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Geography Case Studies

All of our geography case studies in one place

Coastal Erosion

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The Holderness Coast

The Dorset Coast

Happisburgh

Coastal Management

Sandscaping at Bacton, Norfolk

Coastal Realignment Donna Nook

Coastal Realignment Medmerry

Coastal Deposition

Spurn Point

Blakeney Point Spit

Earthquakes

Amatrice Earthquake Case Study

Chile Earthquake 2010

Christchurch Earthquake

Haiti Earthquake

Japan Earthquake 2011

L’Aquila Earthquake

Lombok Indonesia Earthquake 2018

Nepal Earthquake 2015

Sulawesi, Indonesia Earthquake and Tsunami 2018

New Zealand 2016

Malaysia Causes of Deforestation

Malaysia Impacts of Deforestation

Alaska Case Study

Epping Forest Case Study

Sahara Desert Case Study

Svalbard Case Study

Thar Desert Case Study

Western Desert Case Study

Energy Resources

Chambamontera Micro-hydro Scheme

Extreme Weather in the UK

Beast from the East Case Study

Storm Ciera Case Study

Food Resources

Almería, Spain: a large-scale agricultural development

The Indus Basin Irrigation System: a large-scale agricultural development

Sustainable food supplies in a LIC – Bangladesh

Sustainable food supplies in a LIC – Makueni, Kenya

Landforms on the River Tees

Landforms on the River Severn

Indus River Basin (CIE)

River Flooding

Jubilee River Flood Management Scheme

Banbury Flood Management Scheme

Boscastle Floods

Kerala Flood 2018

Wainfleet Floods 2019

The Somerset Levels Flood Case Study

UK Floods Case Study November 2019

River Management

The Three Gorges Dam

Mekong River

The Changing Economic World

How can the growth of tourism reduce the development gap? Jamaica Case Study

How can the growth of tourism reduce the development gap? Tunisia Case Study

India Case Study of Development

Nigeria – A NEE

Torr Quarry

Nissan Sunderland

The London Sustainable Industries Park (London SIP)

Tropical Storms

Beast from the East

Hurricane Andrew

Cyclone Eline

Cyclone Idai Case Study

Typhoon Haiyan 2013

Hurricane Irma 2017

Typhoon Jebi 2018

Hurricane Florence 2018

Typhoon Mangkhut 2018

Urban Issues

Birmingham – Edexcel B

Urban Growth in Brazil – Rio de Janeiro

Urban Growth in India – Mumbai

Urban Growth in Nigeria – Lagos

London – A Case Study of a UK City

Inner City Redevelopment – London Docklands

Sustainable Urban Living – Freiburg

Sustainable Urban Living – East Village

Sustainable Urban Transport Bristol Case Study

Bristol – A major UK city

Volcanic Eruptions

Eyjafjallajokull – 2010

Mount Merapi – 2010

Mount Pinatubo – 1991

Sakurajima Case Study

Nyiragongo Case Study

Water Resources

Hitosa, Ethiopia – A local water supply scheme in an LIC

The South-North Water Transfer Project, China

Wakal River Basin Project

Lesotho Large-Scale Water Transfer Scheme

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Current Topics in Czech and Central European Geography Education pp 115–128 Cite as

Case Studies in Geography Education as a Powerful Way of Teaching Geography

• Eduard Hofmann 5 &
• Hana Svobodová 5  
• First Online: 20 October 2016

506 Accesses

3 Citations

A case study presents an appropriate form and method of providing students with a solution of real situations from the surroundings in which they live. This is called “powerful teaching”, and it is designed to help pupils and students to be able to cope with the rigours of everyday life through geography education. This method is not so well known and used in Czechia as abroad, where it is known under the name “powerful knowledge” or “powerful teaching”. For this reason the introductory part of this chapter devotes enough space to understand “powerful learning” and noted how it differs from inquiry-based, project-based, problem-based, student-centred and constructivist approaches to learning. Knowledge from the Czech geography education is in our case used for solving a case study in a decisive process in which students solve options and consequences of the construction of a ski resort in Brno (in Czechia). They submit their conclusions to the municipal council for assessment.

• Powerful teaching
• Field research
• Initial survey
• Analysis of documents
• Direct observation
• Visual recordings
• Audio recordings
• Land-use planning
• Decision-making process

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Adamová, K. (2014). Wilsonův les [Wilson forest]. Průvodce Brnem. http://www.pruvodcebrnem.cz/wilsonuv-les . Accessed 8 Aug 2015.

Bláha, J. D., & Hátle, J. (2014). Tvorba náčrtů a plánků ve výuce geografie [Creation of sketches and hand-drawn maps in geography teaching]. Geografické rozhledy , 23 (4), 13–14.

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Hofmann, E. (2015). Dělení terénní výuky podle různých kritérií [Dividing of the fieldwork according to various criteria]. Nepublikovaný rukopis/Unpublished Manuscript.

Hofmann, E., & Svobodová, H. (2013). Blending of Old and New Approaches in Geographical Education: A Case Study. Problems of Education in the 21st Century, 53 (53), 51–60.

Hopkins, D. (2000). Powerful learning, powerful teaching and powerful schools. Journal of Educational Change, 1 (2), 135–154.

Janko, T. (2012). Nonverbální prvky v učebnicích zeměpisu jako nástroj didaktické transformace [Non-verbal elements in textbooks of geography as an instrument of didactic transformation]. (disertační práce/thesis), Brno: Pedagogická fakulta MU.

Job, D. (1999). Geography and environmental education: An exploration perspective and strategies. In A. Kent, D. Lambert, M. Naish, & F. Slater (Eds.), Geography in education: Viewpoints on teaching and learning (pp. 22–49). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Kárný, M. (2010). Sjezdovky v Brně? Zatím zůstává jen u přání [Ski Slopes in Brno? Yet Remains only in Wish]. Deník 4. 1. 2010. http://brnensky.denik.cz/serialy/sjezdovky-v-brne-zatim-zustava-jen-u-prani20100103.html . Accessed 8 July 2015.

Kol. (2013). Rámcový vzdělávací program pro základní školy RVP ZV [Framework education programme for basic education FEP BE]. Praha: Ministerstvo školství, mládeže a tělovýchovy, VÚP. http://www.msmt.cz/vzdelavani/zakladni-vzdelavani/upraveny-ramcovy-vzdelavaci-program-pro-zakladni-vzdelavani . http://www.vuppraha.cz/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/RVP_ZV_EN_final.pdf . Accessed 24 Aug 2015.

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Olecká, I., & Ivanová, K. (2010). Případová studie jako výzkumná metoda ve vědách o člověku [Case study as a research method in human science]. EMI , 2 (2), 62–65.

Tejeda, R., & Santamaría, I. (2010). Models in teaching: A powerful skill. In Proceedings of the 7th WSEAS International conference on engineering education (pp. 77–85). Sofia: World Scientific and Engineering Academy and Society (WSEAS).

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Hofmann, E., Svobodová, H. (2017). Case Studies in Geography Education as a Powerful Way of Teaching Geography. In: Karvánková, P., Popjaková, D., Vančura, M., Mládek, J. (eds) Current Topics in Czech and Central European Geography Education. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-43614-2_7

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Methodology

• What Is a Case Study? | Definition, Examples & Methods

What Is a Case Study? | Definition, Examples & Methods

Published on May 8, 2019 by Shona McCombes . Revised on November 20, 2023.

A case study is a detailed study of a specific subject, such as a person, group, place, event, organization, or phenomenon. Case studies are commonly used in social, educational, clinical, and business research.

A case study research design usually involves qualitative methods , but quantitative methods are sometimes also used. Case studies are good for describing , comparing, evaluating and understanding different aspects of a research problem .

Table of contents

When to do a case study, step 1: select a case, step 2: build a theoretical framework, step 3: collect your data, step 4: describe and analyze the case, other interesting articles.

A case study is an appropriate research design when you want to gain concrete, contextual, in-depth knowledge about a specific real-world subject. It allows you to explore the key characteristics, meanings, and implications of the case.

Case studies are often a good choice in a thesis or dissertation . They keep your project focused and manageable when you don’t have the time or resources to do large-scale research.

You might use just one complex case study where you explore a single subject in depth, or conduct multiple case studies to compare and illuminate different aspects of your research problem.

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Once you have developed your problem statement and research questions , you should be ready to choose the specific case that you want to focus on. A good case study should have the potential to:

• Provide new or unexpected insights into the subject
• Challenge or complicate existing assumptions and theories
• Propose practical courses of action to resolve a problem
• Open up new directions for future research

TipIf your research is more practical in nature and aims to simultaneously investigate an issue as you solve it, consider conducting action research instead.

Unlike quantitative or experimental research , a strong case study does not require a random or representative sample. In fact, case studies often deliberately focus on unusual, neglected, or outlying cases which may shed new light on the research problem.

Example of an outlying case studyIn the 1960s the town of Roseto, Pennsylvania was discovered to have extremely low rates of heart disease compared to the US average. It became an important case study for understanding previously neglected causes of heart disease.

However, you can also choose a more common or representative case to exemplify a particular category, experience or phenomenon.

Example of a representative case studyIn the 1920s, two sociologists used Muncie, Indiana as a case study of a typical American city that supposedly exemplified the changing culture of the US at the time.

While case studies focus more on concrete details than general theories, they should usually have some connection with theory in the field. This way the case study is not just an isolated description, but is integrated into existing knowledge about the topic. It might aim to:

• Exemplify a theory by showing how it explains the case under investigation
• Expand on a theory by uncovering new concepts and ideas that need to be incorporated
• Challenge a theory by exploring an outlier case that doesn’t fit with established assumptions

To ensure that your analysis of the case has a solid academic grounding, you should conduct a literature review of sources related to the topic and develop a theoretical framework . This means identifying key concepts and theories to guide your analysis and interpretation.

There are many different research methods you can use to collect data on your subject. Case studies tend to focus on qualitative data using methods such as interviews , observations , and analysis of primary and secondary sources (e.g., newspaper articles, photographs, official records). Sometimes a case study will also collect quantitative data.

Example of a mixed methods case studyFor a case study of a wind farm development in a rural area, you could collect quantitative data on employment rates and business revenue, collect qualitative data on local people’s perceptions and experiences, and analyze local and national media coverage of the development.

The aim is to gain as thorough an understanding as possible of the case and its context.

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In writing up the case study, you need to bring together all the relevant aspects to give as complete a picture as possible of the subject.

How you report your findings depends on the type of research you are doing. Some case studies are structured like a standard scientific paper or thesis , with separate sections or chapters for the methods , results and discussion .

Others are written in a more narrative style, aiming to explore the case from various angles and analyze its meanings and implications (for example, by using textual analysis or discourse analysis ).

In all cases, though, make sure to give contextual details about the case, connect it back to the literature and theory, and discuss how it fits into wider patterns or debates.

If you want to know more about statistics , methodology , or research bias , make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples.

• Normal distribution
• Degrees of freedom
• Null hypothesis
• Discourse analysis
• Control groups
• Mixed methods research
• Non-probability sampling
• Quantitative research
• Ecological validity

Research bias

• Rosenthal effect
• Implicit bias
• Cognitive bias
• Selection bias
• Negativity bias
• Status quo bias

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McCombes, S. (2023, November 20). What Is a Case Study? | Definition, Examples & Methods. Scribbr. Retrieved March 18, 2024, from https://www.scribbr.com/methodology/case-study/

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Types of Case Studies

At least five different types of case studies have been discussed in the geography and social science literature: intrinsic, collective, explanatory, descriptive, and exploratory. In each of these types, there may be single case or multiple case approaches used. An intrinsic case study is defined as research wherein the researcher has a (personal or professional) interest in the project. In this approach, the insider scholar may play the role of a relatively subjective observer (instead of working from a more objective outsider perspective). Collective work refers to the study of a group of interrelated case studies conducted by a single scholar or several researchers working collaboratively. Data from more than one site are often gathered, analyzed, and synthesized collaboratively by a team of researchers using a comparative method of analysis. Explanatory case studies are best used when doing causal investigations since they lend themselves to analysis and, at times, even make contributions to predictive models. Descriptive case studies require that an overarching descriptive or interpretive theory be developed before beginning the study. Finally, exploratory case studies are conducted to gather and analyze foundational data to be used for more expanded work and a set of larger questions to be pursued and carried out after these preliminary pilot data have been assessed.

In human geography , all five of these types of case study approaches have been used in teaching and research. None are mutually exclusive although the use of single case, exploratory, and then explanatory approaches is often the most reliable and valid. For example, a focused case study of Russian immigrants in one metropolitan area (as shown in Figure 1), began with a single case exploratory study and then moved into becoming an explanatory case study in later stages of the project as immigration theory ultimately was tested by a collaborative group of geographers. Key to understanding the application of the theory of heterolocalism in a North American metropolitan area, for example, was a followup study that spatially analyzed religious networks of the same group in the same study area (as shown in Figure 2). This example, and many others published in the discipline's flagship journals in recent years, attest to the usefulness and popularity of the case study approach in conducting geographic research.

• Case Study Approach
• Capital’s Consumption Spatiality
• Capital and Space: Capital’s Crisis-Spatiality
• Capital and Space: Capital’s ‘Normal’ Spatiality
• How Does Capital Work?: Mechanisms of Capital
• Capital and Space
• Business Service Geographies – Global Cities, Service Offshoring, and the Second Global Shift
• Business Services – the Body and Emotional Labor
• Explaining the Growth of Business Service Firms

Organizing Your Social Sciences Research Assignments

• Annotated Bibliography
• Analyzing a Scholarly Journal Article
• Group Presentations
• Dealing with Nervousness
• Using Visual Aids
• Grading Someone Else's Paper
• Types of Structured Group Activities
• Group Project Survival Skills
• Leading a Class Discussion
• Multiple Book Review Essay
• Reviewing Collected Works
• Writing a Case Analysis Paper
• Writing a Case Study
• About Informed Consent
• Writing Field Notes
• Writing a Policy Memo
• Writing a Reflective Paper
• Writing a Research Proposal
• Generative AI and Writing
• Acknowledgments

A case study research paper examines a person, place, event, condition, phenomenon, or other type of subject of analysis in order to extrapolate  key themes and results that help predict future trends, illuminate previously hidden issues that can be applied to practice, and/or provide a means for understanding an important research problem with greater clarity. A case study research paper usually examines a single subject of analysis, but case study papers can also be designed as a comparative investigation that shows relationships between two or more subjects. The methods used to study a case can rest within a quantitative, qualitative, or mixed-method investigative paradigm.

Case Studies. Writing@CSU. Colorado State University; Mills, Albert J. , Gabrielle Durepos, and Eiden Wiebe, editors. Encyclopedia of Case Study Research . Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, 2010 ; “What is a Case Study?” In Swanborn, Peter G. Case Study Research: What, Why and How? London: SAGE, 2010.

How to Approach Writing a Case Study Research Paper

General information about how to choose a topic to investigate can be found under the " Choosing a Research Problem " tab in the Organizing Your Social Sciences Research Paper writing guide. Review this page because it may help you identify a subject of analysis that can be investigated using a case study design.

However, identifying a case to investigate involves more than choosing the research problem . A case study encompasses a problem contextualized around the application of in-depth analysis, interpretation, and discussion, often resulting in specific recommendations for action or for improving existing conditions. As Seawright and Gerring note, practical considerations such as time and access to information can influence case selection, but these issues should not be the sole factors used in describing the methodological justification for identifying a particular case to study. Given this, selecting a case includes considering the following:

• The case represents an unusual or atypical example of a research problem that requires more in-depth analysis? Cases often represent a topic that rests on the fringes of prior investigations because the case may provide new ways of understanding the research problem. For example, if the research problem is to identify strategies to improve policies that support girl's access to secondary education in predominantly Muslim nations, you could consider using Azerbaijan as a case study rather than selecting a more obvious nation in the Middle East. Doing so may reveal important new insights into recommending how governments in other predominantly Muslim nations can formulate policies that support improved access to education for girls.
• The case provides important insight or illuminate a previously hidden problem? In-depth analysis of a case can be based on the hypothesis that the case study will reveal trends or issues that have not been exposed in prior research or will reveal new and important implications for practice. For example, anecdotal evidence may suggest drug use among homeless veterans is related to their patterns of travel throughout the day. Assuming prior studies have not looked at individual travel choices as a way to study access to illicit drug use, a case study that observes a homeless veteran could reveal how issues of personal mobility choices facilitate regular access to illicit drugs. Note that it is important to conduct a thorough literature review to ensure that your assumption about the need to reveal new insights or previously hidden problems is valid and evidence-based.
• The case challenges and offers a counter-point to prevailing assumptions? Over time, research on any given topic can fall into a trap of developing assumptions based on outdated studies that are still applied to new or changing conditions or the idea that something should simply be accepted as "common sense," even though the issue has not been thoroughly tested in current practice. A case study analysis may offer an opportunity to gather evidence that challenges prevailing assumptions about a research problem and provide a new set of recommendations applied to practice that have not been tested previously. For example, perhaps there has been a long practice among scholars to apply a particular theory in explaining the relationship between two subjects of analysis. Your case could challenge this assumption by applying an innovative theoretical framework [perhaps borrowed from another discipline] to explore whether this approach offers new ways of understanding the research problem. Taking a contrarian stance is one of the most important ways that new knowledge and understanding develops from existing literature.
• The case provides an opportunity to pursue action leading to the resolution of a problem? Another way to think about choosing a case to study is to consider how the results from investigating a particular case may result in findings that reveal ways in which to resolve an existing or emerging problem. For example, studying the case of an unforeseen incident, such as a fatal accident at a railroad crossing, can reveal hidden issues that could be applied to preventative measures that contribute to reducing the chance of accidents in the future. In this example, a case study investigating the accident could lead to a better understanding of where to strategically locate additional signals at other railroad crossings so as to better warn drivers of an approaching train, particularly when visibility is hindered by heavy rain, fog, or at night.
• The case offers a new direction in future research? A case study can be used as a tool for an exploratory investigation that highlights the need for further research about the problem. A case can be used when there are few studies that help predict an outcome or that establish a clear understanding about how best to proceed in addressing a problem. For example, after conducting a thorough literature review [very important!], you discover that little research exists showing the ways in which women contribute to promoting water conservation in rural communities of east central Africa. A case study of how women contribute to saving water in a rural village of Uganda can lay the foundation for understanding the need for more thorough research that documents how women in their roles as cooks and family caregivers think about water as a valuable resource within their community. This example of a case study could also point to the need for scholars to build new theoretical frameworks around the topic [e.g., applying feminist theories of work and family to the issue of water conservation].

