Case Study Approach

Essay : Case study - approach & research

SECTION I

What is a ‘case study’ approach?

“What is going on” concerning “case study”? The phenomenon must be approached by asking research questions under the logic of reasoning such as what is meant by “case” and what is meant by “study” and what is meant by “case study?” What is meant by “approach” and what is meant by “case study approach”? “Where does the concept have its origins in academia?”

An enquiry into the question is limited in this assignment to legal education more specifically formal tertiary education in the sense that “case law review” is considered the “main form of research in law, forming part of literature review” . This is because “case study” as a phenomenon has not yet

A synonym for ‘approach’ is ‘method’. “Case (law) approach” and “case (law) method” so as to avoid confusion is used as having the same meaning. “Case law” concerns real-life court decisions to “highlight and analyse legal principles applied to a set of facts in a certain context where litigating parties were embroiled in a dilemma and approached the court to resolve the disputes or to pronounce on a declaration of rights.” So a “case law approach” in this sense would mean that written material must be compiled as “case law” with that as purpose, as a learning outcome.

The phenomenon “Case study’ is referred to “as confusing and a difficult problem or question”. In order to find some resolution an “alternative definition” to the “case study approach” has been formulated by Vanwynsberghe and Kahn . These authors set out to argue that ‘case study’ is not a ‘method’ or ‘methodology’, nor a ‘research design’ or ‘strategy’ and proposes that “case study’ is a “transparadigmatic and transdisciplinary heuristic that involves the careful delineation of the phenomena for which evidence is being collected (event, concept, program, process,

The human factor. Researchers sometimes are presented with enormous challenges for which they just do not have answers. By way of example the following: In considering what everyone has come to be referred to as ‘technology”, when asked to present a paper at a world congress Professors Rias van Wyk (MIT) and Gideon Steyn (Dean, Faculty of Engineerings at the University of Pretoria), decides to present their paper by codifying “technology”. Decades later, Prof van Wyk who is considered as the leading academic in the understanding of “technology” still periodically change the definition he originally structured as “Technology is created capability: it is manifested in artefacts the purpose of which is to augment human skill”. Globally there is a massive effort at findings answers to this question for the global economy is driven by technology, a phenomenon we still do not properly understand because of the codification challenge as is evident in Prof van Wyk’s article “Technology: A fundamental structure?”