Multiple Case Study Analysis

by Robert E. Stake PhD

Overview

Examining situational complexity is a vital part of social and behavioral science research. This engaging text provides an effective process for studying multiple cases--such as sets of teachers, staff development sessions, or clinics operating in different locations--within one complex program. The process also can be used to investigate broadly occurring phenomena without programmatic links, such as leadership or sibling rivalry. Readers learn to design, analyze, and report studies that balance common issues across the group of cases with the unique features and context of each case. Three actual case reports from a transnational early childhood program illustrate the author's approach, and helpful reproducible worksheets facilitate multicase recording and analysis.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781462512409
Publisher:	Guilford Publications, Inc.
Publication date:	04/29/2013
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	342
File size:	5 MB

About the Author

Robert E. Stake is Director of the Center for Instructional Research and Curriculum Evaluation at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is one of several educational researchers who created theory and practice for educational program evaluation in the 1960s. His responsive evaluation approach emphasizes the study of classroom experience, personal interaction, and institutional processes and contexts, often in the form of case studies. Among the evaluative studies he has directed are studies in science and arts education; model programs; and conventional teaching, including higher education, special education and, with Bernadine Evans Stake, gender equity. He is a recipient of the Special Career Award in Qualitative Inquiry from the International Congress for Qualitative Inquiry, the Lazarsfeld Award from the American Evaluation Association, and the Presidential Citation from the American Educational Research Association, and holds honorary doctorates from the University of Uppsala, Sweden, and the University of Valladolid, Spain. For many years, Dr. Stake has been a prominent voice in a transatlantic "invisible college" of like-minded evaluators questioning contexts and conventions for educational evaluation and infusing evaluation with fairness and a valuing of experience.

Table of Contents

	List of Worksheets, Figures, and Photographs	xxiii
Chapter 1	Single Cases	1
1.1	Situation and Experience	2
1.2	A Technical View of a Case	3
1.3	The Quintain	4
1.4	The Case-Quintain Dilemma	7
1.5	The Research Questions	9
1.6	The Particular and the General	10
1.7	The Contexts	12
1.8	Making the Individual Case Report	14
	Planning the Report	14
Chapter 2	The Multicase Study	17
2.1	Staffing	18
2.2	Selecting Cases	22
2.3	Activity in Its Situation	27
2.4	Data Gathering across Cases	29
2.5	Triangulation within Cases	33
Chapter 3	Cross-Case Analysis	39
3.1	Rationale	40
3.2	Reading the Collected Reports	41
3.3	Cross-Case Procedure	46
3.4	Expected Utility of Cases and Ordinariness of Situations	48
3.5	The Grounds for Assertions	50
Track I	Emphasizing Case Findings	50
Track II	Merging Case Findings	58
Track III	Providing Factors for Analysis	64
3.6	Cross-Case Assertions	72
3.7	Triangulation across Cases	77
Chapter 4	The Report	78
4.1	Planning the Multicase Report	79
4.2	Comparing Cases	82
4.3	Advocacy	84
4.4	Generalization	88
Chapter 5	The Step by Step Multicase Study Project	91
5.1	The Open Society Institute and the International Step by Step Association	92
5.2	The Step by Step Approach	93
5.3	Previous Step by Step Evaluations	98
5.4	Aims of the Step by Step Multicase Project	100
5.5	Developing Case Topics	100
5.6	Action Research	101
5.7	Themes for Cross-Case Analysis	102
5.8	The Teams and the Steering Group	105
5.9	Training the Case Researchers	106
	Three Step by Step Case Studies	109
	Addressing the Six Cross-Case Themes	110
	The Experience of the Case Researchers and Mentors	114
Chapter 6	The Ukraine Case Study	119
	Inclusive Education: The Step by Step Program Influencing Children, Teachers, Parents, and State Policies in Ukraine	121
	List of Characters	121
	Liubchyk	122
	Liubchyk's Teacher	126
	Teacher Training in Lviv	129
	A Press Conference in Lviv	132
	Teacher Training in Kyiv	139
	Teacher Training in Ukraine	146
	Liubchyk	148
	Observations by Ailsa Cregan, Mentor	149
	Liubchyk's Mother	150
	Shans, a Parent NGO	153
	Interview with Mr. Volodymyr and Ms. Tamara	154
	Board Meeting of the Center	158
	National Context	161
	Legislation	162
	Treatment of Children with Disabilities	163
	Interview with Victor Ogneviuk	168
	Interview with Vyatcheslav Zasenko	171
	The Ukrainian Step by Step Foundation	172
	Brief History	173
	Capacity of the Ukrainian Step by Step Foundation	174
	The Ministry of Education and Science and Other Partners	175
	Interview with Natalia Sofiy	176
	Our Interpretation of Educational Policy	180
	Our Interpretation of the Teacher Training	182
	Our Interpretation of Inclusion	187
	Liubchyk	191
Chapter 7	The Slovakia Case Study	193
	Impact of Step by Step at the Roma Settlement Jarovnice-Karice: Slovakia Community Resource Mobilization	195
	Summary	195
1	The Community Center: Preparation for Inclusive Education	197
2	The Community Center: A Place for Lifelong Learning	201
2.1	The Community Center: A Place of Community Development	203
2.2	Civic Associations	204
3	Life in the Roma Settlement of Jarovnice	204
3.1	Education	205
3.2	Employment	207
3.3	The First Roma People in the Village	207
3.4	Religious Life in the Community	208
3.5	A Visit to the Parish Priest	209
4	Maria Lichvarova	210
4.1	Gaining Community Acceptance through the Children	211
4.2	The Pastoral Center	212
4.3	Home-Based Teaching	213
5	The Step by Step Program in Slovakia	218
5.1	Nadacia Skola dokoran-the Wide Open School Foundation	220
6	Special Primary Schools	225
6.1	The Special Primary School in Jarovnice	226
6.2	The Headmistress	229
6.3	Parent Participation	232
6.4	Whole-Language Strategies	233
6.5	Differentiated Instruction	234
6.6	The Teacher Assistants	235
6.7	Community Resource Mobilization	239
Chapter 8	The Romania Case Study	241
	The Romanian Case Study: Center for Educational and Professional Development, Step by Step Romania-Teacher Staff Development at the Tulcea Model Training Site	243
	Summary	244
	List of Characters	245
	Glossary	246
1	Introduction and Historical/Political Background	246
1.1	Staff Development at the Tulcea MTS	246
1.2	The Growth of Step by Step Teacher Training in Romania	248
1.3	Teacher Training: The Engine of Educational Reform	250
1.4	The European Union and Romania	252
1.5	Traditional and Alternative Teacher Education	254
1.6	Professional Development from the Bottom Up: The General	256
1.7	Trainees' Expectations of Training	259
1.8	The Romanian Teacher-Training Network	261
1.9	Pluralism and Democracy	262
2	Teacher Training in MTS Kindergarten 3, Tulcea	263
2.1	Day One: Presenting the Step by Step Standards	263
2.2	Planning	272
2.3	Day Two: Step by Step Standards in Action	277
2.4	Parent Involvement	284
3	Alternatives and Partnerships	290
3.1	The Danube Delta: A Metaphor for Alternatives	290
3.2	The National Symposium in Targoviste	291
4	Mentoring	295
4.1	The Mentoring Experience	295
4.2	A Trainee in Galati	297
5	Reflection/Discussion	300
Chapter 9	Step by Step Cross-Case Analysis: First Steps	305
	References	327
	Index	333
	About the Author	341
	Contributors	342

