
study who had dropped out, revealed significant problems with current policy approaches
to dropping out of FE. For in Daniel’s and the other cases, the decision to drop out
derived as much from outside the college as within it, and many of the key factors
involved lay outside the knowledge and control of the teachers, who were being judged
partly by the retention rates of their courses (Hodkinson and Bloomer, 2001).
4) Multiple case studies can enable research to focus on the significance of the
idiosyncratic
Our use of Daniel’s unusual story partially illustrates this next example of using case
study approaches. For comparing different cases, be they of individuals, groups or
organisations, can illuminate the significance of the idiosyncratic as opposed to the
common, or shared experience. This is one of the prime reasons for the approach
adopted within our two TLRP projects. In the one focussed upon school teachers’
learning, which is relatively small, we are researching teachers in four different
departments, in two different schools. This is enabling us to identify features that appear
to be common to all four departments, and those which are significantly different.
Fieldwork on this project is about halfway through, and already some tentative
observations can be made. As we expected, based upon our own prior research and that
of others (see Harris, 2001 for a summary) it is already clear that the department is a
highly significant point of identity for most of the teachers we are working with. On the
other hand, the four departments work in different ways. For example, two of them are
charcterised by strong team working with a close and supportive professional grouping.
The other two departments are more dispersed in character, for example with teachers
spending more time in the staff-room than the departmental spaces, and with a higher
proportion of departmental discussion being in formal meetings and memos. Harris
(2001) cites teamwork as one of the key characteristics of effective school departments.
However, our case study approach reveals that things are more complicated than that.
For the more fragmented departments in our sample are also very successful, but the
teachers adopt subtly different methods of advancing their own learning and their own
practices.
In the Transforming Cultures in FE project, fieldwork has only just begun, so we have no
findings to share. However, this project has taken full advantage of the unprecedented
levels of research funding available within the TLRP, to focus on 16 detailed longitudinal
case studies of teaching and learning in four FE colleges. Each single case focuses on the
student and teacher interactions in one teaching site, be it a classroom, workshop, open
learning centre, or whatever. Each of these case studies will be rich and detailed enough
to be a research project on its own. We have deliberately selected the 16 sites to
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encompass a wide variety of settings, student groups, and subject matter. The project
will focus not only upon how students learn and teachers teach in those sites, but also on
ways in which the research process can aid the on-going transformation of the learning
cultures in each site. By the end of the project, this should enable us to clearly identify
issues and approaches, which are common across all or most sites, and those that differ
significantly. In other words, the project will help identify the extent to which broadly
generalised approaches to teaching and learning in FE are valid, or, put another way, the
extent to which the idiosyncratic contexts of each site is what really matters.
5) Case studies can show the processes involved in causal relationships
Most conventional studies of causal relationships are based upon statistical correlation.
The depth and complexity of case study data can illuminate the ways in which such
correlated factors influence each other. Our earlier work on the Training Credits project,
linked with the Bloomer and Hodkinson study of FE students, illustrate this point very
well. We have already alluded to a significant amount of research and policy literature
that demonstrates the close links between qualification achievement, at 16 and 18, with
future careers. Those with better qualifications are more likely to get jobs, and to get
better jobs, often with better pay. The assumption in many of these studies is that this
relationship is causal: that higher qualifications cause people to get better jobs. It is this
relationship, amongst other things, that has resulted in such a policy focus on retention
and achievement as measure of success in the learning and skills sector (see, for example,
Social Exclusion Unit, 1999). This is linked with the parallel assumption that the way to
increase the number of young people who achieve these desirable qualifications is
through a combination of better guidance and better teaching.
This policy approach makes three largely implicit assumptions that our detailed case
study data challenges. The first is that young people make largely rational decisions
about future careers, and about which course to choose. If this were true, then guidance
could indeed help ensure a better fit between what students need and what they
eventually choose, by giving them relevant information and by enhancing their decision
making. Data from both our studies shows this not to be the case. Young people make
pragmatically rational decisions, which are strongly influenced by the social, cultural and
economic contexts in which they live their lives.