Eisenhardt, Kathleen M. “Building Theories from Case Study Research.” Academy of Management Review 14 (October 1989): 532-550; Emmel, Nick. Sampling and Choosing Cases in Qualitative Research: A Realist Approach . Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, 2013; Gerring, John. “What Is a Case Study and What Is It Good for?” American Political Science Review 98 (May 2004): 341-354; Mills, Albert J. , Gabrielle Durepos, and Eiden Wiebe, editors. Encyclopedia of Case Study Research . Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, 2010; Seawright, Jason and John Gerring. "Case Selection Techniques in Case Study Research." Political Research Quarterly 61 (June 2008): 294-308.

Structure and Writing Style

The purpose of a paper in the social sciences designed around a case study is to thoroughly investigate a subject of analysis in order to reveal a new understanding about the research problem and, in so doing, contributing new knowledge to what is already known from previous studies. In applied social sciences disciplines [e.g., education, social work, public administration, etc.], case studies may also be used to reveal best practices, highlight key programs, or investigate interesting aspects of professional work.

In general, the structure of a case study research paper is not all that different from a standard college-level research paper. However, there are subtle differences you should be aware of. Here are the key elements to organizing and writing a case study research paper.

I.  Introduction

As with any research paper, your introduction should serve as a roadmap for your readers to ascertain the scope and purpose of your study . The introduction to a case study research paper, however, should not only describe the research problem and its significance, but you should also succinctly describe why the case is being used and how it relates to addressing the problem. The two elements should be linked. With this in mind, a good introduction answers these four questions:

• What is being studied? Describe the research problem and describe the subject of analysis [the case] you have chosen to address the problem. Explain how they are linked and what elements of the case will help to expand knowledge and understanding about the problem.
• Why is this topic important to investigate? Describe the significance of the research problem and state why a case study design and the subject of analysis that the paper is designed around is appropriate in addressing the problem.
• What did we know about this topic before I did this study? Provide background that helps lead the reader into the more in-depth literature review to follow. If applicable, summarize prior case study research applied to the research problem and why it fails to adequately address the problem. Describe why your case will be useful. If no prior case studies have been used to address the research problem, explain why you have selected this subject of analysis.
• How will this study advance new knowledge or new ways of understanding? Explain why your case study will be suitable in helping to expand knowledge and understanding about the research problem.

Each of these questions should be addressed in no more than a few paragraphs. Exceptions to this can be when you are addressing a complex research problem or subject of analysis that requires more in-depth background information.

II.  Literature Review

The literature review for a case study research paper is generally structured the same as it is for any college-level research paper. The difference, however, is that the literature review is focused on providing background information and  enabling historical interpretation of the subject of analysis in relation to the research problem the case is intended to address . This includes synthesizing studies that help to:

• Place relevant works in the context of their contribution to understanding the case study being investigated . This would involve summarizing studies that have used a similar subject of analysis to investigate the research problem. If there is literature using the same or a very similar case to study, you need to explain why duplicating past research is important [e.g., conditions have changed; prior studies were conducted long ago, etc.].
• Describe the relationship each work has to the others under consideration that informs the reader why this case is applicable . Your literature review should include a description of any works that support using the case to investigate the research problem and the underlying research questions.
• Identify new ways to interpret prior research using the case study . If applicable, review any research that has examined the research problem using a different research design. Explain how your use of a case study design may reveal new knowledge or a new perspective or that can redirect research in an important new direction.
• Resolve conflicts amongst seemingly contradictory previous studies . This refers to synthesizing any literature that points to unresolved issues of concern about the research problem and describing how the subject of analysis that forms the case study can help resolve these existing contradictions.
• Point the way in fulfilling a need for additional research . Your review should examine any literature that lays a foundation for understanding why your case study design and the subject of analysis around which you have designed your study may reveal a new way of approaching the research problem or offer a perspective that points to the need for additional research.
• Expose any gaps that exist in the literature that the case study could help to fill . Summarize any literature that not only shows how your subject of analysis contributes to understanding the research problem, but how your case contributes to a new way of understanding the problem that prior research has failed to do.
• Locate your own research within the context of existing literature [very important!] . Collectively, your literature review should always place your case study within the larger domain of prior research about the problem. The overarching purpose of reviewing pertinent literature in a case study paper is to demonstrate that you have thoroughly identified and synthesized prior studies in relation to explaining the relevance of the case in addressing the research problem.

III.  Method

In this section, you explain why you selected a particular case [i.e., subject of analysis] and the strategy you used to identify and ultimately decide that your case was appropriate in addressing the research problem. The way you describe the methods used varies depending on the type of subject of analysis that constitutes your case study.

If your subject of analysis is an incident or event . In the social and behavioral sciences, the event or incident that represents the case to be studied is usually bounded by time and place, with a clear beginning and end and with an identifiable location or position relative to its surroundings. The subject of analysis can be a rare or critical event or it can focus on a typical or regular event. The purpose of studying a rare event is to illuminate new ways of thinking about the broader research problem or to test a hypothesis. Critical incident case studies must describe the method by which you identified the event and explain the process by which you determined the validity of this case to inform broader perspectives about the research problem or to reveal new findings. However, the event does not have to be a rare or uniquely significant to support new thinking about the research problem or to challenge an existing hypothesis. For example, Walo, Bull, and Breen conducted a case study to identify and evaluate the direct and indirect economic benefits and costs of a local sports event in the City of Lismore, New South Wales, Australia. The purpose of their study was to provide new insights from measuring the impact of a typical local sports event that prior studies could not measure well because they focused on large "mega-events." Whether the event is rare or not, the methods section should include an explanation of the following characteristics of the event: a) when did it take place; b) what were the underlying circumstances leading to the event; and, c) what were the consequences of the event in relation to the research problem.

If your subject of analysis is a person. Explain why you selected this particular individual to be studied and describe what experiences they have had that provide an opportunity to advance new understandings about the research problem. Mention any background about this person which might help the reader understand the significance of their experiences that make them worthy of study. This includes describing the relationships this person has had with other people, institutions, and/or events that support using them as the subject for a case study research paper. It is particularly important to differentiate the person as the subject of analysis from others and to succinctly explain how the person relates to examining the research problem [e.g., why is one politician in a particular local election used to show an increase in voter turnout from any other candidate running in the election]. Note that these issues apply to a specific group of people used as a case study unit of analysis [e.g., a classroom of students].

If your subject of analysis is a place. In general, a case study that investigates a place suggests a subject of analysis that is unique or special in some way and that this uniqueness can be used to build new understanding or knowledge about the research problem. A case study of a place must not only describe its various attributes relevant to the research problem [e.g., physical, social, historical, cultural, economic, political], but you must state the method by which you determined that this place will illuminate new understandings about the research problem. It is also important to articulate why a particular place as the case for study is being used if similar places also exist [i.e., if you are studying patterns of homeless encampments of veterans in open spaces, explain why you are studying Echo Park in Los Angeles rather than Griffith Park?]. If applicable, describe what type of human activity involving this place makes it a good choice to study [e.g., prior research suggests Echo Park has more homeless veterans].

If your subject of analysis is a phenomenon. A phenomenon refers to a fact, occurrence, or circumstance that can be studied or observed but with the cause or explanation to be in question. In this sense, a phenomenon that forms your subject of analysis can encompass anything that can be observed or presumed to exist but is not fully understood. In the social and behavioral sciences, the case usually focuses on human interaction within a complex physical, social, economic, cultural, or political system. For example, the phenomenon could be the observation that many vehicles used by ISIS fighters are small trucks with English language advertisements on them. The research problem could be that ISIS fighters are difficult to combat because they are highly mobile. The research questions could be how and by what means are these vehicles used by ISIS being supplied to the militants and how might supply lines to these vehicles be cut off? How might knowing the suppliers of these trucks reveal larger networks of collaborators and financial support? A case study of a phenomenon most often encompasses an in-depth analysis of a cause and effect that is grounded in an interactive relationship between people and their environment in some way.

NOTE:   The choice of the case or set of cases to study cannot appear random. Evidence that supports the method by which you identified and chose your subject of analysis should clearly support investigation of the research problem and linked to key findings from your literature review. Be sure to cite any studies that helped you determine that the case you chose was appropriate for examining the problem.

IV.  Discussion

The main elements of your discussion section are generally the same as any research paper, but centered around interpreting and drawing conclusions about the key findings from your analysis of the case study. Note that a general social sciences research paper may contain a separate section to report findings. However, in a paper designed around a case study, it is common to combine a description of the results with the discussion about their implications. The objectives of your discussion section should include the following:

Reiterate the Research Problem/State the Major Findings Briefly reiterate the research problem you are investigating and explain why the subject of analysis around which you designed the case study were used. You should then describe the findings revealed from your study of the case using direct, declarative, and succinct proclamation of the study results. Highlight any findings that were unexpected or especially profound.

Explain the Meaning of the Findings and Why They are Important Systematically explain the meaning of your case study findings and why you believe they are important. Begin this part of the section by repeating what you consider to be your most important or surprising finding first, then systematically review each finding. Be sure to thoroughly extrapolate what your analysis of the case can tell the reader about situations or conditions beyond the actual case that was studied while, at the same time, being careful not to misconstrue or conflate a finding that undermines the external validity of your conclusions.

Relate the Findings to Similar Studies No study in the social sciences is so novel or possesses such a restricted focus that it has absolutely no relation to previously published research. The discussion section should relate your case study results to those found in other studies, particularly if questions raised from prior studies served as the motivation for choosing your subject of analysis. This is important because comparing and contrasting the findings of other studies helps support the overall importance of your results and it highlights how and in what ways your case study design and the subject of analysis differs from prior research about the topic.

Consider Alternative Explanations of the Findings Remember that the purpose of social science research is to discover and not to prove. When writing the discussion section, you should carefully consider all possible explanations revealed by the case study results, rather than just those that fit your hypothesis or prior assumptions and biases. Be alert to what the in-depth analysis of the case may reveal about the research problem, including offering a contrarian perspective to what scholars have stated in prior research if that is how the findings can be interpreted from your case.

Acknowledge the Study's Limitations You can state the study's limitations in the conclusion section of your paper but describing the limitations of your subject of analysis in the discussion section provides an opportunity to identify the limitations and explain why they are not significant. This part of the discussion section should also note any unanswered questions or issues your case study could not address. More detailed information about how to document any limitations to your research can be found here .

Suggest Areas for Further Research Although your case study may offer important insights about the research problem, there are likely additional questions related to the problem that remain unanswered or findings that unexpectedly revealed themselves as a result of your in-depth analysis of the case. Be sure that the recommendations for further research are linked to the research problem and that you explain why your recommendations are valid in other contexts and based on the original assumptions of your study.

V.  Conclusion

As with any research paper, you should summarize your conclusion in clear, simple language; emphasize how the findings from your case study differs from or supports prior research and why. Do not simply reiterate the discussion section. Provide a synthesis of key findings presented in the paper to show how these converge to address the research problem. If you haven't already done so in the discussion section, be sure to document the limitations of your case study and any need for further research.

The function of your paper's conclusion is to: 1) reiterate the main argument supported by the findings from your case study; 2) state clearly the context, background, and necessity of pursuing the research problem using a case study design in relation to an issue, controversy, or a gap found from reviewing the literature; and, 3) provide a place to persuasively and succinctly restate the significance of your research problem, given that the reader has now been presented with in-depth information about the topic.

Consider the following points to help ensure your conclusion is appropriate:

• If the argument or purpose of your paper is complex, you may need to summarize these points for your reader.
• If prior to your conclusion, you have not yet explained the significance of your findings or if you are proceeding inductively, use the conclusion of your paper to describe your main points and explain their significance.
• Move from a detailed to a general level of consideration of the case study's findings that returns the topic to the context provided by the introduction or within a new context that emerges from your case study findings.

Note that, depending on the discipline you are writing in or the preferences of your professor, the concluding paragraph may contain your final reflections on the evidence presented as it applies to practice or on the essay's central research problem. However, the nature of being introspective about the subject of analysis you have investigated will depend on whether you are explicitly asked to express your observations in this way.

Problems to Avoid

Overgeneralization One of the goals of a case study is to lay a foundation for understanding broader trends and issues applied to similar circumstances. However, be careful when drawing conclusions from your case study. They must be evidence-based and grounded in the results of the study; otherwise, it is merely speculation. Looking at a prior example, it would be incorrect to state that a factor in improving girls access to education in Azerbaijan and the policy implications this may have for improving access in other Muslim nations is due to girls access to social media if there is no documentary evidence from your case study to indicate this. There may be anecdotal evidence that retention rates were better for girls who were engaged with social media, but this observation would only point to the need for further research and would not be a definitive finding if this was not a part of your original research agenda.

Failure to Document Limitations No case is going to reveal all that needs to be understood about a research problem. Therefore, just as you have to clearly state the limitations of a general research study , you must describe the specific limitations inherent in the subject of analysis. For example, the case of studying how women conceptualize the need for water conservation in a village in Uganda could have limited application in other cultural contexts or in areas where fresh water from rivers or lakes is plentiful and, therefore, conservation is understood more in terms of managing access rather than preserving access to a scarce resource.

Failure to Extrapolate All Possible Implications Just as you don't want to over-generalize from your case study findings, you also have to be thorough in the consideration of all possible outcomes or recommendations derived from your findings. If you do not, your reader may question the validity of your analysis, particularly if you failed to document an obvious outcome from your case study research. For example, in the case of studying the accident at the railroad crossing to evaluate where and what types of warning signals should be located, you failed to take into consideration speed limit signage as well as warning signals. When designing your case study, be sure you have thoroughly addressed all aspects of the problem and do not leave gaps in your analysis that leave the reader questioning the results.

Case Studies. Writing@CSU. Colorado State University; Gerring, John. Case Study Research: Principles and Practices . New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007; Merriam, Sharan B. Qualitative Research and Case Study Applications in Education . Rev. ed. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 1998; Miller, Lisa L. “The Use of Case Studies in Law and Social Science Research.” Annual Review of Law and Social Science 14 (2018): TBD; Mills, Albert J., Gabrielle Durepos, and Eiden Wiebe, editors. Encyclopedia of Case Study Research . Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, 2010; Putney, LeAnn Grogan. "Case Study." In Encyclopedia of Research Design , Neil J. Salkind, editor. (Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, 2010), pp. 116-120; Simons, Helen. Case Study Research in Practice . London: SAGE Publications, 2009;  Kratochwill,  Thomas R. and Joel R. Levin, editors. Single-Case Research Design and Analysis: New Development for Psychology and Education .  Hilldsale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1992; Swanborn, Peter G. Case Study Research: What, Why and How? London : SAGE, 2010; Yin, Robert K. Case Study Research: Design and Methods . 6th edition. Los Angeles, CA, SAGE Publications, 2014; Walo, Maree, Adrian Bull, and Helen Breen. “Achieving Economic Benefits at Local Events: A Case Study of a Local Sports Event.” Festival Management and Event Tourism 4 (1996): 95-106.

Writing Tip

At Least Five Misconceptions about Case Study Research

Social science case studies are often perceived as limited in their ability to create new knowledge because they are not randomly selected and findings cannot be generalized to larger populations. Flyvbjerg examines five misunderstandings about case study research and systematically "corrects" each one. To quote, these are:

Misunderstanding 1 :  General, theoretical [context-independent] knowledge is more valuable than concrete, practical [context-dependent] knowledge. Misunderstanding 2 :  One cannot generalize on the basis of an individual case; therefore, the case study cannot contribute to scientific development. Misunderstanding 3 :  The case study is most useful for generating hypotheses; that is, in the first stage of a total research process, whereas other methods are more suitable for hypotheses testing and theory building. Misunderstanding 4 :  The case study contains a bias toward verification, that is, a tendency to confirm the researcher’s preconceived notions. Misunderstanding 5 :  It is often difficult to summarize and develop general propositions and theories on the basis of specific case studies [p. 221].

While writing your paper, think introspectively about how you addressed these misconceptions because to do so can help you strengthen the validity and reliability of your research by clarifying issues of case selection, the testing and challenging of existing assumptions, the interpretation of key findings, and the summation of case outcomes. Think of a case study research paper as a complete, in-depth narrative about the specific properties and key characteristics of your subject of analysis applied to the research problem.

Flyvbjerg, Bent. “Five Misunderstandings About Case-Study Research.” Qualitative Inquiry 12 (April 2006): 219-245.

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22 Case Study Research: In-Depth Understanding in Context

Helen Simons, School of Education, University of Southampton

• Published: 01 July 2014
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This chapter explores case study as a major approach to research and evaluation. After first noting various contexts in which case studies are commonly used, the chapter focuses on case study research directly Strengths and potential problematic issues are outlined and then key phases of the process. The chapter emphasizes how important it is to design the case, to collect and interpret data in ways that highlight the qualitative, to have an ethical practice that values multiple perspectives and political interests, and to report creatively to facilitate use in policy making and practice. Finally, it explores how to generalize from the single case. Concluding questions center on the need to think more imaginatively about design and the range of methods and forms of reporting requiredto persuade audiences to value qualitative ways of knowing in case study research.

