From the beginning, the author has stated that this book is proposed to provide materials for doing, learning and teaching about case study research in educational setting. Also this book presents clearly mechanics of conducting a case study, starting from designing, collecting, analyzing data and writing the case study report. The structure of this book is divided into three parts that is a sequence of conducting case study research and each part has a brief description about the topic discussed.

The first part of this book about foundation of qualitative case study research that consists of four related chapter. Chapter one discussing what is the case study in research in general about and then what consideration is taken to decide which design approach will be used in the research, and the last part explaining the case study characteristics. The author quotes a lot of essential things from Yin’s book (another writer about case study research) especially on determining the research questions. As we know before we decide which design approach would be used for our research, we have a lot of considerations. This book states three essential points for considering the research approach:

• The nature of the research questions
• The amount of control
• The desired end product

Characteristics of case studies namely that they are descriptive, heuristic and focus on a specific situation or phenomenon, is also important topic. The interesting point for this chapter is the author has compared the meaning of case study characteristic from five different writers in a scheme. Particularistic, one of the case study characteristic, means that case study focuses on particular situation, event, program or phenomenon where as descriptive is focused on result of case study. Other characteristics, heuristics and inductive mean that case study research can bring discovery of new relationships, new meanings and understanding of the phenomenon under the study. The last topic in first chapter about philosophical assumptions maybe also very interesting because case study as qualitative research use phenomenology and symbolic interaction. More clearly, the author gives a scheme that contains nine point comparisons on characteristics of qualitative and quantitative research.

The next chapter (chapter two) discusses about types and uses of case study research in education. Case study research in education is a blend of theory and method from other study disciplines. Usually research in education seeks to understand specific issues and problems of practice or focus on individual. For this reason case study research involve other disciplines such as ethnographic, historical, psychological and sociological to borrow their concepts and theory and to employ the techniques for conducting the research. The author explains clearly about types end product of case study: descriptive, interpretive and evaluative. Descriptive product means case study research presenting a detailed account of the phenomenon under study which is functioned to present basic information about area of education. Interpretive product will be produced when a case study researcher gathers as much information about the problem as possible with the intent of interpreting or theorizing about the phenomenon. This product contains rich, thick descriptive data that is used to develop conceptual categories or to illustrate and support theoretical assumptions held prior to the data gathering. This chapter also discussed about strengths and weaknesses of case study design for researcher’s consideration before choosing this research approach. The strength points of case study design are:

• Case study results a rich, thick description and analysis of a phenomenon which may be desired.
• Case study plays an important role in advancing a field’s knowledge base

Besides those strength points, we should also consider the weakness of case study research such as biases that can affect the final product because the researcher only relies on by his sensitivity and integrity of instinct and abilities throughout most of the research effort. Issues of reliability, validity and generalizability are also weaknesses in qualitative case study and these issues are discussed more in chapter ten. The author makes a remark that deciding to use a case study design depends on nature of the problem being investigated and also the designer’s understanding of benefits and loss of the design.

The third chapter from the first part explains about the definition of a research problem and selecting a case. From prior explanation we know that case study research addresses certain questions (what characteristics) about a specific phenomenon and certain end products are desired. The researcher is the primary instrument for gathering and analyzing data. In order to produce a good case study he should posses at least three characteristics. Researcher should have a huge tolerance for ambiguity, should be sensitive in data collection, data interpretation and data analysis and should be a good communicator. Tolerance of ambiguity is needed through the case study process. Contrasting with a traditional research design which the researcher works in a structured situations, a case study research requires the researcher prepare himself to face unforeseen events or change direction in pursuit of data. Being sensitive in data collecting is important because the primary instrument in qualitative case study research is the researcher whose all observations, and all analysis is filtered through his worldview, his values and his perspective. The good qualitative researchers need to have a communication skill for looking and listening everywhere to gather data. Selection of a case could be a single unit or bounded system such as an individual, a program, an institution, etc. The author also explains about using data sampling for research because of the limitation of interviewing everyone, observing everything and collecting all relevant materials in a case. The most appropriate sampling strategy to analyze data in this research is non-probability sampling.

The last chapter (chapter four) from part one of this book discusses about the roles of theory and the role of literature in case study research. In this chapter author explains about literature review as an important component of research process. Theory provides a framework what is to be observed and what is to be collected in the data formulation. Some functions of literature review are:

• Providing a foundation for contributing.
• Helping in the formulation of the problem, in the section of methodology and in the interpretation of research.
• Demonstrating how the present study "advances, refines, or revises what is already known".

Part two from this book about data collection techniques for qualitative research. Qualitative case studies rely heavily upon qualitative data obtained from interviews, observations, and documents. Researchers also can use multiple methods of data called triangulation.

