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Case Study Research in Educational Settings
M. BASSEY (Ed.) (1999)
Buckingham, Open University Press
178 pp.
L45.00 (handback), L14.99 (paperback)
Those familiar with Michael Bassey's writing will not be surprised that this book is idiosyncratic, in turns infuriating and interesting, and replete with classifications and sub-classifications as well as diagrams which sometimes clarify but often confuse. It is not so much a guide to case study research as a guide to Michael Bassey's thoughts on the current educational research scene, and debates about educational research, linked to his views as to how case study work needs reconstructing and reformulating in relation to these debates.
As Bassey says at the beginning of Chapter 1, `The aim of this book is to reconstruct the concept of educational case study as a prime strategy for developing educational theory which illuminates educational policy and enhances educational practice'. Chapters 1-5 set out the stall for the summarising reconstruction in Chapter 6, which is followed by the longest chapter in this part of the book, suggesting ways for conducting such case study work. Part 2 of the book consists of three illustrative case studies, although we find another illustration in Chapter 2, a summary of a study by Holligan, which appeared in the British Educational Research Journal (followed by a checklist relating to the claim that this enquiry meets the criteria of an educational case study). To understand this checklist we have to go to Chapter 6. The reader will gather from the above that I did not find the flow from one chapter to another easy.
Bassey is explicit in Chapter I about the experience he is drawing on for the book, and it is very much his experience: as an examiner of dissertations and theses; as a member of UK Research Assessment panels and a commentator on that experience; as a writer about generalization and case study for 20 years. It is important to note that Bassey's book is not concerned with mainstream ethnography, nor with action research. How can we locate this book then? Chapters 3 and 4 are central here, `What is case study' and `Locating educational case study on the map of research in education'. In the former, Bassey engages with Stenhouse,...