Introduction

This chapter explores case study as a major approach to research and evaluation using primarily qualitative methods, as well as documentary sources, contemporaneous or historical. However, this is not the only way in which case study can be conceived. No one has a monopoly on the term. While sharing a focus on the singular in a particular context, case study has a wide variety of uses, not all associated with research. A case study, in common parlance, documents a particular situation or event in detail in a specific sociopolitical context. The particular can be a person, a classroom, an institution, a program, or a policy. Below I identify different ways in which case study is used before focusing on qualitative case study research in particular. However, first I wish to indicate how I came to advocate and practice this form of research. Origins, context, and opportunity often shape the research processes we endorse. It is helpful for the reader, I think, to know how I came to the perspective I hold.

The Beginnings

I first came to appreciate and enjoy the virtues of case study research when I entered the field of curriculum evaluation and research in the 1970s. The dominant research paradigm for educational research at that time was experimental or quasi- experimental, cost-benefit, or systems analysis, and the dominant curriculum model was aims and objectives ( House, 1993 ). The field was dominated, in effect, by a psychometric view of research in which quantitative methods were preeminent. But the innovative projects we were asked to evaluate (predominantly, but not exclusively, in the humanities) were not amenable to such methodologies. The projects were challenging to the status quo of institutions, involved people interpreting the policy and programs, were implemented differently in different contexts and regions, and had many unexpected effects.

We had no choice but to seek other ways to evaluate these complex programs, and case study was the methodology we found ourselves exploring, in order to understand how the projects were being implemented, why they had positive effects in some regions of the country and not others, and what the outcomes meant in different sociopolitical and cultural contexts. What better way to do this than to talk with people to see how they interpreted the “new” curriculum; to watch how teachers and students put it into practice; to document transactions, outcomes, and unexpected consequences; and to interpret all in the specific context of the case ( Simons, 1971 , 1987 , pp. 55–89). From this point on and in further studies, case study in educational research and evaluation came to be a major methodology for understanding complex educational and social programs. It also extended to other practice professions, such as nursing, health, and social care ( Zucker, 2001 ; Greenhalgh & Worrall, 1997 ; Shaw & Gould, 2001 ). For further details of the evolution of the case study approach and qualitative methodologies in evaluation, see House, 1993 , pp. 2–3; Greene, 2000 ; Simons, 2009 , pp. 14–18; Simons & McCormack, 2007 , pp. 292–311).

This was not exactly the beginning of case study, of course. It has a long history in many disciplines ( Simons, 1980; Ragin, 1992; Gomm, Hammersley, & Foster, 2004 ; Platt, 2007 ), many aspects of which form part of case study practice to this day. But its evolution in the context just described was a major move in the contemporary evolution of the logic of evaluative inquiry ( House, 1980 ). It also coincided with movement toward the qualitative in other disciplines, such as sociology and psychology. This was all part of what Denzin & Lincoln (1994) termed “a quiet methodological revolution” (p. ix) in qualitative inquiry that had been evolving over the course of forty years.

There is a further reason why I continue to advocate and practice case study research and evaluation to this day and that is my personal predilection for trying to understand and represent complexity, for puzzling through the ambiguities that exist in many contexts and programs and for presenting and negotiating different values and interests in fair and just ways.

Put more simply, I like interacting with people, listening to their stories, trials and tribulations—giving them a voice in understanding the contexts and projects with which they are involved, and finding ways to share these with a range of audiences. In other words, the move toward case study methodology described here suited my preference for how I learn.

Concepts and Purposes of Case Study

Before exploring case study as it has come to be established in educational research and evaluation over the past forty years, I wish to acknowledge other uses of case study. More often than not, these relate to purpose, and appropriately so in their different contexts, but many do not have a research intention. For a study to count as research, it would need to be a systematic investigation generating evidence that leads to “new” knowledge that is made public and open to scrutiny. There are many ways to conduct research stemming from different traditions and disciplines, but they all, in different ways, involve these characteristics.

Everyday Usage: Stories We Tell

The most common of these uses of case study is the everyday reference to a person, an anecdote or story illustrative of a particular incident, event, or experience of that person. It is often a short, reported account commonly seen in journalism but also in books exploring a phenomenon, such as recovery from serious accidents or tragedies, where the author chooses to illustrate the story or argument with a “lived” example. This is sometimes written by the author and sometimes by the person whose tale it is. “Let me share with you a story,” is a phrase frequently heard

The spirit behind this common usage and its power to connect can be seen in a report by Tim Adams of the London Olympics opening ceremony’s dramatization by Danny Boyle.

It was the point when we suddenly collectively wised up to the idea that what we are about to receive over the next two weeks was not only about “legacy collateral” and “targeted deliverables,” not about G4S failings and traffic lanes and branding opportunities, but about the second-by-second possibilities of human endeavour and spirit and communality, enacted in multiple places and all at the same time. Stories in other words. ( Adams, 2012 )

This was a collective story, of course, not an individual one, but it does convey some of the major characteristics of case study—that richness of detail, time, place, multiple happenings and experiences—that are also manifest in case study research, although carefully evidenced in the latter instance. We can see from this common usage how people have come to associate case study with story. I return to this thread in the reporting section.

Professions Individual Cases

In professional settings, in health and social care, case studies, often called case histories , are used to accurately record a person’s health or social care history and his or her current symptoms, experience, and treatment. These case histories include facts but also judgments and observations about the person’s reaction to situations or medication. Usually these are confidential. Not dissimilar is the detailed documentation of a case in law, often termed a case precedent when referred to in a court case to support an argument being made. However in law there is a difference in that such case precedents are publicly documented.

Case Studies in Teaching

Exemplars of practice.

In education, but also in health and social care training contexts, case studies have long been used as exemplars of practice. These are brief descriptions with some detail of a person or project’s experience in an area of practice. Though frequently reported accounts, they are based on a person’s experience and sometimes on previous research.

Case scenarios

Management studies are a further context in which case studies are often used. Here, the case is more like a scenario outlining a particular problem situation for the management student to resolve. These scenarios may be based on research but frequently are hypothetical situations used to raise issues for discussion and resolution. What distinguishes these case scenarios and the case exemplars in education from case study research is the intention to use them for teaching purposes.

Country Case Studies

Then there are case studies of programs, projects, and even countries, as in international development, where a whole-country study might be termed a case study or, in the context of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), where an exploration is conducted of the state of the art of a subject, such as education or environmental science in one or several countries. This may be a contemporaneous study and/or what transpired in a program over a period of time. Such studies often do have a research base but frequently are reported accounts that do not detail the design, methodology, and analysis of the case, as a research case study would do, or report in ways that give readers a vicarious experience of what it was like to be there. Such case studies tend to be more knowledge and information-focused than experiential.

Case Study as History

Closer to a research context is case study as history—what transpired at a certain time in a certain place. This is likely to be supported by documentary evidence but not primary data gathering unless it is an oral history. In education, in the late 1970s, Stenhouse (1978) experimented with a case study archive. Using contemporaneous data gathering, primarily through interviewing, he envisaged this database, which he termed a “case record,” forming an archive from which different individuals,, at some later date, could write a “case study.” This approach uses case study as a documentary source to begin to generate a history of education, as the subtitle of Stenhouse’s 1978 paper indicates “Towards a contemporary history of education.”

Case Study Research

From here on, my focus is on case study research per se, adopting for this purpose the following definition:

Case study is an in-depth exploration from multiple perspectives of the complexity and uniqueness of a particular project, policy, institution or system in a “real-life” context. It is research based, inclusive of different methods and is evidence-led. ( Simons, 2009 , p. 21).

For further related definitions of case study, see Stake (1995) , Merriam (1998), and Chadderton & Torrance (2011) . And for definitions from a slightly different perspective, see Yin (2004) and Thomas (2011a) .

Not Defined by Method or Perspective

The inclusion of different methods in the definition quoted above definition signals that case study research is not defined by methodology or method. What defines case study is its singularity and the concept and boundary of the case. It is theoretically possible to conduct a case study using primarily quantitative data if this is the best way of providing evidence to inform the issues the case is exploring. It is equally possible to conduct case study that is mainly qualitative, to engage people with the experience of the case or to provide a rich portrayal of an event, project, or program.

Or one can design the case using mixed methods. This increases the options for learning from different ways of knowing and is sometimes preferred by stakeholders who believe it provides a firmer basis for informing policy. This is not necessarily the case but is beyond the scope of this chapter to explore. For further discussion of the complexities of mixing methods and the virtue of using qualitative methods and case study in a mixed method design, see Greene (2007) .

Case study research may also be conducted from different standpoints—realist, interpretivist, or constructivist, for example. My perspective falls within a constructivist, interpretivist framework. What interests me is how I and those in the case perceive and interpret what we find and how we construct or co-construct understandings of the case. This not only suits my predilection for how I see the world, but also my preferred phenomenological approach to interviewing and curiosity about people and how they act in social and professional life.

Qualitative Case Study Research

Qualitative case study research shares many characteristics with other forms of qualitative research, such as narrative, oral history, life history, ethnography, in-depth interview, and observational studies that utilize qualitative methods. However, its focus, purpose, and origins, in educational research at least, are a little different.

The focus is clearly the study of the singular. The purpose is to portray an in-depth view of the quality and complexity of social/educational programs or policies as they are implemented in specific sociopolitical contexts. What makes it qualitative is its emphasis on subjective ways of knowing, particularly the experiential, practical, and presentational rather than the propositional ( Heron, 1992 , 1999 ) to comprehend and communicate what transpired in the case.

Characteristic Features and Advantages

Case study research is not method dependent, as noted earlier, nor is it constrained by resources or time. Although it can be conducted over several years, which provides an opportunity to explore the process of change and explain how and why things happened, it can equally be carried out contemporaneously in a few days, weeks, or months. This flexibility is extremely useful in many contexts, particularly when a change in policy or unforeseen issues in the field require modifying the design.

Flexibility extends to reporting. The case can be written up in different lengths and forms to meet different audience needs and to maximize use (see the section on Reporting). Using the natural language of participants and familiar methods (like interview, observation, oral history) also enables participants to engage in the research process, thereby contributing significantly to the generation of knowledge of the case. As I have indicated elsewhere ( Simons, 2009 ), “This is both a political and epistemological point. It signals a potential shift in the power base of who controls knowledge and recognizes the importance of co-constructing perceived reality through the relationships and joint understandings we create in the field” (p. 23).

Possible Disadvantages

If one is an advocate, identifying advantages of a research approach is easier than pointing out its disadvantages, something detractors are quite keen to do anyway! But no approach is perfect, and here are some of the issues that often trouble people about case study research. The “sample of one” is an obvious issue that worries those convinced that only large samples can constitute valid research and especially if this is to inform policy. Understanding complexity in depth may not be a sufficient counterargument, and I suspect there is little point in trying to persuade otherwise For frequently, this perception is one of epistemological and methodological, if not ideological, preference.

However, there are some genuine concerns that many case researchers face: the difficulty of processing a mass of data; of “telling the truth” in contexts where people may be identifiable; personal involvement, when the researcher is the main instrument of data gathering; and writing reports that are data-based, yet readable in style and length. But one issue that concerns advocates and nonadvocates alike is how inferences are drawn from the single case.

Answers to some of these issues are covered in the sections that follow. Whether they convince may again be a question of preference. However, it is worth noting here that I do not think we should seek to justify these concerns in terms identified by other methodologies. Many of them are intrinsic to the nature and strength of qualitative case study research.

Subjectivity, for instance, both of participants and researcher is inevitable, as it is in many other qualitative methodologies. This is often the basis on which we act. Rather than see this as bias or something to counter, it is an intelligence that is essential to understanding and interpreting the experience of participants and stakeholders. Such subjectivity needs to be disciplined, of course, through procedures that examine both the validity of individuals’ representations of “their truth”, and demonstrate how the researcher took a reflexive approach to monitoring how his or her own values and predilections may have unduly influenced the data.

Types of Case Study

There are numerous types of case study, too many to categorize, I think, as there are overlaps between them. However, attempts have been made to do this and, for those who value typologies, I refer them to Bassey (1999) and, for a more extended typology, to Thomas (2011b) . A slightly different approach is taken by Gomm, Hammersley, and Foster (2004) in annotating the different emphases in major texts on case study. What I prefer to do here is to highlight a few familiar types to focus the discussion that follows on the practice of case study research.

Stake (1995) offers a threefold distinction that is helpful when it comes to practice, he says, because it influences the methods we choose to gather data (p. 4). He distinguishes between an intrinsic case study , one that is studied to learn about the particular case itself and an instrumental case study , in which we choose a case to gain insight into a particular issue (i.e., the case is instrumental to understanding something else; p. 3). The collective case study is what its name suggests: an extension of the instrumental to several cases.

Theory-led or theory-generated case study is similarly self-explanatory, the first starting from a specific theory that is tested through the case; the second constructing a theory through interpretation of data generated in the case. In other words, one ends rather than begins with a theory. In qualitative case study research, this is the more familiar route. The theory of the case becomes the argument or story you will tell.

Evaluation case study requires a slightly longer description as this is my context of practice, one which has influenced the way I conduct case study and what I choose to emphasize in this chapter. An evaluation case study has three essential features: to determine the value of the case, to include and balance different interests and values, and to report findings to a range of stakeholders in ways that they can use. The reasons for this may be found in the interlude that follows, which offers a brief characterization of the social and ethical practice of evaluation and why qualitative methods are so important in this practice.

Interlude: Social and Ethical Practice of Evaluation

Evaluation is a social practice that documents, portrays, and seeks to understand the value of a particular project, program, or policy. This can be determined by different evaluation methodologies, of course. But the value of qualitative case study is that it is possible to discern this value without decontextualizing the data. While the focus of the case is usually a project, program, policy, or some unit within, studies of key individuals, what I term case profiles , may be embedded within the overall case. In some instances, these profiles, or even shorter cameos of individuals, may be quite prominent. For it is through the perceptions, interpretations, and interactions of people that we learn how policies and programs are enacted ( Kushner, 2000 , p. 12). The program is still the main focus of analysis, but, in exploring how individuals play out their different roles in the program, we get closer to the actual experience and meaning of the program in practice.

Case study evaluation is often commissioned from an external source (government department or other agency) keen to know the worth of publicly funded programs and policies to inform future decision making. It needs to be responsive to issues or questions identified by stakeholders, who often have different values and interests in the expected outcomes and appreciate different perspectives of the program in action. The context also is often highly politicized, and interests can conflict. The task of the evaluator in such situations becomes one of including and balancing all interests and values in the program fairly and justly.

This is an inherently political process and requires an ethical practice that offers participants some protection over the personal data they give as part of the research and agreed audiences access to the findings, presented in ways they can understand. Negotiating what information becomes public can be quite difficult in singular settings where people are identifiable and intricate or problematic transactions have been documented. The consequences that ensue from making knowledge public that hitherto was private may be considerable for those in the case. It may also be difficult to portray some of the contextual detail that would enhance understanding for readers.

The ethical stance that underpins the case study research and evaluation I conduct stems from a theory of ethics that emphasizes the centrality of relationships in the specific context and the consequences for individuals, while remaining aware of the research imperative to publicly report. It is essentially an independent democratic process based on the concepts of fairness and justice, in which confidentiality, negotiation, and accessibility are key principles ( MacDonald, 1976 ; Simons, 2009 , pp. 96–111; and Simons 2010 ). The principles are translated into specific procedures to guide the collection, validation, and dissemination of data in the field. These include:

engaging participants and stakeholders in identifying issues to explore and sometimes also in interpreting the data;

documenting how different people interpret and value the program;

negotiating what data becomes public respecting both the individual’s “right to privacy” and the public’s “right to know”;

offering participants opportunities to check how their data are used in the context of reporting;

reporting in language and forms accessible to a wide range of audiences;

disseminating to audiences within and beyond the case.

For further discussion of the ethics of democratic case study evaluation and examples of their use in practice, see Simons (2000 , 2006 , 2009 , chapter 6, 2010 ).

Designing Case Study Research

Design issues in case study sometimes take second place to those of data gathering, the more exciting task perhaps in starting research. However, it is critical to consider the design at the outset, even if changes are required in practice due to the reality of what is encountered in the field. In this sense, the design of case study is emergent, rather than preordinate, shaped and reshaped as understanding of the significance of foreshadowed issues emerges and more are discovered.

Before entering the field, there are a myriad of planning issues to think about related to stakeholders, participants, and audiences. These include whose values matter, whether to engage them in data gathering and interpretation, the style of reporting appropriate for each, and the ethical guidelines that will underpin data collection and reporting. However, here I emphasize only three: the broad focus of the study, what the case is a case of, and framing questions/issues. These are steps often ignored in an enthusiasm to gather data, resulting in a case study that claims to be research but lacks the basic principles required for generation of valid, public knowledge.

Conceptualize the Topic

First, it is important that the topic of the research is conceptualized in a way that it can be researched (i.e., it is not too wide). This seems an obvious point to make, but failure to think through precisely what it is about your research topic you wish to investigate will have a knock-on effect on the framing of the case, data gathering, and interpretation and may lead, in some instances, to not gathering or analyzing data that actually informs the topic. Further conceptualization or reconceptualization may be necessary as the study proceeds, but it is critical to have a clear focus at the outset.

What Constitutes the Case

Second, I think it is important to decide what would constitute the case (i.e., what it is a case of) and where the boundaries of this lie. This often proves more difficult than first appears. And sometimes, partly because of the semifluid nature of the way the case evolves, it is only possible to finally establish what the case is a case of at the end. Nevertheless, it is useful to identify what the case and its boundaries are at the outset to help focus data collection while maintaining an awareness that these may shift. This is emergent design in action.

In deciding the boundary of the case, there are several factors to bear in mind. Is it bounded by an institution or a unit within an institution, by people within an institution, by region, or by project, program or policy,? If we take a school as an example, the case could be comprised of the principal, teachers, and students, or the boundary could be extended to the cleaners, the caretaker, the receptionist, people who often know a great deal about the subnorms and culture of the institution.