Interviews

Graduate students and researchers in the behavioral and social sciences, including psychology, education, social work, sociology, management, public health, and nursing. The book's sample cases are drawn from early childhood education programs, which will appeal to early childhood education researchers and administrators. Serves as a supplemental text in graduate-level courses in case study research, qualitative research methods, evaluation, and applied research.

Editorial Reviews

"Researchers in education and social science have worried for decades over how to study multiple cases of the same phenomena and come up with viable conclusions. Robert Stake's careful analysis lays out the problems, the pitfalls, and the dangers of such an enterprise, and provides masterful, amply illustrated, easily understood, and reproducible solutions. All of us who study multiple sites will be grateful for this enormous gift, which analyzes and teaches simultaneously."—Howard S. Becker, PhD, author of Writing for Social Scientists and Tricks of the Trade

“Stake does it again: takes up a murky research problem, such as how to integrate multiple case studies that do or don’t have a common subject, and shows us how to solve it. This book could be the basis for a superb graduate seminar or simply the 'manual' for a research team facing a dozen piles of results from case studies. It would also be excellent supplementary reading for a course in qualitative research methods that would provide students with an appreciation of the difficulties and possibilities of drawing conclusions from words.”—Les McLean, PhD, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (Emeritus), University of Toronto, Canada

"This book fills a major gap in the qualitative research and evaluation literature. Although multicase studies are a commonly used strategy, I know of no published work that provides a comprehensive, in-depth, and practical guide to the conduct of such studies. The book embodies the author’s extensive experience and deep understanding of this approach, and manages to be both groundbreaking and user-friendly. The detailed examples of case studies are a major strength of the book. This book would be appropriate as a textbook for advanced courses in qualitative or case study research, and also as a guide and resource for practicing researchers and evaluators."—Joseph A. Maxwell, PhD, Graduate School of Education, George Mason University

"Stake offers a very detailed, honest, and perceptive account of the methodology of cross-case analysis, and the dilemmas of generating both the 'case' and the 'generalization.'"—Research Professor Ian Stronach, Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester, UK

"Stake's book provides the reader with hands-on experience in doing multicase research, offering theoretical insights, useful worksheets, and technical detail. The international Step by Step Early Childhood program implemented in Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia is an ideal study area, with rich contextual data furnishing glimpses of the complexities of changing the patterns and ingrained practices of educational systems."—Henriette Heimgaertner, Bernard van Leer Foundation, The Hague, The Netherlands

From the Publisher