Chapter five of this book focuses on how to conduct effective interviews. Usually case study research in education field collecting data by interviews. Interview is necessary when we can’t observe behavior, feelings or how people interpret the world around them and also when we are interested in events occurred in the past, that are impossible to replicate. There are three types of interviews: highly structured, semi structured and unstructured interviews. The most common interview used in qualitative case study is semi-structure interview, which is used for gathering certain information and guided by a set of questions and issues should be explored. To get good data from respondent, the researcher should ask appropriate questions. The researcher can use various types of information desired such as opinion, experience, feeling, knowledge, sensory or demographics as aids in deciding which types of question and what questioning strategy to apply. Observation also is a primary source in data collection.

Chapter six focuses on the activity of observation. Although observation is one of the techniques to collecting data this book give a criticism because these techniques are highly subjective and unreliable mature human perception. But there are also numerous reasons that make researcher prefers to gather data through observation. The ideal observation in qualitative case studies is to get inside the perspective of the participants, full participation is not always possible. This book suggests being careful on bias that could be happened in data collection. Researcher can affect and be affected by situation, which lead to distortion of real situation.

Part two deals in, not only on how to collect data from interview but also from documents useful in case study research. A third major source of data in case study research is documents that include public records, paper, etc. Documents as a source of data have some advantages and disadvantages. Chapter seven places stability sources of data as one of the greatest advantages, where as difficulties in determining authenticity and accuracy is one of the major problems with documentary materials. At the end of this chapter, this book proposes that all the type of documents can help researcher uncover meanings, develop understanding and discover insights relevant to the research problem.

The final part (part three) in this book guides readers to understand how to analyze and report case study research. Detailed instruction but not enough examples sometimes make readers get confused.

Chapter eight, the first chapter in this part, discussed on several dimensions of data analysis. Author compares when the best and the worst time to analyze data have been collected in a case study investigation. This book also gives some advice how to organize data based on chronology of the case when they were collected, etc. There are three levels of analysis described by this book. The basic level is organized chronologically and presented in a narrative or descriptive (shown in exhibit 4) and the highest level of analysis involves a process making inferences and developing theory.

Chapter nine deals with strategies used to analyze qualitative data by using special techniques and computer. To analyze qualitative data, researcher can use some techniques or tactics. This chapter presented Miles and Huberman’s (1984) strategies for deriving meaning from data and also explained more about using computer to analyze data. Researcher should consider advantages for using computer as a data manager or an efficient clerk to facilitate team research and collaboration.

Validity, reliability and ethics are major concerns in a qualitative case study. Validity is the extent to which one’s findings are congruent with reality. Reliability is the extent to which there is consistency in one’s finding. Chapter ten explains that internal validity question is addressed by using triangulation, checking interpretations with individuals interviewed or observed, staying on-site over a period of time, asking peers to comment on emerging findings, involving participants in all phases of the research, and clarifying researcher biases and assumptions. Reliability is enhanced by investigator explaining the assumptions and theory underlying the study, by triangulating data, and by leaving an audit trail. Ethics also has an important role in research, although researcher has a guidelines and regulation to deal with some ethical concerns, burden of producing a study that was conducted and disseminated in an ethical manner lies with individual investigator.

Chapter eleven, the last chapter in this book discussed about writing report as the last step in doing research. There are few steps in writing report process. Starting with compiling of data and then determine intended audience. The next step is settling on the main message or theme of the study then ready to write first draft. This chapter also presents Yin’s criteria for composing a good case study report.

The book would be useful for students who learn about qualitative case study design for conducting research and would be essential for those who are working in educational field to develop a qualitative research. Although I will not conduct a large-scale research but I think this book give a little bit contribution for my knowledge about research. It’s an easy book to understand because the author does not use profound words or special terms to explain about qualitative case study research.

The overall impression of this book is that the author has succeeded in providing a lot of information in supporting aspects of qualitative case study research. Author seems try to summary all qualitative case study research books, that makes this book very rich of facts and data. Comparing to Yin’s book that is more complicated and detailed, this book explains more briefly and clearly. The author also seems like comparing other writer’s arguments and quoting some writer’s opinion. Not giving enough examples on case study research is a weakness of this book. Reading this book makes me feel that I not only read one book but also read a lot of literature about qualitative case study research.

The author gives me an impression that implementing a case study research in educational field maybe an appropriate research design but not an easy way for inexperienced researcher. Before conducting a case study research, the researcher should know positive and negative effect behind a qualitative case study research.

Although this book is not a good practical guide to execute a case study research, but I can recommend inexperienced researcher to read this book before conducting a case study research.

Yin, R. K. Case Study Research: Design and Methods. Newbury Park, Calif.:Sage, 1984.