Teaching outdoor and adventure activities: an investigation of a primary school physical education professional development p

Chapter Three: Methodology 
This study seeks to describe, analyse and understand teachers’ and children’s 
experiences of a contextualised, whole school professional development programme in 
primary physical education. A research design had to be identified which would provide 
the structure to evaluate the effectiveness of the various aspects of the programme.
Overviews of the theoretical perspectives that underpin this study were outlined in the 
introduction to this thesis and this chapter outlines the research design in light of the 
theoretical framework. This chapter is divided into five sections, each section outlining 
a particular aspect of the design of the study. The first section explains the research 
design through the conceptual framework for the study including the aims and 
objectives for each phase of the study, while section two discusses the various data 
collection methods utilised in the study. The third section describes the data analysis 
and the chapter continues with the ethical considerations and concludes by positioning 
the researcher within the study context.
The research methodology is a case study with mixed methods being utilised 
Phase 1 is quantitative methods driven followed by a second qualitative data collection.
Phase 3 and 4 are qualitative methods driven with quantitative methods being used 
simultaneously. Overall the study has an inductive drive, with each study planned and 
conducted to answer particular research questions. The real strength in using mixed 
methods is to obtain a different level of data providing together a more comprehensive 
picture than any earlier method on its own (Morse, 2003).
Strategy of Inquiry - Research Design 
A case study approach was chosen as it offers the potential of gaining access to a 
rich source of data and a deep understanding of the complexities of the school. ‘It is the 
study of the particularity and complexity of a single case, coming to understand its 
activity within important circumstances’ (Stake, 1995, p. xi). In this thesis the case is 
the school, bounded by the school environment, the principal, teachers and pupils, and 
the important circumstances are the professional development programme at the core of 
the study. This school became the focus of the study, when the school’s principal 
recognised a need for professional development in the area of physical education and 
approached the physical education staff in a college of education to facilitate this. The 
author accepted this invitation and acknowledged that this could also be a research 

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opportunity. Defining and describing a case study is a difficult task. Lincoln and Guba 
(1985) acknowledge the difficulty in describing a case study when they write, ‘while the 
literature is replete with references to case studies and with examples of case study 
reports, there seems to be little agreement about what a case study is’ (p. 360). Gillham 
(2000) provides a detailed definition of case studies; 
A case study is one which investigates the above [a group such as a family, 
class, office, hospital ward, institution or large scale community] to answer 
specific research questions (that may be very loose to begin with) and seeks a 
range of different evidence, evidence which is there in the case setting, and 
which has to be abstracted and collated to get the best possible answers to the 
research question. No one kind or source of evidence is likely to be sufficient 
(or sufficiently valid) on its own right. This use of multiple sources of evidence, 
each with its strengths and weaknesses, is a key characteristic of case study 
research.’ (p. 1-2) 
Many authors have classified case studies in to various categories. Stake (2000) 
identifies two types of case study, intrinsic – which focuses on the individual case and 
instrumental – which studies a number of cases to understand a wider puzzlement.
Stenhouse (1985) identified four categories: a. ethnographic case study – a single case 
studied in its own right through participant observation and interview; b. evaluative case 
study – which aims to provide an evaluation of policies and programmes for example 
and may be single or a collection of cases; c. educational case study - which aims to ‘ 
enrich the thinking and discourses of educators whether by the development of 
educational theory or by the refinement of prudence through systematic and reflective 
documentation of evidence’ (p. 49); d. action research case study – which is concerned 
with the development of a case through feedback of information which can inform 
revision or refinement of the action. Yin’s (1993) categorisation is similar but contains 
only three categories: a. an exploratory case study aimed at defining the questions and 
hypotheses of a subsequent study; b. a descriptive case study which describes the 
phenomenon in its own context and c. an explanatory case study which data bearing on 
a cause-effect relationship – explaining which causes produced which effects. These 
categories help locate the key features of case study and provide a framework for this 
research. The use of the term ‘case study’ in this study has features of Stenhouse’s 
(1985) educational and evaluative studies and Yin’s (1993) descriptive case study.
Thus various methods were employed, description and explanation sought, data 
analysed and themes developed and the case studied to shed light on the research 
questions.

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Thus for the purposes of this study the case is taken to mean a particular school, 
an urban, mixed gender, primary school [teachers: N=28 (year 1), N=27 (year 2) and 
pupils: N=780 (year 1), N=800 (year 2)] the school community of Principal, teachers 
and pupils and the variables that construct physical education and professional 
development in physical education in the school and its wider social context. A mixture 
of qualitative and quantitative research methods including interviews, focus group 
discussions, observations, teacher lesson evaluations, questionnaires, self-efficacy 
questionnaires and physical measurements were used during the study.
The study was divided into four consecutive phases, each of which informed the 
next phase of the research. The study concluded with an evaluation of the overall 
professional development programme on completion. Although much of the research 
design was established prior to its inception, aspects were ‘emergent’ (Guba and 
Lincoln, 1985). The emergent research design was primarily associated with the 
programme itself, and the methods of data collection that were used. The research 
design provided a firm structure within which the methodology remained flexible and 
was changed relatively easily.