If the case is a policy or particular parameter of a policy, the considerations may be slightly different. People will still be paramount—those who generated the policy and those who implemented it—but there is likely also to be a political culture surrounding the policy that had an influence on the way the policy evolved. Would this be part of the case?

Whatever boundary is chosen, this may change in the course of conducting the study when issues arise that can only be understood by going to another level. What transpires in a classroom, for example, if this is the case, is often partly dependent on the support of the school leadership and culture of the institution and this, in turn, to some extent is dependent on what resources are allocated from the local education administration. Much like a series of Russian dolls, one context inside the other.

Unit of analysis

Thinking about what would constitute the unit of analysis— a classroom, an institution, a program, a region—may help in setting the boundaries of the case, and it will certainly help when it comes to analysis. But this is a slightly different issue from deciding what the case is a case of. Taking a health example, the case may be palliative care support, but the unit of analysis the palliative care ward or wards. If you took the palliative care ward as the unit of analysis this would be as much about how palliative care was exercised in this or that ward than issues about palliative care support in general. In other words, you would need to have specific information and context about how this ward was structured and managed to understand how palliative care was conducted in this particular ward. Here, as in the school example above, you would need to consider which of the many people who populate the ward form part of the case—nurses, interns, or doctors only, or does it extend to patients, cleaners, nurse aides, and medical students?

Framing Questions and Issues

The third most important consideration is how to frame the study, and you are likely to do this once you have selected the site or sites for study. There are at least four approaches. You could start with precise questions, foreshadowed issues ( Smith & Pohland, 1974 ), theories, or a program logic. To some extent, your choice will be dictated by the type of case you have chosen, but also by your personal preference for how to conduct it—in either a structured or open way.

Initial questions give structure; foreshadowed issues more freedom to explore. In qualitative case study, foreshadowed issues are more common, allowing scope for issues to change as the study evolves, guided by participants’ perspectives and events in the field. With this perspective, it is more likely that you will generate a theory of the case toward the end, through your interpretation and analysis.

If you are conducting an instrumental case study, staying close to the questions or foreshadowed issues is necessary to be sure you gain data that will illuminate the central focus of the study. This is critical if you are exploring issues across several cases, although it is possible to do a cross-case analysis from cases that have each followed a different route to discovering significant issues.

Opting to start with a theoretical framework provides a basis for formulating questions and issues, but it can also constrain the study to only those questions/issues that fit the framework. The same is true with using program logic to frame the case. This is an approach frequently adopted in evaluation case study where the evaluator, individually or with stakeholders, examines how the aims and objectives of the program relate to the activities designed to promote it and the outcomes and impacts expected. It provides direction, although it can lead to simply confirming what was anticipated, rather than documenting what transpired in the case.

Whichever approach you choose to frame the case, it is useful to think about the rationale or theory for each question and what methods would best enable you to gain an understanding of them. This will not only start a reflexive process of examining your choices—an important aspect of the process of data gathering and interpretation—it will also aid analysis and interpretation further down the track.

Methodology and Methods

Qualitative case study research, as already noted, appeals to subjective ways of knowing and to a primarily qualitative methodology, that captures experiential understanding ( Stake, 2010 , pp. 56–70). It follows that the main methods of data gathering to access this way of knowing will be qualitative. Interviewing, observation, and document analysis are the primary three, often supported by critical incidents, focus groups, cameos, vignettes, diaries/journals, and photographs. Before gathering any primary data, however, it is useful to search relevant existing sources (written or visual) to learn about the antecedents and context of a project, program, or policy as a backdrop to the case. This can sharpen framing questions, avoid unnecessary data gathering, and shorten the time needed in the field.

Given that there are excellent texts on qualitative methods (see, for example, Denzin & Lincoln, 1994 ; Seale, 1999 ; Silverman, 2000 , 2004 ), I will not discuss all potential relevant methods here, but simply focus on the qualities of the primary methods that are particularly appropriate for case study research.

Primary Qualitative Data Gathering Methods

Interviewing.

The most effective style of interviewing in qualitative case study research to gain in-depth data, document multiple perspectives and experiences and explore contested issues is the unstructured interview, active listening and open questioning are paramount, whatever prequestions or foreshadowed issues have been identified. This can include photographs—a useful starting point with certain cultural groups and the less articulate, to encourage them to tell their story through connecting or identifying with something in the image.

The flexibility of unstructured interviewing has three further advantages for understanding participants’ experiences. First, through questioning, probing, listening, and, above all, paying attention to the silences and what they mean, you can get closer to the meaning of participants’ experiences. It is not always what they say.

Second, unstructured interviewing is useful for engaging participants in the process of research. Instead of starting with questions and issues, invite participants to tell their stories or reflect on specific issues, to conduct their own self-evaluative interview, in fact. Not only will they contribute their particular perspective to the case, they will also learn about themselves, thereby making the process of research educative for them as well as for the audiences of the research.

Third, the open-endedness of this style of interviewing has the potential for creating a dialogue between participants and the researcher and between the researcher and the public, if enough of the dialogue is retained in the publication ( Bellah, Madsen, Sullivan, Swidler, & Tipton, 1985 ).

Observations

Observations in case study research are likely to be close-up descriptions of events, activities, and incidents that detail what happens in a particular context. They will record time, place, specific incidents, transactions, and dialogue, and note characteristics of the setting and of people in it without preconceived categories or judgment. No description is devoid of some judgment in selection, of course, but, on the whole, the intent is to describe the scene or event “as it is,” providing a rich, textured description to give readers a sense of what it was like to be there or provide a basis for later interpretation.

Take the following excerpt from a study of the West Bromwich Operatic Society. It is the first night of a new production, The Producers , by this amateur operatic society. This brief excerpt is from a much longer observation of the overture to the first evening’s performance, detailing exactly what the production is, where it is, and why there is such a tremendous sense of atmosphere and expectation surrounding the event. Space prevents including the whole observation, but I hope you can get a glimmer of the passion and excitement that precedes the performance:

Birmingham, late November, 2011, early evening.... Bars and restaurants spruce up for the evening’s trade. There is a chill in the air but the party season is just starting....

A few hundred yards away, past streaming traffic on Suffolk Street, Queensway, an audience is gathering at the New Alexandra Theatre. The foyer windows shine in the orange sodium night. Above each one is the rubric: WORLD CLASS THEATRE.

Inside the preparatory rituals are being observed; sweets chosen, interval drinks ordered and programmes bought. People swap news and titbits about the production.... The bubble of anticipation grows as the 5-minute warning sounds. People make their way to the auditorium. There have been so many nights like this in the past 110 years since a man named William Coutts invested £10,000 to build this palace of dreams.... So many fantasies have been played under this arch: melodramas and pantomimes, musicals and variety.... So many audiences, settling down in their tip-up seats, wanting to be transported away from work, from ordinariness and private troubles.... The dimming lights act like a mother’s hush. You could touch the silence. Boinnng! A spongy thump on a bass drum, and the horns pipe up that catchy, irrepressible, tasteless tune and already you’re singing under your breath, ‘Springtime for Hitler and Germany....’ The orchestra is out of sight in the pit. There’s just the velvet curtain to watch as your fingers tap along. What’s waiting behind? Then it starts it to move. Opening night.... It’s opening night! ( Matarasso, 2012 , pp. 1–2)

For another and different example—a narrative observation of an everyday but unique incident that details date, time, place, and experience—see Simons (2009 , p. 60).

Such naturalistic observations are also useful in contexts where we cannot understand what is going on through interviewing alone—in cultures with which we are less familiar or where key actors may not share our language or have difficulty expressing it. Careful description in these situations can help identify key issues, discover the norms and values that exist in the culture, and, if sufficiently detailed, allow others to cross corroborate what significance we draw from these observations. This last point is very important to avoid the danger in observation of ascribing motivations to people and meanings to transactions.

Finally, naturalistic observations are very important in highly politicized environments, often the case in commissioned evaluation case study, where individuals in interview may try to elude the “truth” or press on you that their view is the “right” view of the situation. In these contexts, naturalistic observations not only enable you to document interactions as you perceive them, but they also provide a cross-check on the veracity of information obtained in interviews.

Document analysis

Analysis of documents, as already intimated, is useful for establishing what historical antecedents might exist to provide a springboard for contemporaneous data gathering. In most cases, existing documents are also extremely pertinent for understanding the policy context.

In a national policy case study I conducted on a major curriculum change, the importance of preexisting documentation was brought home to me sharply when certain documentation initially proved elusive to obtain. It was difficult to believe that it did not exist, as the evolution of the innovation involved several parties who had not worked together before. There was bound, I thought, to be minuted meetings sharing progress and documentation of the “new” curriculum. In the absence of some crucial documents, I began to piece together the story through interviewing. Only there were gaps, and certain issues did not make sense.

It was only when I presented two versions of what I discerned had transpired in the development of this initiative in an interim report eighteen months into the study that things started to change. Subsequent to the meeting at which the report was presented, the “missing” documents started to appear. Suddenly found. What lay behind the “missing documents,” something I suspected from what certain individuals did and did not say in interview, was a major difference of view about how the innovation evolved, who was key in the process, and whose voice was more important in the context. Political differences, in other words, that some stakeholders were trying to keep from me. The emergence of the documents enabled me to finally produce an accurate and fair account.

This is an example of the importance of having access to all relevant documents relating to a program or policy in order to study it fairly. The other major way in which document analysis is useful in case study is for understanding the values, explicit and hidden, in policy and program documents and in the organization where the program or policy is implemented. Not to be ignored as documents are photographs, and these, too, can form the basis of a cultural and value analysis of an organization ( Prosser, 2000 ).

Creative artistic approaches

Increasingly, some case study researchers are employing creative approaches associated with the arts as a means of data gathering and analysis. Artistic approaches have often been used in representing findings, but less frequently in data gathering and interpretation ( Simons & McCormack, 2007 ). A major exception is the work of Richardson (1994) , who sees the very process of writing as an interpretative act, and of Cancienne and Snowber (2003) , who argue for movement as method.

The most familiar of these creative and artistic forms are written—narratives and short stories ( Clandinin & Connelly, 2000 ; Richardson, 1994 ; Sparkes, 2002 ), poems or poetic form ( Butler-Kisber, 2010 ; Duke, 2007 ; Richardson, 1997 ; Sparkes & Douglas, 2007 ), cameos of people, or vignettes of situations. These can be written by participants or by the researcher or developed in partnership. They can also be shared with participants to further interpret the data. But photographs also have a long history in qualitative research for presenting and constructing understanding ( Butler-Kisber, 2010 ; Collier, 1967 ; Prosser, 2000 ; Rugang, 2006 ; Walker, 1993 ).

Less common are other visual forms of gathering data, such as “draw and write” ( Sewell, 2011 ), artefacts, drawings, sketches, paintings, and collages, although all forms are now on the increase. For examples of the use of collage in data gathering, see Duke (2007) and Butler-Kisber (2010) , and for charcoal drawing, Elliott (2008) .

In qualitative inquiry broadly, these creative approaches are now quite common. And in the context of arts and health in particular (see, for example, Frank, 1997 ; Liamputtong & Rumbold, 2008 ; Spouse, 2000 ), we can see how artistic approaches illuminate in-depth understanding. However, in case study research to date, I think narrative forms have tended to be most prominent.

Finally, for capturing the quality and essence of peoples’ experience, nothing could be more revealing than a recording of their voices. Video diaries—self-evaluative portrayals by individuals of their perspectives, feelings, or experience of an event or situation—are a most potent way both of gaining understanding and communicating that to others. It is rather more difficult to gain access for observational videos, but they are useful for documentation and have the potential to engage participants and stakeholders in the interpretation.

Getting It All Together

Case study is so often associated with story or with a report of some event or program that it is easy to forget that much analysis and interpretation has gone on before we reach this point. In many case study reports, this process is hidden, leaving the reader with little evidence on which to assess the validity of the findings and having to trust the one who wrote the tale.

This section briefly outlines possibilities, first, for analyzing and interpreting data, and second, for how to communicate the findings to others. However it is useful to think of these together and indeed, at the start, because decisions about how you report may influence how you choose to make sense of the data. Your choice may also vary according to the context of the study—what is expected or acceptable—and your personal predilections, whether you prefer a more rational than intuitive mode of analysis, for example, or a formal or informal style of writing up that includes images, metaphor, narratives, or poetic forms.

Analyzing and Interpreting Data

When it comes to making sense of data, I make a distinction between analysis—a formal inductive process that seeks to explain—and interpretation, a more intuitive process that gains understanding and insight from a holistic grasp of data, although these may interact and overlap at different stages.

The process, whichever emphasis you choose, is one of reducing or transforming a large amount of data to themes that can encapsulate the overarching meaning in the data. This involves sorting, refining, and refocusing data until they make sense. It starts at the beginning with preliminary hunches, sometimes called “interpretative asides” or “working hypotheses,” later moving to themes, analytic propositions, or a theory of the case.

There are many ways to conduct this process. Two strategies often employed are concept mapping —a means of representing data visually to explore links between related concepts—and progressive focusing ( Parlett & Hamilton, 1976 ), the gradual reframing of initially identified issues into themes that are then further interpreted to generate findings. Each of these strategies tends to have three stages: initial sense making, identification of themes, and examination of patterns and relationships between them.

If taking a formal analytic approach to the task, the data would likely be broken down into segments or datasets (coded and categorized) and then reordered and explored for themes, patterns, and possible propositions. If adopting a more intuitive process, you might focus on identifying insights through metaphors and images, lateral thinking, or puzzling over paradoxes and ambiguities in the data, after first immersing yourself in the total dataset, reading and re-reading interview scripts, observations and field notes to get a sense of the whole. Trying out different forms of making sense through poetry, vignettes, cameos, narratives, collages, and drawing are further creative ways to interpret data, as are photographs taken in the case arranged to explain or tell the story of the case.

Reporting Case Study Research

Narrative structure and story.

As indicated in the introduction, telling a story is often associated with case study and some think this is what a case study is. In one sense, it is and, given that story is the natural way in which we learn ( Okri, 1997 ), it is a useful framework both for gathering data and for communicating case study findings. Not any story will do however. To count as research, it must be authentic, grounded in data, interpreted and analyzed to convey the meaning of the case.

There are several senses in which story is appropriate in qualitative case study: in capturing stories participants tell, in generating a narrative structure that makes sense of the case (i.e., the story you will tell), and in deciding how you communicate this narrative (i.e., in story form). If you choose a written story form (and advice here can be sought from Harrington (2003) and Caulley (2008) ), it needs to be clearly structured, well written, and contain only the detail that is necessary to give readers the vicarious experience of what it was like in the case. If the story is to be communicated in other ways, through, for example, audio or videotape, or computer or personal interaction, the same applies, substituting visual and interpersonal skill for written.

Matching forms of reporting to audience

The art of reporting is strongly connected to usability, so forms of reporting need to connect to the audiences we hope to inform: how they learn, what kind of evidence they value, and what kind of reporting maximizes the chances they will use the findings to promote policies and programs in the interests of beneficiaries. As Okri (1997) further reminds us, the writer only does half the work; the reader does the other (p. 41).

There may be other considerations as well: how open are commissioners to receiving stories of difficulties, as well as success stories? What might they need to hear beyond what is sought in the technical brief? And through what style of reporting would you try and persuade them? If conducting noncommissioned case study research, the scope for different forms of reporting is wider. In academia, for instance, many institutions these days accept creative and artistic forms of reporting when supported by supervisors and appreciated by examiners.

Styles of Reporting

The most obvious form of reporting is linear, often starting with a short executive summary and a brief description of focus and context, followed by methodology, the case study or thematic analysis, findings, and conclusions or implications. Conclusion-led reporting is similar in terms of its formality, but simply starts the other way around. From the conclusions drawn from the analyzed data, it works backward to tell the story through narrative, verbatim, and observational data of how these conclusions were reached. Both have a strong story line. The intent is analytic and explanatory.

Quite a different approach is to engage the reader in the experience and veracity of the case. Rather like constructing a portrait or editing a documentary film, this involves the sifting, constructing, re-ordering of frames, events and episodes to tell a coherent story primarily through interview excerpts, observations, vignettes, and critical incidents that depict what transpired in the case. Interpretation is indirect through the weaving of the data. The story can start at any point provided the underlying narrative structure is maintained to establish coherence ( House, 1980 , p. 116).

Different again, and from the other end of a continuum, is a highly interpretative account that may use similar ways of presenting data but weaves a story from the outset that is highly interpretative. Engaging metaphor, images, short stories, contradictions, paradoxes, and puzzles, it is invariably interesting to read and can be most persuasive. However, the evidence is less visible and therefore less open to alternative interpretations.

Even more persuasive is a case study that uses artistic forms to communicate the story of the case. Paintings, poetic form, drawings, photography, collage, and movement can all be adopted to report findings, whether the data was acquired using these forms or by other means. The arts-based inquiry movement ( Mullen & Finley, 2003 ) has contributed hugely to the validation and legitimation of artistic and creative ways of representing qualitative research findings. The journal Qualitative Inquiry contains many good examples, but see also Liamputtong & Rumbold (2008) . Such artistic forms of representation may not be for everyone or appropriate in some contexts, but they do have the power to engage an audience and the potential to facilitate use.

Generalization in Case Study Research

One of the potential limitations of case study often proposed is that it is impossible to generalize. This is not so. However, the way in which one generalizes from a case is different from that adopted in traditional forms of social science research that utilize large samples (randomly selected) and statistical procedures and which assume regularities in the social world that allow cause and effect to be determined. In this form of research inferences from data are stated as formal propositions that apply to all in the target population. See Donmoyer (1990) for an argument on the restricted nature of this form of generalization when considering single-case studies.

Making inferences from cases with a qualitative data set arises more from a process of interpretation in context, appealing to tacit and situated understanding for acceptance of their validity. Such inferences are possible where the context and experience of the case is richly described so the reader can recognize and connect with the events and experiences portrayed. There are two ways to examine how to reach these generalized understandings. One is to generalize from the case to other cases of a similar or dissimilar nature. The other is to see what we learn in-depth from the uniqueness of the single case itself.

