The first example is Tsang (2004) with Teachers'

personal practical knowledge and interactive decisions.

The study was conducted to investigate the role of teachers'
personal practical knowledge in interactive decision making
for three pre-service non-native ESL teachers. The research
question was formulated as follows: What role does pre-
service ESL personal practical knowledge play in their
interactive decisions? This is a case study of three pre-
service non-native ESL teachers. The three student teachers
were asked to write a language learning/teaching
autobiography, a statement of their philosophy and teaching
expectations, and a description of their favorite teachers at
the beginning of their Practice Teaching course. After-class
interviews, non-participant observations, and a video-based
method of eliciting introspective data were conducted to
triangulate the findings. Inductive analysis approach with
content analysis method was applied to analyze the collected
data. The findings of this study reveal that teachers apply
their personal practical knowledge not only in making
interactive decisions, but also in teachers' other decision-
making processes. Three implications were proposed: first,
bringing personal practical knowledge to the foreground
helps optimize the accessibility to, or potential application of,
such knowledge in the decision-making process; second, post
reflection provides an opportunity for teachers to orchestrate
both old and new aspects of personal practical knowledge
and raises consciousness of situations in which instructional
decisions, planned or immediate, are called for; and third, the
study show teachers' maxims to be an effective
operationalization of the concept of personal practical
knowledge.
The second example is Nixon & McCay (2007). The
title of their article is Collaborative writing assessment:
Sowing seeds for transformational adult learning
published in Assessing Writing 12 (2007); pp. 149-166. They
conducted a case study to answer the question, How do the
three teachers of Elementary School (Samantha, Amy,
and Natalie) assess their own students' written work?
This is a case study investigating how three elementary
teachers summatively assessed their own students' written
work over a three and one-half month period. Data collection
was conducted through interview and classroom observation,
as well as analysis of artifacts (rubrics, student reflections,
assignments, year and unit plans, and professional journals).
Data analysis was conducted through holistic data analysis:
reading, thinking aloud, coding, and drawing inferences. The
result of the study reveals that these three teachers develops
four conversational routines or structures in assessing their
students written work, namely: group gossiping or
spectating; reading/ rereading; deliberating/ reframing; and
collaboratively creating.
The third example of case study is Learner
perspectives of success in EAP writing course by
Basturkmen, Helen and Marilyn Lewis published in
Assessing Writing 8 (2002); pp. 31-46. The study set out to
investigate the following questions: How do three students
conceptualize and assess their success and the reasons for
it on an EAP writing course? and How do the students
perspectives relate to the perceptions of their teachers?
They named this an EXPLORATORY CASE STUDY
conducted in a specific course, an on-going academic writing
class at a university in New Zealand. This study involves 3
female Students and 2 teachers (one male one female) as the
participants. Data collection was conducted through
interview and email dialogues with students. Data Analysis
was conducted following analytical induction procedures:
revisited the data a number of times, individually and
together, looking for salient themes and patterns which were
then commented on in the researchers words. The findings
of the study maintain that the three students have different
views of success; teachers perceptions of their students
success vary in many respects from those of the students.
Wettes article entitled Making the instructional
curriculum as an interactive, contextualized process: case
studies of seven ESOL teachers published in Language
Teaching Research 13,4 (2009); pp. 337-365 can be taken as
the fourth example of case study. The primary aim of this
study was to answer the research question: How do
experienced teachers go about making the instructional
curriculum? This question is specified into three: (1)To
what extent is the instructional curriculum pre-planned?; (2)
How are various dimensions of the curriculum selected and
organized?; and (3) What influences shape the way the
curriculum is made? With these questions, the ultimate goal
of the study is to identify curriculum making principles and
practices that were common to a number of teachers as a
contribution to practice-based disciplinary knowledge and
second language teacher education literature.
To achieve the defined objectives, Wette conducted
what she called an interpretative case study of seven well-
qualified, experienced teachers of adult ESOL, collected
through weekly interviews and analysis of documents and
materials produced over the duration of a whole course for
