Practitioner Research and Case Study

Green, Judith L., et. al. Handbook of Complmentary Methods in Education Research
Practitioner and Research. AERA, 2006.

In practitioner research, the practitioner simultaneously takes on the role of researcher. Those who live and work in particular contexts are among those with significant knowledge perspectives about the situation. This assumes that what a practitioner/researcher can know by through inquiry into the situation is worth knowing and that ALL participants in the context are regarded as knowers, learners, and researchers. Of course, I see my students as teachers and us all doing inquiry to the gaps and fissures of texts and experiences.  We all have authority to construct knowledge, so it make sense then for practitioner research to be collaborative, too. The knowledge needed to understand, analyze and improve educational situations is within the context itself and cannot be generated from without or outside the situation. Thus, the knowledge needed to improve practice is embedded in local contexts and intended for use within the context generated.  Is local knowledge of use and of interest beyond the local context? Perhaps.

With practitioner research, the problems and issues of professional practice  such as the discrepancies between what was intended and what occurred are the focus of investigation.  It is less from the study of the literature and more from the questions of particular students or situations.  However, this does not mean that the inquiry is only behavioral or action oriented.   Practice is both practical and theoretical.

The boundaries between inquiry and practice blur when the practitioner is a researcher and when the professional contexts is a site for the study of problems of practice.  Such blurring has the potential to generate innovative research and new kinds of knowledge. Inquiry is an integral not separate part of practice and learning from practice is an essential task of professional life.  Boundaries must blur so that the practitioner can construct questions, interrogate assumptions, gather data, develop courses of action that are valid in local contexts and continuously re-evaluate.

Regarding validity and generalizability, practitioner research differ from traditional research notions of transferability and application of findings.  Validity is related to trustworthiness; the focus is on significance, quality and autobiographical analysis.

Practitioner research requires systematicity and intentionality  - ordered ways of gathering and recoding information, documenting experiences inside and outside the contexts of practice, and making written records.  In addition, there must be ordered ways of recollecting, rethinking, and analyzing events for which there are only partially written records.  The intentionality aspect refers to the need for delibraer rather than spontaneous practice.

(I might interview several students, look at their artifacts, and record a group discussion.)

Self-study research cannot be independent; otherwise, it becomes rationalizing one's own perspective rather than genuinely grappling with the contradictions involved in improving practice by better understanding personal experience.  The study must be opened to community for peer scrutiny.  Generally, the knowledge generated in practitioner research is only for the local community, but it may be useful more publicly in that it suggests new insights into the domains of research on teaching.

Case Study

Case study as a method is pertinent when your research addresses a descriptive question (what happened) or an explanatory question (how or why did something happen). This method allows for the researcher to do data collection and data analysis together. Interviews in the field with prompt analysis will allow the researcher to do re-interview, interview another subject to resolve conflicting responses or for another perspective, or to modify data collection. This is different compared to other methods; surveys and experiments occur during a formal stage separate from data analysis.

Step one is to define the case you are studying. Step two is to decide whether to do a single-case or multiple-case studies. Third is the theoretical framework.  What will be your initial theoretical perspective? Your case should build, extend, or challenge this perspective? (Common Core, standardization, rhetoric/fiction, modernity). Is this a case study with multiple embedded subcases?  or a multiple case study project?

Formal case study screening procedure. Some useful screening criteria include the willingness of key persons in the case to participate, the likely richness of the available data, and preliminary evidence that the case has had the experience or situation that you are seeking to study. Be sure the case is viable. Are the cases confirmatory or presumed to replicate the same phenomenon? contrasting cases such as one success and one failure? or theoretically diverse cases  like a primary and secondary case?  With multiple cases, audiences want to see some geographic, size, ethnic or other variation. A multiple case reduces suspicion that your skills are limited to a single case personally special to the researcher and provides a certain amount of comparative data.

Case studies are not limited to a single source of data -- questionnaire or survey.  The idea is to triangulate or establish converging lines of evidence to make the findings robust.

1. Documents (e.g., newspaper articles, letters, emails, reports)
2. Archival records (e.g., student records)
3. Interviews (e.g., open-ended conversation with key informants)
4. Participant Observations (e.g., being identified as a researcher but also filling a real-liferole in the scene being studied)
5. Physical Artifacts (e.g, computer printouts of students' work)


Design, selection, analysis and reporting.