Case Study Research in Education Policy: Contemporary Insights and Future Directions

Abstract

Case study research holds a critical if contested place in studies of education policy. This chapter briefly describes case study methodology, focusing especially on its relevance to building knowledge of and for education policy.  It then examines case study research on contemporary accountability, school choice, and school-community engagement policies. Taken together, the case studies advance institutional, leadership, and social capital theories to illuminate the processes through which policy variously redresses or retrenches educational inequities related to race, social class, and ability. The case studies thus reveal who contemporary education policy works for, in what contexts, and to what consequences. The chapter concludes by identifying areas for advancing case study research in education policy.  Specifically, it calls on case study researchers to attend more carefully to the causal processes that connect education policy to its consequences and to expand conceptions of the contexts in and through which education policy operates.

Keywords: case study research; process causality; policy implementation; accountability; school choice; school-community engagement