The second assumption is that students’ progress through education and into a job is
normally and ideally a matter of simple, linear progression. In other words, it assumes
that they do not change significantly as people, or change their career intentions, as their
post-16 education progresses. The data from the study with Bloomer shows that, on the
contrary, most of our sample of young people changed significantly during their 16 to 19
education, so that what they wanted towards the end, was very different from what they
wanted at the beginning.
The third assumption we have already encountered, for both studies demonstrate that
many of the most significant factors in the learning careers of the young people we
studied lay outside the actual place of learning. This was clearer in the case of the FE
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study, as had been seen in relation to dropping out. In the Training Credits study, things
worked rather differently. For most of these trainees, the place of work was the prime
location for their training, but two tensions were apparent. In the workplace, the needs of
the job often took priority over learning needs. For example, one trainee, working in a
stables, had planned learning activities frequently cancelled, as the need to work with
customers took priority. Also, doing the job at work often took precedence over off the
job training. Finally, for these trainees, progression to work depended primarily on the
decisions made by others (employers), and these were very rarely influenced by
qualification achievement.
Consequently, our researches would suggest that the links between qualification
achievement and future career are complex, and work in different ways for different
people, and in different contexts. This does not mean that the other research is wrong,
but it does point to different ways of understanding any causal relationships involved, and
identifies possible flaws in current policy approaches to these issues.
6) Case studies can facilitate rich conceptual/theoretical development
A combination of the other five factors means that case studies are fertile grounds for
conceptual and theoretical development. Existing theories can be brought up against
complex realities, and the very richness of the data can help generate new thinking and
new ideas. Though thick description can be valuable in its own right, case study research
really demonstrates its relevance when such new or modified thinking takes place. In the
Training Credits study, we developed a new theory of career decision making. In the
teacher training study, we developed a clearer understanding as to why school-based
practice was often at odds with the expectations of university-based educators, even
though they had been very experienced teachers. The study with Bloomer developed the
concept of ‘learning career’. In the current study of teachers’ learning, our conceptual
development is at an early stage, but elsewhere in this conference we have outlines some
of our early thinking (Hodkinson and Hodkinson, 2001). Teacher learning, we have
suggested, involves the complex interrelationship between individual careers and
dispositions to learning, the cultures of school and department, and the broader social,
economic, political and above all, policy contexts in which teachers are currently working
and have worked in the past.
Limitations of Case Studies
In order to balance this account, it is necessary to examine, if more briefly, some of the
limitations of case study research.
1) There is too much data for easy analysis.
All case study researchers are conscious of being swamped in data. For example, our
Training Credits study generated 198 taped interviews. However such data is analysed,
which is itself a contentious issue (Colley and Diment, 2001), much has to be omitted.
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Anyone who reads Triumphs and Tears (Hodkinson et al., 1996) will notice that some
trainees’ stories are given more detail than others. Furthermore, even the most detailed of
those stories is a significant simplification of what we were told. In other publications
from that study (e.g. Hodkinson and Sparkes, 1994) we chose not to tell individual stories
at all, but rather to analyse issues across the stories. This is probably a more conventional
approach, but the problem still remains. We only drew on quotes from a small number of
trainees and their stakeholders, and took those out of the context of the stories of which
the data was part. Much of what we found in that and subsequent studies has never been
published. It is quite possible, indeed likely, that a revisiting of the data would reveal
other issues and aspects that Training Credits scheme that are at least as interesting and
important as those we chose to analyse and write about.
2) Very expensive, if attempted on a large scale
Case study data is time-consuming to collect, and even more time-consuming to analyse.
Yet cutting corners on either of these facets is likely to seriously weaken the value and
credibility of any findings produced. This means that large or multiple case studies can
be very expensive. The TLC project, for example, has an overall budget in excess of
£800,000. Furthermore, there is often a reluctance to fund such large scale work, for
some of the reasons explored below.
