Case Development in Educational Administration

In the past case studies have been viewed principally as instructional tools for developing particular skills. Consequently the cases have been limited to the “issue” and “descriptive” variety. In the future considerable attention should be given to the case study as a research tool. In this regard, “substantive” cases dealing with social science concepts or advanced field practices represent a fruitful area for case development. Cases of all types will need to have immediate relevance to the current problems of practitioners, to cover a wide range of problems, roles, organizational types and environments and to seek to advance knowledge in a systematic way. There is a need for the classification of available cases and for preparation of many more cases, especially of the substantive type, perhaps by graduate students in the universities.