each teacher. Data analysis was conducted qualitatively
through the process of coding, in which categories relevant to
the research questions .were generated from the interviews
both deductively and inductively, adopted from LeCompte
and Preissle (1993). In all, 23 main categories were
generated, each of which produced two to ten sub-categories.
Eight of the categories were generated by pre-course
interview data, and covered the teaching context, knowledge
and predictions about learners, written curriculum sources,
pre-course conceptualizations and actual planning
procedures. Categories derived from the weekly interviews
included linguistic and macro-skill curriculum components,
strategy development, influences from learners and the socio-
cultural context, teachers' reflections, ongoing planning and
main curriculum concerns. Post-course interview codes
reported on teachers' statements regarding changes from pre-
course plans and conceptualizations, emphases in and
shaping influences on the taught curriculum.
The professional knowledge and experience of the
study teachers was apparent in their ability to conceptualize
and draft plans-in readiness in the pre-course phase, to
establish rapport and diagnose learners' developmental
priorities in the initial phase, and to weave a coherent
curriculum from a variety of components and sources, taking
into account conflicting demands and not losing sight of its
global structure.
The curriculum making practices are consistent with the
findings of earlier relevant researches. These include: (1) the
pre-specified plans always need to be reconsidered in the
light of learner and contextual factors; (2) teaching an
integrated skills course involves the ability to coherently
weave combinations of linguistic, learning strategy, thematic
and socio-cultural content to create a rich learning
environment; (3) curriculum components need to be
combined in such a way that balance, variety, overall
coherence and continuity between items of conceptual
content are achieved; and (4) the use of pedagogic routines
and customary sequences in classroom management and
instruction can ease the teacher's cognitive workload and
learners' uncertainty.
However, the curriculum making accounts of the seven
teachers in this study all differ significantly from much of the
advice and information offered in language teacher education
texts, which emphasize syllabus types and rational pre-course
planning as the expense of implementation and the
instructional curriculum. The findings of this study suggest
that there is a considerable distance between theoretical
discourses on the ESOL offering practical discourses that
describe diverse, particular and dynamic occurrences.
The writer himself has ever conducted a case study
entitled, Motivation and learning strategies of a good
Indonesian EFL learner (Haryanto, 1999). The study was
designed to find out the answers to the following question:
How does motivation of Indra operate to achieve success of
EFL learning in Indonesian context? and What are the
learning strategies performed by Indra as a good Indonesian
EFL learner? This is a case study to an outperforming
Indonesian EFL learner, Indra, a pseudonym of a student of
senior high school in Indonesia.
Data were collected through the process of in-depth-
interview, participant observation, and document
examination. Data analysis was conducted using the
grounded theory adopted from Strauss and Corbin (1990)
including open coding, axial coding, selective coding; and
story line development. Open coding is a process of labeling
phenomena which in turn revealed categories from the
observed phenomena. These categories were interrelated each
other following the paradigmatic relation covering: causal
condition phenomena action outcome through the
process of axial coding. The interrelationship was completed
through the process of selective coding which in turn reveal a
storyline reflecting the relationship of the core category and
the peripheral categories. The story line was then
manipulated into theoretical description. For illustration, the
overall process of grounded theory is illustrated in the
following page.
In the end, this case study investigates that motivation
and learning strategies reveal the main factors influencing the
success in English learning; motivation fluctuation was
influenced by some other factors; and that dichotomy of
motivation as intrinsic and extrinsic was not clear. The
mixture of both kinds of motivation had lead to the learning
strategies leading to success of Indra in EFL learning.






GROUNDED THEORY PROCEDURES IN HARYANTO (1999)
FIELDNOTES
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CORE
CATEGO
RY
STORY
LINE
PARADIGMATIC
RELATIONS
BETWEEN CORE
CATEGORY AND
PHERIPHERAL
CATEGORIES
FINDINGS;
CONCLUSION &
IMPLICATION
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MENA

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RY

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CATEGR
OY

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CATEGO
RY
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MENA

CATEGO
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