On the other hand, some forms of small case study investigation can be quite cheap.
Even for those days, the £45,000 spent on the Training Credits study is not large, by
research project standards. Also, for practitioners trying to conduct their own small scale
action research investigations, a case study of, for example, one group that they teach, is
manageable, and can give valuable data.
3) The complexity examined is difficult to represent simply
When case studies are successful in revealing some of the complexities of social or
educational situations, there is often a problem of representation. If is often difficult to
present accessible and realistic pictures of that complexity in writing. For instance,
writing is predominantly a linear form of communication, with a beginning, middle and
end, but much of what case study research reveals is simply not like that. Often, by
writing about one aspect of the issue as, for example, in one person’s story, other aspects
of it are unintentionally concealed. There are often several different ways to present the
same set of issues, each one of which is subtly different in its approach and emphasis.
This situation can make the findings of such research very difficult to summarise.
4) They do not lend themselves to numerical representation
Some aspects of case study work can be fairly easily presented in numerical form, but
much cannot. Some examples will illustrate the point. In the FE study conducted with
Martin Bloomer, the actual sample size varied slightly from year to year. We started with
more students than we finished with, we lost sight of some, or decided not to follow
others. In some sweeps, particular students could not be contacted, in one case, for
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example, because of illness. Consequently, it is difficult to express even the sample size
of that study in simple numerical form.
Presenting much of the findings of such studies in numerical form is even more
problematic. For example, in the Training Credits study we argued that our sample
trainees made decisions using pragmatic rationality. But if we try to look beneath that
umbrella term, and analyse the extent to which students met one or other of the
characteristics by which we identified that concept, two problems surface. Firstly, those
characteristics make little sense separated out from the whole concept, so that it is
difficult to express, for example, how many of our sample were using information from
friends and relatives to make their decisions. Furthermore, identifying clear boundaries
around an issue such as ‘did or did not use information from friends and relatives’ is
difficult. At one extreme, we have clear examples where some of them talk about the
sorts of information they got. For example, one of them was told about a job vacancy by
his step-father, who worked in the firm concerned. Indeed, that step-father actually
negotiated with the firm, to get him the placement. Others talked more generally about
discussing possible careers with someone they knew. For these sorts of reason, we often
used phrases like ‘most of our sample …..’ or ‘many of our sample …’. This lack of
precision is regarded as a serious weakness by many other researchers.
Finally, for the most important issues we were examining, attempts to break down data
into numerical categories undermined the essential richness of the interrelationships we
were interested in. In this respect, as others, the very strengths of case study research,
described above, are the cause of this inability to count effectively.
5) They are not generalisable in the conventional sense
By definition, case studies can make no claims to be typical. We have no way of
knowing, empirically, to what extent our four secondary school departments are similar
or different from other such departments in schools all over England. Furthermore,
because the sample is small and idiosyncratic, and because data is predominantly nonnumerical, there is no way to establish the probability that data is representative of some
larger population. For many researchers and others, this renders any case study findings
as of little value.
6) They are strongest when researcher expertise and intuition are maximised, but this
raises doubts about their “objectivity”
For a combination of reasons that have been addressed elsewhere in this paper, researcher
expertise, knowledge and intuition is a vital part of the case study approach. We have to
choose what questions to ask, and how to ask them, what to observe and what to record.
We have to draw out issues of interest from the data, and construct stories about those
issues and/or people. In our research, we have decided how to present individual stories:
what data and issues to include and focus on, and what to exclude. In this way, case
study researchers are constantly making judgments about the significance of the data.
