Scope
To make causal statements about the effects of educational interventions on learning and/or affective outcomes, RCTs in large samples are needed. Notwithstanding the research advantages, RCTs come with significant financial and human resources requirements. In times of budget cuts in research funding and teacher shortages in many countries, with schools very overloaded and not always inclined to engage in educational research anymore, it is very relevant to use research funds in a targeted and cost-efficient way. We therefore propose that large-scale RCTs should be preceded by smaller-scale research that has already been able to study building blocks for the intervention alongside teacher concerns upon implementation. Hence, multiple case studies can function as a bridge between theory on the one hand and RCTs on the other, serving as a methodological go-between and middle ground. However, to date, the potential of the multiple case design has neither been fully spread, nor explored to support the development of high-quality literacy interventions.
In this E-CER we aim to explore the potential of multiple single case studies as a promising methodology to increase the quality and efficacy of literacy interventions regarding content, optimal delivery, and duration via intermediate smaller-scale studies. This methodology offers the advantage of delving deeply into the intricate details, providing fine-grained insights into students' literacy learning processes and into teachers' intervention implementation, all prior to and in view of optimizing large-scale and expensive RCTs.
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