Generalizing from the Single Case

A common approach to generalization and one most akin to a propositional form is cross-case generalization. In a collective or multi-site case study, each case is explored to see if issues that arise in one case also exist in other cases and what interconnecting themes there are between them. This kind of generalization has a degree of abstraction and potential for theorizing and is often welcomed by commissioners of research concerned that findings from the single case do not provide an adequate or “safe” basis for policy determination.

However, there are four additional ways to generalize from the single case, all of which draw more on tacit knowledge and recognition of context, although in different ways. In naturalistic generalization , first proposed by Stake (1978) , generalization is reached on the basis of recognition of similarities and differences to cases with which we are familiar. To enable such recognition, the case needs to feature rich description; people’s voices; and enough detail of time, place, and context to provide a vicarious experience to help readers discern what is similar and dissimilar to their own context ( Stake, 1978 ).

Situated generalization ( Simons, Kushner, Jones, & James, 2003 ) is close to the concept of naturalistic generalization in relying for its generality on retaining a connectedness with the context in which it first evolved. However, it has an extra dimension in a practice context. This notion of generalization was identified in an evaluation of a research project that engaged teachers in and with research. Here, in addition to the usual validity criteria to establish the warrant for the findings, the generalization was seen as dependable if trust existed between those who conducted the research (teachers, in this example) and those thinking about using it (other teachers). In other words, beyond the technical validity of the research, teachers considered using the findings in their own practice because they had confidence in those who generated them. This is a useful way to think about generalization if we wish research findings to improve professional practice.

The next two concepts of generalization— concept and process generalization —relate more to what you discover in making sense of the case. As you interpret and analyze, you begin to generate a theory of the case that makes sense of the whole. Concepts may be identified that make sense in the one case but have equal significance in other cases of a similar kind, even if the contexts are different.

It is the concept that generalizes, not the specific content or context. This may be similar to the process Donmoyer (2008) identifies of “intellectual generalization” (quoted by Butler-Kisber, 2010 , p. 15) to indicate the cognitive understanding one can gain from qualitative accounts even if settings are quite different.

The same is true for generalization of a process. It is possible to identify a significant process in one case (or several cases) that is transferable to other contexts, irrespective of the precise content and contexts of those other cases. An example here is the collaborative model for sustainable school self-evaluation I identified in researching school self-evaluation in a number of schools and countries ( Simons, 2002 ). Schools that successfully sustained school self-evaluation had an infrastructure that was collaborative at all stages of the evaluation process from design to conduct of the study, to analyzing the results and to reporting the findings. This ensured that the whole school was involved and that results were discussed and built into the ongoing development of school policies and practice. In other cases, different processes may be discovered that have applicability in a range of contexts. As with concept generalization, it is the process that generalizes not the substantive content or specific context.

Particularization

The forms of generalization discussed above are useful when we have to justify case study in a research or policy context. But the overarching justification for how we learn from case study is particularization —a rich portrayal of insights and understandings interpreted in the particular context. Several authors have made this point ( Stake, 1995 ; Flyvberg, 2006 ; Simons 2009 ). Stake puts it most sharply when he observes that “The real business of case study is particularization, not generalization” (p. 8), referring here to the main reason for studying the singular, which is to understand the uniqueness of the case itself.

My perspective (explored further in Simons, 1996 ; Simons, 2009 , p. 239; Simons & McCormack, 2007 ) is similar in that I believe the “real” strength of case study lies in the insights we gain from in-depth study of the particular. But I also argue for the universality of such insights—if we get it “right.” By which I mean that if we are able to capture and report the uniqueness, the essence, of the case in all its particularity and present this in a way we can all recognize, we will discover something of universal significance. This is something of a paradox. The more you learn in depth about the particularity of one person, situation, or context, the more likely you are to discover something universal. This process of reaching understanding has support both from the way in which many discoveries are made in science and in how we learn from artists, poets, and novelists, who reach us by communicating a recognizable truth about individuals, human relationships, and/or social contexts.

This concept of particularization is far from new, as the quotation from a preface to a book written in 1908 attests. Stephen Reynolds, the author of A Poor Man’s House , notes that the substance of the book was first recorded in a journal, kept for purposes of fiction, and in letters to one of his friends, but fiction proved an inappropriate medium. He felt that the life and the people were so much better than anything he could invent. The book therefore consists of the journal and letters drawn together to present a picture of a typical poor man’s house and life, much as we might draw together a range of data to present a case study. It is not the substance of the book that concerns us here but the methodological relevance to case study research. Reynolds notes that the conclusions expressed are tentative and possibly go beyond this man’s life, so he thought some explanation of the way he arrived at them was needed:

Educated people usually deal with the poor man’s life deductively; they reason from the general to the particular; and, starting with a theory, religious, philanthropic, political, or what not, they seek, and too easily find, among the millions of poor, specimens—very frequently abnormal—to illustrate their theories. With anything but human beings, that is an excellent method. Human beings, unfortunately, have individualities. They do what, theoretically, they ought not to do, and leave undone those things they ought to do. They are even said to possess souls—untrustworthy things beyond the reach of sociologists. The inductive method—reasoning from the particular to the general... should at least help to counterbalance the psychological superficiality of the deductive method. ( Reynolds, 1908 : preface) 1

Slightly overstated perhaps, but the point is well made. In our search for general laws, we not only lose sight of the uniqueness and humanity of individuals, but reduce them in the process, failing to present their experience in any “real” sense. What is astonishing about the quotation is that it was written over a century ago and yet many still argue today that you cannot generalize from the particular.

Going even further back, in 1798, Blake proclaimed that “To Generalize is to be an Idiot. To Particularize is the Alone Distinction of Merit.” In research, we may not wish to make such a strong distinction: these processes both have their uses in different kinds of research. But there is a major point here for the study of the particular that Wilson (2008) notes in commenting on Blake’s perception when he says: “Favouring the abstract over the concrete, one ‘sees all things only thro’ the narrow chinks of his cavern”’ (referring here to Blake’s The Marriage of Heaven and Hell [1793]; in Wilson, 2008 , p. 62). The danger Wilson is pointing to here is that abstraction relies heavily on what we know from our past understanding of things, and this may prevent us experiencing a concrete event directly or “apprehend[ing] a particular moment” ( Wilson, 2008 , p. 63).

Blake had a different mission, of course, than case researchers, and he was not himself free from abstractions, as Wilson points out, although he fought hard “to break through mental barriers to something unique and living” ( Wilson, 2008 , p. 65). It is this search for the “unique and living” and experiencing the “isness” of the particular that we should take from the Blake example to remind ourselves of the possibility of discovering something “new,” beyond our current understanding of the way things are.

Focusing on particularization does not diminish the usefulness of case study research for policy makers or practitioners. Grounded in recognizable experience, the potential is there to reach a range of audiences and to facilitate use of the findings. It may be more difficult for those who seek formal generalizations that seem to offer a safe basis for policy making to accept case study reports. However, particular stories often hold the key to why policies have or have not worked well in the past. It is not necessary to present long cases—a criticism frequently levelled—to demonstrate the story of the case. Such case stories can be most insightful for policy makers who, like many of us in everyday life, often draw inferences from a single instance or case, whatever the formal evidence presented. “I am reminded of the story of....”

The case for studying the particular to inform practice in professional contexts needs less persuasion because practitioners can recognize the content and context quite readily and make the inference to their own particular context ( Simons et al., 2003 ). In both sets of circumstances—policy and practice—it is more a question of whether the readers of our case research accept the validity of findings determined in this way, how they choose to learn, and our skill in telling the case study story.

Conclusion and Future Directions

In this chapter, I have presented an argument for case study research, making the case, in particular, for using qualitative methods to highlight what it is that qualitative case study research can bring to the study of social and educational programs. I outlined the various ways in which case study is commonly used before focusing directly on case study as a major mode of research inquiry, noting characteristics it shares with other qualitative methodologies, as well as itsdifference and the difficulties it is sometimes perceived to have. The chapter emphasizes the importance of thinking through what the case is, to be sure that the issues explored and the data generated do illuminate this case and not any other.

But there is still more to be done. In particular, I think we need to be more adventurous in how we craft and report the case. I suspect we may have been too cautious in the past in how we justified case study research, borrowing concepts from other disciplines and forms of educational research. More than 40 years on, it is time to take a greater risk—in demonstrating the intrinsic nature of case study and what it can offer to our understanding of human and social situations.

I have already drawn attention to the need to design the case, although this could be developed further to accentuate the uniqueness of the particular case. One way to do this is to feature individuals more in the design itself, not only to explore programs and policies through perspectives of key actors or groups and transactions between them, which to some extent happens already, but also to get them to characterize what makes the context unique. This is the reversal of many a design framework that starts with the logic of a program and takes forward the argument for personal evaluation ( Kushner, 2000 ), noted in the interlude on evaluation. Apart from this attention to design, there are three other issues I think we need to explore further: the warrant for creative methods in case study, more imaginative reporting; and how we learn from a study of the singular.

Warrant for More Creative Methods in Case Study Research

The promise that creative methods have for eliciting in-depth understanding and capturing the unusual, the idiosyncratic, the uniqueness of the case, was mentioned in the methods section. Yet, in case study research, particularly in program and policy contexts, we have few good examples of the use of artistic approaches for eliciting and interpreting data, although more, as acknowledged later, for presenting it. This may be because case study research is often conducted in academic or policy environments, where propositional ways of knowing are more valued.

Using creative and artistic forms in generating and interpreting case study data offers a form of evidence that acknowledges experiential understanding in illuminating the uniqueness of the case. The question is how to establish the warrant for this way of knowing and persuade others of its virtue. The answer is simple. By demonstrating the use of these methods in action, by arguing for a different form of validity that matches the intrinsic nature of the method, and, above all, by good examples.

Representing Findings to Engage Audiences in Learning

In evaluative and research policy contexts, where case study is often the main mode of inquiry or part of a broader study, case study reports often take a formal structure or sometimes, where the context is receptive, a portrayal or interpretative form. But, too often, the qualitative is an add-on to a story told by other means or reduced to issues in which the people who gave rise to the data are no longer seen. However, there are many ways to put them center stage.

Tell good stories and tell them well. Or, let key actors tell their own stories. Explore the different ways technology can help. Make video clips that demonstrate events in context, illustrate interactions between people, give voice to participants—show the reality of the program, in other words. Use graphics to summarize key issues and interactive, cartoon technology, as seen on some TED presentations, to summarize and visually show the complexity of the case. Video diaries were mentioned in the methods section: seeing individuals tell their tales directly is a powerful way of communicating, unhindered by “our” sense making. Tell photo stories. Let the photos convey the narrative, but make sure the structure of the narrative is evident to ensure coherence. These are just the beginnings. Those skilled in information technology could no doubt stretch our imagination further.

One problem and a further question concerns our audiences. Will they accept these modes of communication? Maybe not, in some contexts. However, there are three points I wish to leave you with. First, do not presume that they won’t. If people are fully present in the story and the complexity is not diminished, those reading, watching, or hearing about the case will get the message. If you are worried about how commissioners might respond, remember that they are no different from any other stakeholder or participant when it comes to how they learn from human experience. Witness the reference to Okri (1997) earlier about how we learn.

Second, when you detect that the context requires a more formal presentation of findings, respond according to expectation but also include elements of other forms of presentation. Nudge a little in the direction of creativity. Third, simply take a chance, that risk I spoke about earlier. Challenge the status quo. Find situations and contexts where you can fully represent the qualitative nature of the experience in the cases you study with creative forms of interpretation and representation. And let the audience decide.

Learning from a Study of the Singular

Finally, to return to the issue of “generalization” in case study that worries some audiences. I pointed out in the generalization section several ways in which it is possible to generalize from case study research, not in a formal propositional sense or from a case to a population, but by retaining a connection with the context in which the generalization first arose—that is, to realize in-depth understanding in context in different circumstances and situations. However, I also emphasized that, in many instances, it is particularization from which we learn. That is the point of the singular case study, and it is an art to perceive and craft the case in ways that we can.

Acknowledgments

Parts of this chapter build on ideas first explored in Simons, 2009 .

I am grateful to Bob Williams for pointing out the relevance of this quotation from Reynolds to remind us that “there is nothing new under the sun” and that we sometimes continue to engage endlessly in debates that have been well rehearsed before.

Adams, T. ( 2012 ) ‘ Olympics 2012: Team GB falters but London shines bright on opening day ’, Observer, 29.07.12.

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• Published: 26 March 2021

Environmental problems and Geographic education. A case study: Learning about the climate and landscape in Ontinyent (Spain)

• Benito Campo-Pais   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-7675-7788 1 ,
• Antonio José Morales-Hernández 1 ,
• Álvaro Morote-Seguido 1 &
• Xosé Manuel Souto-González   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-1480-327X 1  

Humanities and Social Sciences Communications volume  8 , Article number:  90 ( 2021 ) Cite this article

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• Environmental studies

Cultural perceptions of the environment bring us back to elements and factors guided by “natural” cause-effect principles. It seems that academic education has had little effect on the manner and results of learning about changes in the local landscape, especially as regards rational explanations. There is considerable difficulty relating academic concepts about the climate to transformations in the environmental landscape. Teaching tasks are mediatized due to the use of rigorous and precise concepts which facilitate functional and satisfactory learning. This is the objective of the research this article aims to undertake, for which we have chosen the case of Ontinyent (Spain). This research will include two parts: the first aims to identify problems in geographical education of the climate, and the second applies to didactic suggestions for improvement. Methodologically, this study involves qualitative, non-experimental, research-oriented toward change, which purports to understand the educational reality. Our sample included a total of 431 students. Moreover, a semi-structured interview, conducted with teachers in schools and universities in Ontinyent, was organized. Fourteen teachers were interviewed, including two who participated as research professors in the action-research method. The study revealed that students’ conceptual and stereotypical errors, in the different educational stages, vary according to the type (climate, weather, climate change, landscape) and stage (Primary, Secondary, University). They are persistent and continuous, given that they are repeated and appear anchored in the ideas and knowledge development of students regarding the problems and the study of the climate throughout their education.

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“The spring, the summer,

The childing autumn, angry winter, change

Their wonted liveries, and the mazed world,

By their increase, now knows not which is which:

And this same progeny of evils comes

From our debate, from our dissension”

(W. Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream , cited in Kitcher and Fox, 2019 )

Introduction

Traditionally, school-taught geography has focused on studying the relationships between physical and cultural factors in the organization of the environment (Capel, 1981 , 1984 ; Graves, 1985 ). Climate change and the environmental impact are two representative examples that have had an impact on how the research group S ocials Footnote 1 has planned educational activities.

In this vein, the sixth Global Environment Outlook report (GEO 6) declared that climate change is a matter of priority that affects both human (including human health) and natural systems (the air, biological diversity, freshwater, the oceans, and the earth) and alters the complex interactions between these systems (UNEP, 2019 , p. 10).

Furthermore, the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development expresses, through Sustainable Development Goal 13 (SDG 13), the need to “take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts” (United Nations, 2015 , p. 16). All of this leads us to reflect on the way in which we learn about and understand the concept of climate and its impact on the landscape, and vice versa, in order to take measures, as a critical and active citizen, which could reverse the current emergency situation facing the planet’s climate.

Within the group Socials (University of Valencia, Spain), we are developing a line of didactic research related to socio-environmental education to analyze the obstacles which hinder learning about the climate and landscape in an academic setting. This includes the following: (1) The lack of an interdisciplinary approach to understand the impact on socio-ecological systems from a glocal perspective; (2) The disconnection between scholarly academic knowledge related to the climate/landscape and the reality experienced by students, which allow for geographic conceptualization and an understanding of the world from school-taught geography (Cavalcanti, 2017 ); (3) The absence of analysis of the influence of social representations (Moscovici, 1961 ) on the perception of the environment (Reigota, 2001 ) related to the interaction between climate and landscape; (4) The need to boost active participation (Hart, 1993 ) in order to implement strategies and measures related to climate change mitigation and adaptation; and (5) The accuracy of using active territoriality (Dematteis and Governa, 2005 ) to create emotional links with the territory we must manage (Morales, Santana and Sánchez, 2017 ), due to its particular impact on climate and landscape factors.

All of this leads us to re-evaluate the importance of analyzing cultural perceptions of the environment to determine the factors which have an impact on environmental transformation, starting from the paradigm Education for Eco-Social Transformation. The aim is to encourage the inclusion thereof in the academic curriculum (González, 2018 ). This is a line of study we have already tackled through the analysis of the trialectics of spatiality, where we reconsidered the Piaget taxonomy of lived, objective, and conceived spaces (Hannoun, 1977 ). We aimed to further our understanding of space through lived emotions, the cultural perceptions which create spatial stereotypes, and the conceived space, a result of the actions taken by political and economic leaders in the country (Souto, 2016 , 2018a ). This conceptual modification helped us understand the environment as a process of intellectual construction, like a reflection of a physical reality conceived with emotions and social filters. In other words, this is coherent with what we consider in our research proposal.

Our approach to the problem

Local geographical studies are methodologically similar to what are known as case studies in educational research. To this effect, it is worthwhile recalling that a local case is specific, but it is not unique or unrepeatable. That is to say, there are aspects particular to the social and territorial context, but the explanatory factors refer us to theories that have been developed around other comparative analyses. In this vein, the work we are presenting here, as a case study of climate and landscape education in Ontinyent (Spain), answers three basic questions which outline the problem.

Firstly, what is the role of the academic system in explaining everyday issues? If climate change and the perception of changes in the landscape are of social concern, we must specify whether the academic system should codify aspects of these expectations in a conceptual corpus. This can be done through a series of educational activities and by seeking answers to events that may be communicated with explanations in a public sphere. This will be the main objective of this study.