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For these reasons, a key determinant of the quality of a piece of case study research is the
quality of the insights and thinking brought to bear by the particular researcher. When
you read our publications, you are accessing our construction of the data around issues
we judge to be important. No matter how rigorous we strive to be, this means that the
research is not, and cannot be, completely objective, nor can we easily make transparent
all the judgements we have made. Like all good researchers, we try to present adequate
evidence, from the data, to support the stories we tell, but a certain amount has to be
taken on trust. For some researchers, this makes work like ours highly dubious,
especially when combined with others of the limitations already listed.
7) They are easy to dismiss, by those who do not like the messages that they contain
Quite apart from the sorts of weakness that are often found in case study research, there is
a further problem if they present issues or findings that are unpopular, for example with
policy makers or managers. Those who do not like what case study researchers write,
can easily find reasons to dismiss those findings: the sample was too small; it’s not like
that elsewhere; the researchers were biased, etc. The sorts of research based on large
representative samples, with apparently clear, unambiguous findings, are much less easy
to resist.
8) They cannot answer a large number of relevant and appropriate research questions
Despite the small amount of space given to it, this reservation is arguably the most
important of them all. Case studies are neither ubiquitous nor a universal panacea. There
are very many important research questions that cannot be answered in this way.
How Can Case Study Findings be “Generalised”?
Despite the fact that they cannot be representative, case studies can provide more than
simply idiosyncratic understanding. We prefer not to think of this as ‘generalisation’,
because of the connotations of that term for statistically significant large scale surveys.
Rather, the issue is what case studies can tell us about situations beyond the actual case
that was studied. Good case studies, we would claim, can do that in a number of ways.
1) Theory can be transposed beyond the original sites of study
Where case studies generate new thinking, that thinking has a validity that does not
entirely depend upon the cases from which it is drawn. Our theory of career decision
making can be judged in other contexts, and other settings. It has already been used on
two other studies (one by Bloomer and Hodkinson, already described, and one by Ball, et
al., 2000). It can also be compared with and judged against other rival theories of career
development and career decision making, elsewhere in the literature. It is much, much
more than ‘the story of 10 trainees’.
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2) Findings can ‘ring true’ in other settings
Readers of case study research can judge whether or not the analysis presented sounds
convincing, based upon what they know of similar situations and circumstances. In our
experience, many professionals can empathise with our studies, because they recognise
the sorts of situation that we describe. They seem less relevant/attractive to policy
makers and some managers, perhaps because they reveal some of the over-simplifications
upon which some policies and managerial practices are based.
3) Case Studies can provide provisional truths, in a Popperian sense
We would argue that our career decision-making theory establishes a provisional truth,
even though it was based on the experiences of 10 young people, all white and all on a
youth training programme. It is arguably the best account of such decision making in the
current literature, and should stand, until contradictory findings or better theorising has
been developed. The latter is beginning to happen, for example in the Ball et. al. (2000)
study. However, the theorising is not widely known or recognised in the career guidance
and counselling field. The reasons for this are fascinating, but do not relate to the case
study origins.
Conclusion
In rounding off this brief analysis of some of the strengths and weaknesses of case study
research, we would wish to make two fairly obvious points, one of which has some
complex implications. Firstly, we would argue strongly for the continuing place of case
study research, alongside many other types of research and approaches to it. Secondly,
and more controversially, we would argue that there is no simple check list of criteria,
against which the validity and/or quality of a piece of case study research can be judged.
If common tests of objectivity , sample size, clear numerical categories and
generalisability are applied, many case studies will fail, almost by definition. Rather,
judging the worth of case study research demands some understanding and careful
thinking by the reader. Do the stories told ‘ring true’? Do they seem well supported by
evidence and argument? Does the study tell us something new and/or different, that is of
value in some sort of way? Is any theorising better or more valuable than alternative
models? These and many other questions can and should be asked of any case study that
is read. Ideally, they should be asked from a position of some prior understanding: of the
topic being investigated, and/or of the strengths and limitations of the methods and
approaches used. With regard to the learning and skills field, this paper attempts to aid
that latter type of understanding.
References
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Experiences of Further Education in the 1990s. London: Cassell.
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