Secondly, we wonder what specific disciplinary knowledge can contribute? In the case of geography, due to its interdisciplinary links, it will be useful to determine its impact on academic knowledge and, consequently, the construction of a public opinion regarding everyday issues. How can an understanding of geography affect the development of a critical theory which questions the practical meaning of everyday life?

Finally, a significant contribution to this study: what conclusions can we draw from the social representations of spontaneous knowledge in developing social arguments? We want to know to what extent representations of daily practicality present an obstacle to developing independent knowledge and thus render conceptual disciplinary knowledge useful for arguing in public opinion debates influencing common sense and determining our everyday practicality. We wanted to exemplify this with ideas provided by students and teachers from schools in the region.

When looking at the relationships between stages, from global phenomena to local measures with eco-geographical dynamics and where anthropogenic activities are included as explanatory factors, school and university students’ ideas about the climate and the lived and conceived landscape do not tend to be included in a subjective way. This fact contradicts the definition itself of the landscape set out in the European Landscape Convention, by not taking into account the territorial perception of the population (Council of Europe, 2000 ).

The central idea of our line of research points to using students’ personal and social perceptions as a starting point to develop basic knowledge about the climate and landscape. We question spontaneous concepts to explain the landscape in terms of the climate and create a certain environment (microclimate, evapotranspiration, sunlight…).

In this vein, students taking the Research in Social Science Didactics: Geography postgraduate programs (University of Valencia) have produced several master’s and Doctoral Theses which deal with the existing relationship between social representations and environmental education Footnote 2 . Some of this research is related to the EcoRiba Footnote 3 project, with the aim of understanding the importance of linking this didactic research to integral education about the local environment, in order to promote more sustainable and supportive interactions both in a local and global setting (Morales and García, 2016 ; Morales, 2017 ; Morales, 2018 ). It is a way of integrating academic studies into social and civic renown, an academic construction of an educational public space for the local community.

The research context

Studies about “marginalised students” Footnote 4 as examples of the realities of academic failure, but also of second chances, present arguments about what happens in the teaching and thus the didactics of geography. Analyzing this set of school students provides evidence linking failure with teachers’ and students’ personal narratives to understand what is concealed (Campo, Ciscar, and Souto, 2014 ; García Rubio and Souto, 2020 ). As such, it was possible to carry out an assessment, using social representations, of academic knowledge which facilitates improvement options at different educational stages, including the experiences of marginalized students (Campo, 2014 ). These representations also challenge academic traditions and routines, presenting obstacles and causing difficulties teaching and learning geography (Canet et al., 2018 ; Campo et al., 2019 ). These studies represent the instruction and methodological arguments that are part of the rational and personal reasons for taking on this research: learning difficulties at school, social representations in educational research of geography didactics, and the question of innovation as a requirement for educational improvement.

We have pinpointed these principles for a research topic. Learning about the climate and landscape is fundamental for students to understand environmental changes and problems and, moreover, is part of geography didactics both in basic education (Tonda and Sebastiá, 2003 ; Jaén and Barbudo, 2010 ; García de la Vega, 2014 ; Martínez and López, 2016 ; Olcina, 2017 ; Martínez and Olcina, 2019 ), and in the work of students training to become teachers (Valbuena and Valverde, 2006 ; Boon, 2014 ; Souto, 2018a ; Morote et al., 2019 ) who highlight the dilemmas and perceptions of geography or climate change (González and Maldonado, 2014 ; Chang and Pascua, 2016 ). In our case, we are mainly concerned with observing what is happening in classrooms. Students make explanations about climate problems which are full of mistakes and stereotypes produced by the trivialization of some scientific concepts shared by the mass media (Olcina and Martín, 1999 ; Martín-Vide, 2009 ). In order to analyze students’ education about the climate and landscape, we must identify teaching practices (Souto, 2013 , 2018a ) and reveal what students know. In both cases, we are guided by various studies focused on conceptions, ideas, and representations (Gil, 1994 ; García Pérez, 2002 , 2004 ; Kindelan, 2013 ; Bajo, 2016 ; Santana, 2019 ; García-Monteagudo, 2019 ) which, stemming from research and interest in the psychology of learning, aim to understand student mistakes and make constructive suggestions based on models focused on student learning. This starts with their existing knowledge, moving on to what students have been taught, and finally observing the impact of the media on their education. In this way, theoretical tenets of social representations will allow us to interpret what is happening, based on referential systems and enabling categories that classify contexts, phenomena, or individuals (Jodelet, 1991 ). We use these educational research theories with the pertinent epistemological awareness (Castorina and Barreiro, 2012 ) which proves the representations observed in school geography (Souto and García, 2016 ) among the population as regards climate change (Heras, 2015 ; Alatorre-Frenk et al., 2016 ) and the landscape (Santana et al., 2014 ) or among students and teachers in the practice thereof (Domingos, 2000 ).

This objective corresponds with a line of research Footnote 5 linked to doctoral research Footnote 6 , which outlines its idiographic, explanatory, and applied nature (Bisquerra, 2009 ). First, it is idiographic due to the approach for understanding and interpreting the unique nature of school geography lessons on the climate and landscape as curricular content. Secondly, it is explanatory because it claims to clarify what is happening in teaching-learning processes. Finally, it is applied in nature because it aims to transform the conditions of didactic activities and introduce improvements in the teaching-learning process of geography using real-life experiences from schools in Ontinyent (Spain). This research will include two parts: the first aims to identify problems in geographical education of the climate, and the second applies to didactic suggestions for improvement.

In this article, we will develop the first part—assessing the topic we outlined above. Our hypothesis indicates that geography lessons about the climate, school traditions, and the mass media lead to knowledge shaped by stereotypes and conceptual mistakes which are exposed in children’s education and remain present in higher education.

Methodology

This study involves qualitative, non-experimental, research-oriented toward change, which purports to understand the educational reality. As such, an open and mixed design is most suitable, which adapts to the knowledge observed during the study. This justifies the analytical study we propose for this research. We selected the case study (Stake, 1999 , Álvarez and San Fabián, 2012 ) as a way of analyzing how students in Ontinyent (Valencia) learn about the region’s climate and landscape. Given the study’s characteristics and the objective of making the quantity of information manageable and systematizing the analysis (Goetz and Lecompte, 1988 ; Miles and Huberman, 1994 ; Rodríguez et al., 1996 ; Rodríguez et al., 2005 ) we have used a combination of quantitative techniques, which make statistical analysis possible (Gil, 2003 ), and qualitative techniques, which facilitate content analysis, for the data analysis. This combination of techniques is used in case studies to further explore explanations for the phenomena analyzed, with the aim of making the quantity of information manageable (Bisquerra, 2009 ).

It is worthwhile outlining the sample in context for assessment purposes. The sampling technique used is non-probabilistic for convenience and accessibility (Bisquerra, 2009 ; Otzen and Manterola, 2017 ). We chose the municipality of Ontinyent due to adjustment reasons and opportunity criteria. On the one hand, the population of Ontinyent assures a sample size that is representative of a concrete population: the innovation program Footnote 7 provided access to school and university settings in this municipality which has a population of 35,534 Footnote 8 (2016) and boasts educational centers across the different educational stages: Kindergarten, Primary, Secondary, and University. In other words, we can carry out a transversal study of children’s education about the climate throughout the different educational stages, with different chronological ages, at the same time and encompassing the entire school and university education of one person. On the other hand, Ontinyent, as shown in Fig. 1 is a municipality in the Community of Valencia (Spain) with specific climatic conditions due to its location 47 kilometers from the Mediterranean Sea. It has a typical Mediterranean climate or, according to the Koppen classification, a semi-arid cold climate with mild winters and hot summers (Guerra, 2018 ).

Ontinyent is located within Valencian Community (Spain). Self-elaborated map based on Google Earth data.

During the 2015–16 academic year, between May and December 2016, we gathered data from different school classrooms in Ontinyent, including 5 Kindergartens Footnote 9 and Primary Schools (4 public schools and 2 private schools with state-funded financial support), 3 Compulsory and Baccalaureate Secondary Schools Footnote 10 (1 public school and 2 private schools with state-funded financial support) and the headquarters of the University of Valencia in Ontinyent (2 classes of the Teaching Diploma). In total, 202 first-year primary school pupils, 204 fifth-year primary school pupils, 135 second-year secondary school students, and 92 university students taking the Teaching Diploma participated.

As such, our sample included a total of 633 students, covering a range of the academic population, from both school and university, in Ontinyent which has a total of 6185 students Footnote 11 . If we take the demographic numerical data in Table 1 Footnote 12 as a reference, it represents a Confidence Interval (CI) of 0.52% which indicates that the academic population in Ontinyent is representative of the academic population in the Community of Valencia. This represents a level of reliability equaling 95% of the academic population, typical of Social Sciences statistical studies (Campo and Martínez, 2017 ). But this does not mean that the study sample is in turn representative of the population in the Community of Valencia.

In order to define the context of academic knowledge, qualitative tools were developed. These tools are unique to research in Social Science Didactics and include a semi-structured interview and questionnaire (Banchs, 2000 ). These tools have been validated by experts in the fields of knowledge associated with this research (Physical Geography, Regional Geographical Analysis, Social Science Didactics and Didactics, and School Organisation) from four universities, three of which are in Spain (Seville, Alicante, and Valencia) and one in Chile (La Serena). Footnote 13

Furthermore, this research draws on previous studies Footnote 14 , using the action-research method which puts the participating students and teachers at the heart of the study (Stenhouse, 1990 ; Elliot, 2000 ), reflecting on their own practice (Teppa, 2012 ). This distinctly includes the model of a research professor in the research (Stenhouse, 1975 ; Sancho and Hernández, 2004 ). In order to improve the curriculum, teachers and other professionals are in the best conditions to carry out this type of research.

The questionnaire is a versatile technique that facilitates the collection of information regarding the objectives of the research. In January and February 2016, teachers and students were asked to participate in the study, obtaining a commitment of wilfulness for this investigation. This is done through specific questions which gather specific quantifiable information for the study (Cohen and Manion, 1990 ), thus allowing for direct comparison between groups. In our case, this is a comparison between the variable of educational stages or the co-variation of students’ ideas in the different educational stages when learning about the climate. Its design focuses on the evaluative considerations of a questionnaire about geography didactics (Alfageme et al., 2010 ) and follows the process itself for the creation of questionnaires: following the research objectives, creating a first draft of the questionnaire for assessment and validation by experts, carrying out a pilot test and delivering the final version of the questionnaire (Del Rincón et al., 1995 ). For the proposed analysis, we used three of the sections which make up the questionnaire: the first section, item 1, covers information sources for students about climate change; the second section, items 2 to 6, looks at the difference between the climate and the weather; the third section, items 7 to 10, tackles the causes of climate change. The questionnaire was created based on content that appears in the textbooks used by participants, containing the same questions/items in order to maintain homogeneity among the 431 participating students, representing Primary Education (10–12 years old; 105 girls and 99 boys), Secondary Education (13–15 years old; 63 girls and 72 boys) and University (82 women and 8 men with 21–23 years old). The design covers a mixed structure of closed and open questions which appear in sections with the corresponding items.

The semi-structured interview , conducted with teachers in schools and universities in Ontinyent, is a substantial part of the research. The teachers were selected according to accessibility and interest in the research. This convenience-based option was chosen due to the possibility of being able to interview them and the relevance to the project framework on the study of the climate and landscape Footnote 15 . Fourteen teachers were interviewed, including two who participated as research professors in the action-research method. The questions were chosen for the study related to their ideas (Saraiva, 2007 ) before participating in the project and covered teacher training, methodology and practice, and their explanations of environmental problems—how they explain environmental changes in Ontinyent to their students. Ultimately, we wanted to find out what the teacher knows and what they do to help their students learn about the climate.

Of the 14 teachers, 8 are women and 6 are men. Three of them are over the age of 56, 2 are between 46 and 55 years old, 6 between 36 and 45, and 3 between 25 and 35 years old. They teach in public (6), private (7), and privately managed public (1) schools. They teach at different educational levels, 1 in Kindergarten, 2 in Primary, 9 in Secondary School, and 2 at Baccalaureate level. They teach different subjects: 2 teach Social Sciences, 4 teach Biology, 2 teach Physics and Chemistry, 1 teaches Mathematics, 1 teaches Language and Literature, 1 teaches Social Integration, 1 teaches Administration and 1 teaches Kindergarten.

Results and data analysis

The data gathered using the questionnaire and interviews are shown, in a quantitative setting, through the already processed conversion into percentages of the participants’ responses per educational stage. The qualitative data has been categorized in line with the desired objectives.

Students’ perception of climate and landscape

In the first section of the questionnaire, related to the hypothesis and objectives of the study, we wanted to know what the students’ favorite source of news on climate change was in order to analyze the trends among students regarding the information they obtain about climate change in the communication society, and the impact on their academic knowledge (Souto, 2011 ). The items in this section questioned the participants about where they get information on climate change, establishing an order of preference. In order to understand what information, they get and the extent to which they receive it from the sources mentioned, we asked a multiple-choice question, the percentages of which established a percentage median of the students’ priorities per educational stage. The data were quantified using a statistical median of the participants’ responses per stage, reflecting the order of importance of the sources they selected in the first step. We differentiated online social networks from the internet, due to their renown and growth. Although the first requires the second, we distinguished that the essential use and function of social networks is communication between people who are active in social relationships, while the internet is a source of information with multiple uses and possibilities. Thereafter, we will detail the number of students who chose each source as their top source and the percentage of the sample. As such, as shown in Fig. 2 , of the 423 students we can see how sources evolve from the family environment (37.7%) in Primary School to the Internet (39.3% in Secondary School and 79.8% at University). We also observe that social networks are used more in Secondary School than at any other educational stage.

The bars represent the percentage in each educational stage.

When analyzing the data, we started with the premise that traditional information sources for learning over the last century such as school, family, friends (social relations), and the media (the press, television) have been expanded by this society of information, communication and technology and the globalization of information and news, because we are now in a network society (Castells, 2006 ). Surveys by official bodies about the information society in Spain and in Europe (Eurostat, 2016 ) show that in 2016 95.2% of students in Spain used the internet, 58.8% used it every day, and 25.7% almost every day for between one and three hours. Among those over the age of 15, around 90% used the internet for e-mail and social networks. The data obtained allowed us to qualify these figures, which are reduced into percentages about more generic sectors. In this way, we established four large categories of information sources that have an impact on knowledge: school, family, the media (Internet, television, and the press), and social relations (friends and networks).

The trend shift towards the media as an information source for students was confirmed. This preference, especially from secondary school onwards, corresponds with the exponential trend for the use of the media by society. However, this suggests a problem and a risk for learning about the climate as it is subject to errors and stereotypes. The liquid modernity we live in comprises the transience, use, and access to a large quantity of data. From the perspective of cognitive psychology and as proven, people find it difficult to retain more than seven units of information. When building our knowledge, quality is more important than quantity. This liquid society produces a series of habits that make it difficult to learn geography (Sebastiá and Tonda, 2017 ). The need for information to learn collides with the sheer quantity of data available which spreads on technological motorways and platforms, motorways of information in the informational technological revolution. The so-called technological revolution hangs over new informative engineering like a cloud and is of great concern for data verification and codes of best practice (Goldenberg and Bengtsson, 2016 ; Wardle et al., 2018 ). Fake news is generated to create states of opinion about climate change (Maslin, 2019 ) and we have observed how these factors have a harmful impact on students’ geographical literacy (Campo, 2019 ). In other words, data shows us that students do not look at social media from a critical perspective.

In addition to understanding the attitudes to climate and environmental knowledge, we wanted to find out what knowledge students had in relation to two main aspects of climate education : the difference between the climate and the weather, and understanding the causes of climate change. We dedicated a part of the questionnaire to these issues.

For the first aspect, we analyzed students’ understanding of the differences between the climate and the weather, identifying whether they knew how to distinguish them. To do this, we provided different statements which they had to match up with climate or weather. This gave us some clues as to their cognitive level (Anderson and Krathwohl, 2001 ; Biggs and Tang, 2007 ; Granados, 2017 ) and what the students had learned because the act of matching up indicates subject knowledge and the identification of relationships. The data was obtained through a closed polytomous question in which they could choose which statement referred to the climate, the environment, or unsure. The statements were included in the following items of the questionnaire: item 2, “Last year, the annual average temperature in Ontinyent was 16.2°C” (climate); item 3, “In the summer, the Clariano river is drier than in the winter” (climate); item 4, “The Ontinyent landscape is the Mediterranean” (climate); item 5, “It’s very hot today” (weather); item 6, “Yesterday, the historical center of Ontinyent was flooded” (weather).

As shown in Fig. 3 , the students in each educational stage who correctly matched the concepts with the statements were measured. In addition to the responses from students who answered incorrectly, there were the students who indicated that they did not know.

The colors of the bars represent the student’s answers per item. Right answers are represented by “RIGHT”. Wrong answers are represented by “WRONG”. Not answered questions are represented by “DON’T KNOW”. We have combined the “WRONG” and “DON’T KNOW” answers to represent the degree of confusion regarding each item at each educational stage.

In general, throughout the three stages, more than 25% of students matched the items up incorrectly, making mistakes with all the suggested statements, except for university students who answered item 3 correctly at a rate of 76.2%, item 4 at 92.9%, and item 6 at 77.4%. The high proportion of students who answered item 2 incorrectly stands out, with at least 53.3% answering incorrectly. This percentage corresponds to the secondary school pupils. The average annual temperature was not associated with the climate and the time event “last year” confused them. Primary pupils and university students were further off-the-mark for item 2 with 67.6% and 72.6% respectively, responding incorrectly. As regards the weather, for item 5 at least 36.9% of the students surveyed (this percentage corresponds to university students) did not connect that the weather happens at a certain time while the climate is a succession of weather conditions; for item 5, 53.9% of primary school pupils and 46.7% of secondary school pupils were also incorrect.

We have noted that mistakes about the concepts of climate and weather carry through from primary school to university. If we calculate the average of wrong answers to all items for students from each educational stage, the degree of confusion per participating stage is 55.5% for primary education (113 students out of 204), 41.4% for secondary education (56 students out of 135) and 32.32% for university (27 students out of 84).

Ultimately, students from all educational stages make mistakes or display a lack of knowledge about the climate and weather. This is proven by the incorrect answers to questions about the average temperature and climate (item 2), knowledge of the local climate, characteristics of the climate and its implications for the landscape (items 3 and 4), or identifying the fleeting nature of weather as the climate (item 5) or indeed other phenomena, such as a temporary flood (item 6).

Furthermore, using the questionnaire we wanted to find out if students recognized some of the causes of climate change which were presented in the questions, relating them to gas emissions or the increase in the greenhouse effect. The items were dichotomous: the participants had to select whether the statements were true or false. In line with the taxonomies established by the educational stages, the questions asked aimed to distinguish causes from events, truths from falsehoods, which is interesting given the confusion that surrounds climate change. The statements corresponded with the following items in the questionnaire: item 7, “Thanks to the greenhouse effect, we can live on Earth”; item 8, “Deforestation doesn’t have an impact on climate change, it only has an impact on ground erosion”; item 9, “One of the causes of climate change is the global warming of the Earth”; item 10, “One of the causes that contribute to the process of climate change is the excessive burning of fossil fuels”.

In Table 2 , we note how items 8 and 9 maintain a line of progression of wrong answers in correlation with the age of students and their cognitive level per educational stage. For item 8, 31.9% and 32.9%, and for item 9, 18.6% and 15.6% of primary school and secondary school pupils responded incorrectly. Although they are almost the same, for item 8 around 32% of both groups had difficulties relating deforestation processes with the climate, as indicated by IPCC reports Footnote 16 . The loss of wooded areas produces a rise in carbon emissions, gases which increase the greenhouse effect (IPCC, 2013 ) because they are not absorbed by tree leaves and trunks. In parallel, deforestation leads to land desertification (IPCC, 2019 ) which hinders the processes of afforestation and reforestation. This chain explanation is an example of seeing the world and its problems in a holistic way, working on comprehensive thinking (Morin, 1990 ). This is more difficult to integrate with various fields of knowledge for certain levels and education.

As regards the answers to items 9 and 10, there is visible controversy. For item 9, most students recognize the link between global warming and climate change. But it is concerning that the link is not as clear in the answers to item 10 to which 54% of primary pupils, 33.3% of secondary pupils, and 26.2% of university students answered incorrectly. This data supposes that 41.06% of the surveyed population (see Table 3 ), in other words, 177 of 431 students between the ages of 6 and 24, do not identify the causal relationship between human activities and global warming. They do not associate the increase in burning fossil fuels with climate change (IPCC, 2014 ).

The item which reveals the most mistakes is item 7. Some of the experts consulted when validating this item already indicated that it is a complex question given the origin of the gases because there are those of natural and human origin.

The analysis of the results shows us that there are different levels of confusion among students across all the educational stages to explain the relationships between physical factors (items 7 and 9), humans (items 8 and 10), and climate change. However, there is further confusion regarding the effects of human activities, which lead to deforestation and the burning of fossil fuels, on the climate and its evolution.

Teachers’ opinion about climate and landscape explanation

The semi-structured interview allowed us to expand on certain aspects. Once the questions on learning had been asked and the students’ ideas about the climate and landscape gathered, we wanted to define a more precise scale for analysis. In other words, we wanted to see how learning happens in real life in school classrooms. The questionnaire confirmed our hypothesis that there some conceptual problems and corresponding mistakes. The interview allowed us to dig deeper into these assumptions through teachers’ disciplinary and practical training. The design of a personal interview makes it easier to repeat questions to teachers, related with concrete aspects that we had already found proof of thanks to the students’ answers to the questionnaire.

For the study, four categories related to teachers’ ideas were established, allowing us to elaborate coherent explanations for the analysis of students’ education and the vulgar representations of climate change theories. This followed patterns shown by different authors regarding problems in learning and teaching geography, related to students and teachers (Horno, 1937 ; García Pérez, 2011 ; Liceras, 2000 ; Martínez and Olcina, 2019 ).

Teacher training: the academic background of the teachers interviewed is apparent in the basic statistical data we gathered. We asked them when they complete their continuous teacher training, how long it takes, at what time of day, where, and what topics they study. Given the inaccuracy of some responses, we asked them again to specify when they studied, if it was in their free time, in the evening after class, during summer courses, a Cefire course Footnote 17 etc.

Student difficulties regarding the topic of the climate. We tried to understand what the main difficulties are which hinder the effectiveness of the explanations they bring to the subject matter and the problems they encounter when trying to explain topics to their students when teaching about the climate, climate change, and the Ontinyent landscape. To be more precise, we asked them again about knowledge gaps and the procedures and didactic learning difficulties they encounter when explaining these topics.

Teaching methodologies: classroom strategies. We wanted to identify what teachers’ perceptions are regarding how to explain the climate in order to understand their opinion as a teacher on education about the climate and landscape, the relationship between the climate and landscape in the Clariano river landscape in the municipality of Ontinyent, and by which means they explain the problem of climate change to their students in the class. We aimed to understand how they lay out the topic with the textbook in addition to their own explanations using local data or any other means.

which Concepts teachers value and believe necessary to their explanations: climate, weather, climate change, minimum average temperature, night-time irradiation, sunlight, greenhouse effect, albedo effect, cold drop, and landscape. The scale is designed for them to evaluate the concept in line with their use or evaluation of it, with 0 being “nothing” (I don’t use it or deem it useful), 1 “little”, 2 “quite” and 4 “a lot”.

For this article, we will present a summary of the analysis for each category in line with the questions asked and answered by the teachers.

If we analyze the results of the interviews regarding teacher training , most participants, 12 out of 14, revealed that they completed their training outside working hours. Only two teachers answered that certain times were set aside in their work timetable for training purposes. In general, training takes place in the evening or summer, at the cost of their free time. The Cefire courses Footnote 18 were the most common option for continuous training. In the end, their training was reliant on the personal availabilities of teachers who had to bear the responsibility of their training outside school hours and its costs. This infringes the challenges highlighted by different international geography partnerships and the IGU’s Footnote 19 declarations where they recommend geography training as a necessity for primary and secondary school teachers (De Miguel et al., 2016 ; De Miguel, 2017 ). However, it cannot be denied that nowadays, with regard to work and school organization and structure, the school system and political decisions on education result in scarce teacher training to the detriment of teachers’ intentions. It is a pathway that presents too many obstacles for them to be able to commit to potential interests including didactics, innovation, and scientific knowledge about climate change. Rather it relies on the individual will and sense of responsibility of teachers, as reflected in this teacher’s answer Footnote 20 :

“Outside of school hours, through the completion of courses such as Cefire, reading scientific articles published in journals, watching documentaries, TV programs, etc.”

As regards students and the main learning difficulties when it comes to the climate and landscape, teachers understand and outline 25 problems in total which have been categorized into five groups, and the problems which appear in Fig. 4 are broken down into percentages according to the frequency with which they appeared in teachers’ answers, which was in this order: Field of Study (5 problems, 18 references), Student Characteristics (7 problems, 14 references), Didactic Materials (5 problems, 9 references), Teaching Staff (5 problems, 9 references) and School Context (3 problems, 5 references).

The inner ring represents the relative frequency of each difficulty within its group. The outer ring represents the absolute frequency of each difficulty within the whole array of difficulties.

The problems which are identified the most and repeated most frequently are the need to experience the topic outside of the classroom and the theoretical complexity of the content, the spread of data to be used on the topic, the lack of basic education among students, and inter-disciplinary coordination. The rest of the factors highlighted by one or more teachers included the conceptual ideas and errors already held by students, the lack of continuity in the educational stages to tackle curricular topics or the objectives of the school. The teachers’ answers justify the importance of taking them into account when making changes for innovation, the integration of subject matters, and working on projects and problems relevant to the student. Geography is a science explained through other sciences; these ideas, as well as those previously mentioned, were expressed by the teachers interviewed, as summarized by this teacher:

“On the one hand, the content is approached in an isolated way in some subjects and, in my opinion, it should be studied in “all” subject areas. There should be coordination among teachers, as well as continuity between stages and courses, providing a contextualised approach applied to their surroundings. Consequently, their families, the authorities and the rest of the community should participate in their studies. If, furthermore, we don’t get out of the “ordinary classroom” scenario in order to observe, evaluate, analyze, apply knowledge, etc., the student ends up viewing a real problem which affects them directly as an abstract foreign concept, “something we talk about but has nothing to do with me”.

Geography is a science that requires practice, so the main problem mentioned is the need for contact with the environment. It is relevant for the student to study the climate and landscape. The theoretical complexity of the topic combines with the education received by the pupil, the materials used, and the academic context, but how do teachers tackle the subject to give answers and explain the problems of school geography lessons with climate problems and the environmental consequences? (Santiago, 2008 ).

We will now look at how teachers organize and handle their explanations to respond to these difficulties. The methodological aspects outlined in Table 3 demonstrate the 27 aspects the teachers associated with their teaching and the study of the climate. These factors belong to three main groups: materials and resources (13), methodologies (7), and type of activities (7). Most teachers use the textbook (10), documentaries and videos (7), local articles and data (6), illustrations, and the internet (5) for support, as a basis for the information to be studied in the classroom. In addition, but to a lesser extent, they use information about extreme weather events, climograph, or personal experiences related to the climate. The second group relates to the methods used. Environmental experimentation and research appear as the main strategy for learning alongside democratic training, the development of knowledge using previous ideas, cooperative learning, and interactive methods. Finally, the third group encompasses the activities undertaken in tandem with the methodology: brainstorming, understanding of reading materials, presenting projects, debates, and data analysis.

Some methodological aspects about resources, activities, and strategies coincide with those regularly used for teaching and learning about the climate (Romero, 2010 ; Martínez and López, 2016 ; Olcina, 2017 ), such as the textbook, the use of data and graphs, maps and activities for the interpretation and analysis of data. However, although there are aspects which could be included generically, there are no references to specific or innovative aspects for the study of the climate such as thematic maps, satellite images, the creation of monthly rain diagrams, constructing a laboratory, gathering data about the weather on a daily basis (Cruz, 2010 ) or learning based on projects or interdisciplinary projects (Rekalde and García, 2015 ).

The contrast between the difficulties that teachers observe among their students and the teaching they practice indicates that, without specific continuous teacher training, teachers’ thoughts and intentions do not correspond with their practice to a large extent. In other words, teachers are aware of the difficulties, but they cannot utilize methods such as methodological changes and specific resources for the design of activities related to the improvement of climate study at school.

In the end, we are interested in finding out what value teachers attribute to their explanations of independent and necessary concepts to explain climate and climate change. Here we have to highlight, as can be observed in Fig. 5 , the result obtained regarding the frequency of use for its evaluation. Teachers use, with a frequency of over 50%, the concepts of climate change, landscape, the greenhouse effect, climate, and weather compared with, at less than 50%, the minimum average temperature, cold drops, and sunlight. Night-time irradiation and the albedo effect were practically mentioned by one teacher.

The graph bars show how teachers make use of these concepts. The frequency of use of these concepts, represented by colors, shows the percentage of use of each notion by teachers on a scale from 0 (never) to 3 (very frequently).

The results show that teachers identify some concepts as more important to explain climate change in class. Thanks to the analysis carried out with the questionnaire, we were able to demonstrate the confusion experienced by students about the climate and weather, the mistaken identification of the average temperature as a piece of data that explains the climate, or the confusion about the causes of climate change. Teachers attribute relative value to minimum average temperatures, night-time irradiation, the albedo effect of sunlight. Science, on the other hand, explains and draws links between climate change and the increase in night-time temperatures to explain global warming, one of the causes of climate change, as expressed in a report and evaluations by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (Houghton; Callander and Varney, 1992 ):

“Average warming over parts of the Northern Hemisphere mid-latitude continents has been found to be largely characterized by increases in minimum (night-time) rather than maximum (daytime) temperatures.” (p. 7)

“A notable feature over considerable areas of the continental land masses of the Northern Hemisphere is that warming over the last few decades is primarily due to an increase in night-time rather than daytime temperatures.” (p. 21).

The school geography curriculum in Spain prescribes the complexity of curricular content, in line with the cognitive level of the pupil, to be studied during primary and secondary education. Studying with a progression of knowledge is important. During primary education, the curriculum is based on the physical environment, studying the air, then the atmosphere, atmospheric phenomena, weather elements, measurements and recording, the difference between weather and climate, the characteristics of different climates, and explanations for climate change (Martínez and López, 2016 ). During secondary education, they expand on causal and complex thinking, physical and human geography, and ecology from an analytical and later scalar perspective (Romero, 2010 ). Here lies the problem in properly understanding knowledge development processes on the topic of the climate. The teachers we interviewed mentioned this when they identified students’ learning difficulties, identifying their lack of basic training, their idealization of concepts, or the discontinuity in the curricular development of the topic. However, this contrasts with how the teachers evaluated basic concepts used to explain the climate, which is more or less the same as those found in the textbooks, related to the curriculum, rather than those necessary for a comprehensive causal explanation, such as that of climate change. As such, sunlight is only valued by one of the teachers interviewed and used very little. In Ontinyent itself, data over the last 30 years reveals the progressive increase in annual temperatures (Souto, 2018b ), which is not caused so much by sunlight—the same percentage of sunlight hours at certain times of the day is maintained—but rather by night-time irradiation. This concept was only mentioned by two teachers who use it very little.

As we can see, teachers mainly follow the topics in the curriculum as embodied in the textbooks, with the exception of the local reference to the Clariano river. They agree on the importance of this element of the landscape and understanding the significance of its dynamic relationship with the climate. The teachers observe the difficulty students have when studying the climate without leaving the classroom and speak of the need for more commensurate strategies. However, they maintain school traditions and routines, the use of the textbook, and standard curricular content.

Conclusions

The conclusions of the statistical study we carried out confirm the representativeness of the sample, while the analysis of responses verifies the substantiality of the surveyed population in tracking certain stereotypes in the “practical sense” (Domingos and Diniz, 2019 ) and the mechanic reproduction of climate and landscape concepts.

The results endorse the use of “practical sense” ideas Footnote 21 when it comes to everyday explanations regarding the climate, climate change, and its relationship with the landscape. We expected to explain the traditional method of learning about the climate, conditioned by students’ social representations. In this way, we concluded that the mistaken stereotypes and perceptions of a part of the academic population in primary, secondary, and baccalaureate, as well as higher education, are related with the assumption of “common sense”, derived from an everyday practical sense, to which authority is granted when “the facts” are reflected in social communication media.

The study revealed that students’ conceptual and stereotypical errors in the different educational stages vary according to the type (climate, weather, climate change, landscape) and stage (primary, secondary, university). They are persistent and continuous, given that they are repeated and appear anchored in the ideas and knowledge development of students regarding the problems and the study of the climate throughout their education.

We highlight the continuity regarding the manner of reasoning, although representations of abstract thinking are distinguished among secondary school and university students. In these stages, representations of concrete thinking, characteristic of lower cognitive levels and stages, are considered in the school curriculum for the teaching of the climate (Martínez and Olcina, 2019 ).

In the mind maps drawn by students about the climate and learning about the climate, we ascertained that the media and education are the most important factors in the development of knowledge among students. As regards the first, the influence of the internet and digital social communication media grows every day on students as a source of information, whilst other traditional sources of learning and knowledge such as school and family fall behind. As regards teaching, we highlight the role of the teacher in classes: how they teach, the obstacles of the school system, methodology, and the selection of conceptual aspects, procedures, and attitudes which predispose a certain education of the climate, its materialization on the landscape and the evidence of climate change.

Ultimately, the representativeness of the study helps us decipher one of the initial conjectures of this research: “stereotypes and conceptual errors about the climate and landscape are repeated in different statistical demographic cohorts” . This means that the educational system reinforces the ideas derived from common sense and those who transform these stereotypes into alternative arguments as a result of academic education (basic and university) are scarce.

In terms of the students and given the considerable degree of confusion between the weather and climate or about the causes of climate change in the educational stages, we showed how social representations have had an impact on children, teenagers, and young adults developing their knowledge about the climate and landscape, influenced more by the presence of vulgar theories on the topic than by the understanding and application of school concepts.

As regards the teachers, we showed how teachers’ intentions for methodological change collide with difficulties in specific continuous professional development. The obstacles to developing different methodologies, resources, and innovative activities are not overcome by teacher training in order to provide comprehensive explanations about climate change to their students. The increase of the influence of the media on students’ education about climate change facilitates students’ development of knowledge about the climate and environmental changes filled with errors and stereotypes. Some situations cannot be compared or analyzed in a classroom environment, either due to a lack of time dedicated to these topics or due to the obstacles inferred by teaching practice, such as the absence of specific training.

Failing to contest these spontaneous conceptions and academic traditions and routines leads to academic concepts being overshadowed by an incomplete explanation of the climate, resulting in a partial explanation based on vulgar and superficial ideas.

Data availability

The article directly contains the data used to carry out the analysis pertinent to the study. If you are interested in the rest of the data gathered for the research, it can be made available by reasonable written request to the authors.

The Social(S) group is recognized by the University of Valencia as a research group, including teachers from the non-university educational system as collaborators. For more details on the educational background of the group, you can check http://socialsuv.org/educacionsocioambiental/ .

Accordingly, we can highlight the doctoral theses by Diana Santana, “School participation and environmental governance: an educational dialectic” and Diego García, “The social representation of the rural environment: an analysis of school geography”, both presented in 2019, alongside more than ten Master’s theses developed between 2011 and 2019 which tackle the line of research related with Socio-environmental Education.

EcoRiba is a program local to Riba-roja de Túria in Valencia, Spain, which aims to showcase the landscape in order to invigorate the territory. It was presented to society in February 2016 and underpins all the objectives of this sustainable strategy for socio-environmental education.

This is what we call students who have obstacles and hindrances to achieving the objectives and basic skills set out in the school curriculum for a certain age. The book “La invisibilidad de las periferias escolares” [The invisibility of marginalised students] by J. García and X. Souto ( 2020 ) contains a compilation of a research project, thesis, and innovative educational proposals for use in classrooms by teachers who carry out this work with their students.

Group subsidiary dedicated to research and innovation in the education of history and geography at the University of Valencia, Socials group which refers to the understanding of social and environmental problems when teaching and learning about the climate and landscape. https://www.uv.es/uvweb/servicio-investigacion/es/grupos-investigacion/grupo-1285949714098.html?p2=GIUV2015-217 .

The work we referred to pertained to research carried out within the Research in Specific Didactics Doctoral Programme at the University of Valencia, in the line of research of Geography Didactics. Namely, the doctoral thesis entitled “Knowledge of the climate and landscape: from analysis to a teaching proposal”.

The Educational Innovation Project, “teacher training entrenched in the environment from the perspective of school practice” by the Generalitat Valencia with the code UV-SFPIE-GER18-85040, was developed during the three academic years from 2016 to 2019 by teachers in Ontinyent and the Department of Experimental and Social Science Didactics at the University of Valencia. This facilitated relationship-building with teachers, schools, and local bodies which was a guarantee for the sample and data collection.

Data about the Ontinyent population from the year 2016 extracted from the 2019 municipal sheets which can be found on the Generalitat Valencia’s Statistics Portal: http://www.pegv.gva.es/auto/scpd/web/FITXES/Fichas/46184.pdf .

Representations held by Kindergarten pupils were studied, but the explanation thereof is not reflected in the article, because it was a specific study of drawings.

Hereafter, we will use the term Secondary Education to refer to Compulsory Secondary Education.

For this article, pictorial representations were not analyzed.

Census data from the Valencian Statistics Institute (IVE).

The procedure to validate the questionnaire consisted of sending a first model of 84 questions so that the five experts could evaluate it. With the comments and assessment of each item, we have selected the most relevant questions to be able to analyze the students’ learning results; an exchange of views that have been archived, but not published. 10 questions have been selected from these results in this article.

See note 8, an Educational Innovation Project created with the objective of both students and teachers improving the teaching and learning about the climate and local landscape.

See note 4 of this article.

IPCC is the acronym for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, made up of an international group of experts and part of the UN, which generates periodical reports with studies and recommendations about climate change.

In the Community of Valencia, the Cefire is responsible for providing state-run courses for the continued professional development of teachers.

See previous note.

IGU is the acronym for the International Geographical Union.

Response received to the question regarding when and on what topic they take classes, given by a biology teacher from a public school which provides compulsory secondary education.

We follow the theories of Moisés Domingos regarding Pierre Bourdieu and Sergi Moscovici’s ideas.

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This work is part of the project: The social representations of school content in the development of teaching skills , R&D Projects on Knowledge Development and Scientific Consolidation and System Technology R + D + i (Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities), reference PGC2018-094491-B-C32, and co-financed with EU FEDER funds. This work was supported by the research project “The social representations of educational content in the development of teaching competencies” [PGC2018-094491-B-C32], funded by the Ministry of Science, Innovation, and Universities of Spain and co-funded by the ERDF.

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Campo-Pais, B., Morales-Hernández, A.J., Morote-Seguido, Á. et al. Environmental problems and Geographic education. A case study: Learning about the climate and landscape in Ontinyent (Spain). Humanit Soc Sci Commun 8 , 90 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-021-00761-6

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A short definition for Migration Studies

The movement of groups and individuals from one place to another, involving a change of usual residence. Migration is usually distinguished from mobility in general by conventions of spatial and temporal scale. For example, by convention international migration requires crossing a national boundary for an actual or intended period of at least one year. Residential mobility , by contrast, may consist of a short-distance move between properties in the same city.

Typologies of migration differentiate between internal and international migration, and the two forms are usually studied separately. Looked at historically, however, the movement of people long predates nation-states; homo sapiens left Africa some 150,000 years ago. Geographers are interested in inter-regional, rural-urban, and urban-rural movements, especially in societies with low birth and death rates where migration is often the major cause of population change ( see counter-urbanization ). In 2008, about 3 per cent of Americans moved to another county, for example, and in China, it is estimated that there were 140 million migrants, mostly from rural to urban areas (Fan 2008 ).

The major focus of current geographical work, however, is international migration. It is estimated that there were 215 million people living outside their country of birth in 2010, around 3 per cent of the world’s population. But this surprisingly low number has disproportionate effects on the places and countries linked by flows, economically, socially, culturally, and—increasingly—politically. This type of migration is further classified by time, differentiating temporary (or short-term), permanent (or long-term), and circular (including seasonal) forms. Whereas permanent migration was once considered the norm—especially during the era of colonial settlement in the 19th century—it is now recognized that growing numbers of people are implicated in migrations at a variety of spatial and temporal scales. Transnational migrants may live in two places at once, or at least shuttle between them on a regular basis in addition to sustaining meaningful inter-connections. Further distinctions are often made between legal and illegal immigration .

Beginning with the work of Ravenstein , geographers and others have sought to explain and model migration. An elementary dichotomy between forced and voluntary migration has proved difficult to sustain analytically, not least because of the rise in human trafficking . Can children accompanying adults, for example, be said to choose to move? The globalization of human flows has not only drawn in more counties and regions into the world migration pattern, but it has also eroded once-basic division between sending (or home, origin) and receiving (or host, destination) countries. Many are now both; the Russian federation is in the top three emigration and immigration countries. Rather than explain migration in terms of ‘push’ factors at an origin and ‘pull’ factors at a destination, the metaphor of a revolving door may be more appropriate. In a widely cited textbook, Castles and Miller (2009) discuss three broad kinds of explanation: first, neoclassical economics , focusing mainly on the individual level ( see Todaro model ); second, historical-structural, including world systems theory ; and third, migration-systems theory , including a concentration on the role of social networks (see also Massey 1999 for a more elaborate list of theories). The observation that migration flows along distinct ‘corridors’ (e.g. Mexico–USA, Turkey–Germany) fits with this theory. But, compared with the 1960s and 1970s, when geographers applied various spatial interaction models ( see gravity model ) to migration, there is now less discipline-specific research on the causes and consequences of migration.

Geographical research on migration is far-reaching, covering both historical past and the present (King et al. 2010 ). Once considered a peripheral subject in social sciences, the study of migration is increasingly deemed central. Paradoxically, given the changes in personal and social mobility associated with globalization, it is ever harder to distinguish migration from the greater register of flows (King 2002 ); are backpackers migrants? There is a clear trend towards studying migrants, their experiences, biographies, families, emotions, etc., as contrasted with the demographic fact of migration. Migration is generally a selective process, by age, skill, gender, race, class, and health, and it may also be implicated with critical lifecourse events. Recent research foci have included the impact of climate change, the migration-development nexus , children’s migration, international student migration, and the heightened security and surveillance directed at moving bodies of all kinds. See also immigration ; iom .

Castree, N., Kitchin, R., & Rogers, A. (2013).  " Migration ." In A Dictionary of Human Geography . Oxford University Press. Retrieved 27 Oct. 2021 

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In This Article Expand or collapse the "in this article" section Population Geography

Introduction, general overviews.

• Reference and Data Resources
• Spatial Demography
• Human Capital
• Internal Migration
• International Migration/Immigration
• Residential Mobility
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Population Geography by Rachel S. Franklin LAST REVIEWED: 19 December 2016 LAST MODIFIED: 26 February 2013 DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199874002-0065

Population geography is traditionally understood to encompass the spatial variation and analysis of the demographic components of change: migration, fertility, and mortality. One statement that can be made without reservation is that the boundary between population geography and demography, sociology, or economics can be difficult to locate. The consensus is that demographers focus more on fertility research, whereas population geographers tend to focus on migration. Indeed, fertility research and segregation studies, to name another topic, have tended to be dominated by other disciplines, although this is changing. With the advent of more-sophisticated methods, in particular those related to geographical information systems (GIS) or remote sensing, and the ever-increasing availability of data at multiple spatial scales, the fundamental importance of space and geography has become more mainstream in population studies across the social sciences. This evolution is apparent in the development of a multidisciplinary subfield called spatial demography that is neither traditional population geography nor pure demography. As can be easily discerned by the citations included in this article, the core competency of population geographers is internal migration along with population distribution and composition. In the subfield of population and environment, geographers have made strong contributions in the area of land-use change, perhaps because of the geographers’ early comfort with remote sensing techniques.

Although population geography is, in the early 21st century, a well-established subfield of human geography, this was not always the case. Trewartha 1953 is recognized as the original call for the establishment of a population geography subfield within the discipline. Up until that point, population was of course a valuable element of geographic research, but it existed more as a descriptor or contextual variable in much of the analysis of the time. Since then, population geography has been the subject of a great deal of contemplation on the part of its practitioners. Zelinsky 1966 represents an early attempt to describe population geography. More-recent articles, such as Findlay and Graham 1991 , Graham 2000 , and Ogden 1998 , not only provide some sense of what population geography consists of but also are good expressions of contemporaneous growing pains experienced by the subfield. Those seeking a pure description, or review, of what population geography research is will be best served by Gober and Tyner 2003 , whereas those in search of basic historical context on world population change can do no better than Livi-Bacci 2007 . The Livi-Bacci book will also be quite helpful to those seeking background information on some of the fundamental theoretical debates, such as Malthusian limits to population growth, that have framed population research over the past decades.

Findlay, Allan M., and Elspeth Graham. “The Challenge Facing Population Geography.” Progress in Human Geography 15.2 (1991): 149–162.

A somewhat dated but still quite valid review piece on population geography’s relationship to the broader discipline of geography and to demography. Available online for purchase or by subscription.

Gober, Patricia, and James A. Tyner. “Population Geography.” In Geography in America at the Dawn of the 21st Century . Edited by Gary L. Gaile and Cort J. Willmott, 185–199. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.

This chapter of Geography in America provides brief but thorough coverage of the main streams of research in population geography. Like other chapters in this book, the chapter on population geography gives a thorough assessment of the research questions, methods, and theories in the field.

Graham, Elspeth. “What Kind of Theory for What Kind of Population Geography?” International Journal of Population Geography 6.4 (2000): 257–272.

DOI: 10.1002/1099-1220(200007/08)6:4%3C257::AID-IJPG189%3E3.0.CO;2-#

Population geography, like demography, has been criticized for an overemphasis on empirical work, to the detriment of theory development. Graham argues for more concentration on the latter. Available online for purchase or by subscription.

Livi-Bacci, Massimo. A Concise History of World Population . 4th ed. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2007.

Not a book on population geography, per se, but an excellent survey of global population growth and change over time, as well as a knowledgeable guide to basic theories of population growth.

Ogden, Philip E. “Population Geography.” Progress in Human Geography 22.1 (1998): 105–114.

DOI: 10.1191/030913298675423648

One of a triumvirate of reviews by this author in this journal, this article assesses the landscape of population geography at a time when the subfield was experiencing a jolt of expansion. Available online for purchase or by subscription.

Trewartha, Glenn T. “A Case for Population Geography.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 43.2 (1953): 71–97.

An exhortation on the part of a former president of the Association of American Geographers (this was his presidential address) to give population its proper due in the overall discipline of geography. This piece is often cited as the origination of population geography as its own subdiscipline. Available online for purchase or by subscription.

Zelinsky, Wilbur. A Prologue to Population Geography . Prentice-Hall Foundations of Economic Geography. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1966.

One of the original efforts to offer an introduction to population geography as a subfield of geography. No longer current, but good for historical context.

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Case Study: The Amazon Rainforest

The Amazon in context

Tropical rainforests are often considered to be the “cradles of biodiversity.” Though they cover only about 6% of the Earth’s land surface, they are home to over 50% of global biodiversity. Rainforests also take in massive amounts of carbon dioxide and release oxygen through photosynthesis, which has also given them the nickname “lungs of the planet.” They also store very large amounts of carbon, and so cutting and burning their biomass contributes to global climate change. Many modern medicines are derived from rainforest plants, and several very important food crops originated in the rainforest, including bananas, mangos, chocolate, coffee, and sugar cane.

In order to qualify as a tropical rainforest, an area must receive over 250 centimeters of rainfall each year and have an average temperature above 24 degrees centigrade, as well as never experience frosts. The Amazon rainforest in South America is the largest in the world. The second largest is the Congo in central Africa, and other important rainforests can be found in Central America, the Caribbean, and Southeast Asia. Brazil contains about 40% of the world’s remaining tropical rainforest. Its rainforest covers an area of land about 2/3 the size of the continental United States.

There are countless reasons, both anthropocentric and ecocentric, to value rainforests. But they are one of the most threatened types of ecosystems in the world today. It’s somewhat difficult to estimate how quickly rainforests are being cut down, but estimates range from between 50,000 and 170,000 square kilometers per year. Even the most conservative estimates project that if we keep cutting down rainforests as we are today, within about 100 years there will be none left.

How does a rainforest work?

Rainforests are incredibly complex ecosystems, but understanding a few basics about their ecology will help us understand why clear-cutting and fragmentation are such destructive activities for rainforest biodiversity.

High biodiversity in tropical rainforests means that the interrelationships between organisms are very complex. A single tree may house more than 40 different ant species, each of which has a different ecological function and may alter the habitat in distinct and important ways. Ecologists debate about whether systems that have high biodiversity are stable and resilient, like a spider web composed of many strong individual strands, or fragile, like a house of cards. Both metaphors are likely appropriate in some cases. One thing we can be certain of is that it is very difficult in a rainforest system, as in most other ecosystems, to affect just one type of organism. Also, clear cutting one small area may damage hundreds or thousands of established species interactions that reach beyond the cleared area.

Pollination is a challenge for rainforest trees because there are so many different species, unlike forests in the temperate regions that are often dominated by less than a dozen tree species. One solution is for individual trees to grow close together, making pollination simpler, but this can make that species vulnerable to extinction if the one area where it lives is clear cut. Another strategy is to develop a mutualistic relationship with a long-distance pollinator, like a specific bee or hummingbird species. These pollinators develop mental maps of where each tree of a particular species is located and then travel between them on a sort of “trap-line” that allows trees to pollinate each other. One problem is that if a forest is fragmented then these trap-line connections can be disrupted, and so trees can fail to be pollinated and reproduce even if they haven’t been cut.

The quality of rainforest soils is perhaps the most surprising aspect of their ecology. We might expect a lush rainforest to grow from incredibly rich, fertile soils, but actually, the opposite is true. While some rainforest soils that are derived from volcanic ash or from river deposits can be quite fertile, generally rainforest soils are very poor in nutrients and organic matter. Rainforests hold most of their nutrients in their live vegetation, not in the soil. Their soils do not maintain nutrients very well either, which means that existing nutrients quickly “leech” out, being carried away by water as it percolates through the soil. Also, soils in rainforests tend to be acidic, which means that it’s difficult for plants to access even the few existing nutrients. The section on slash and burn agriculture in the previous module describes some of the challenges that farmers face when they attempt to grow crops on tropical rainforest soils, but perhaps the most important lesson is that once a rainforest is cut down and cleared away, very little fertility is left to help a forest regrow.

What is driving deforestation in the Amazon?

Many factors contribute to tropical deforestation, but consider this typical set of circumstances and processes that result in rapid and unsustainable rates of deforestation. This story fits well with the historical experience of Brazil and other countries with territory in the Amazon Basin.

Population growth and poverty encourage poor farmers to clear new areas of rainforest, and their efforts are further exacerbated by government policies that permit landless peasants to establish legal title to land that they have cleared.

At the same time, international lending institutions like the World Bank provide money to the national government for large-scale projects like mining, construction of dams, new roads, and other infrastructure that directly reduces the forest or makes it easier for farmers to access new areas to clear.

The activities most often encouraging new road development are timber harvesting and mining. Loggers cut out the best timber for domestic use or export, and in the process knock over many other less valuable trees. Those trees are eventually cleared and used for wood pulp, or burned, and the area is converted into cattle pastures. After a few years, the vegetation is sufficiently degraded to make it not profitable to raise cattle, and the land is sold to poor farmers seeking out a subsistence living.

Regardless of how poor farmers get their land, they often are only able to gain a few years of decent crop yields before the poor quality of the soil overwhelms their efforts, and then they are forced to move on to another plot of land. Small-scale farmers also hunt for meat in the remaining fragmented forest areas, which reduces the biodiversity in those areas as well.

Another important factor not mentioned in the scenario above is the clearing of rainforest for industrial agriculture plantations of bananas, pineapples, and sugar cane. These crops are primarily grown for export, and so an additional driver to consider is consumer demand for these crops in countries like the United States.

These cycles of land use, which are driven by poverty and population growth as well as government policies, have led to the rapid loss of tropical rainforests. What is lost in many cases is not simply biodiversity, but also valuable renewable resources that could sustain many generations of humans to come. Efforts to protect rainforests and other areas of high biodiversity is the topic of the next section.

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AQA GCSE GEOGRAPHY PAPER 1 CASE STUDIES AND KEY EXAMPLES BOOKLET

Subject: Geography

Age range: 14-16

Resource type: Assessment and revision

Last updated

14 March 2024

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AQA GCSE GEOGRAPHY

A great revision resource for AQA Geography GCSE students that focuses on the key case studies and key examples.

PDF and Word doc provided so can be adapted to your students needs.

Paper 1: Living with the physical environment Case Studies and Key Examples The challenge of natural hazards – Question 1 The living world – Question 2 Coastal landscapes in the UK – Question 3 River landscapes in the UK – Question 4

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AQA GCSE GEOGRAPHY REVISION

Paper 1 and Paper 2 Case Studies Booklet Knowledge recall questions and answer Srudent Guide on how to answer each style of questions with model examples

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