The Case as Space

Abstract

This article considers the potential of Doreen Massey’s work on the relational conceptualization of space as a multiplicity of trajectories to inform case study research in educational settings. I argue that the conceptualization can be useful at two levels: methodology and methods. At a methodological level, the case itself can be conceptualized as space. The heterogeneity and dynamism of space thought of in this way has implications for familiar case study issues such as the bounding of the case, the positioning of the researcher, issues of generalization, approach to triangulation, and ethical practices. At the level of methods, implications include the need for multiple methods that explore relationships and change over time. When the substantive topic of research is itself children and young people’s understanding of place, congruence between the conceptualization of place/space and methods of data collection used is particularly important. Overall, it is argued that Massey’s ideas have potential to inform, challenge, and enliven the practice of case study research.

Keywords

place space qualitative research case study

Thinking About Space, Place, and Space–Time

Scholars and disciplinary movements have constructed and emphasized the linked concepts of place and space in a diverse range of ways (Hubbard, Kitchin, & Valentine, 2004). For example, within Western geography from the 1960s, spatial science presented space as surface, a uniform background over which the relative positioning of human activities could be understood and rationalized. In this approach, place was marginalized to location, with its complex meaning dimension sidelined. In reaction to this, 1970s humanistic geography, with its phenomenological roots, emphasized the meaning of place as it was experienced by individuals and groups (e.g., Relph, 1976). More recently, the many strands of work that could be grouped together under the heading of “new” cultural geography have fore-grounded the power dimensions of people’s experiences and the construction of space/place. For example, Cresswell (1996) considers who is “in” or “out” of place in a particular location and how such rules are established and subverted, while McDowell (1997) critiques romantic notions of place and home that can obscure inequality and oppression. Gregory sums up three roughly sequential phases in approach to space within human geography as “absolute” to “relative” to “relational.” In the latter approach, space is seen as being produced through action and interaction, so constituting, rather than containing, everyday life (Gregory, 2000, 2009).This relational emphasis forms part of the cultural turn within geography, as well as being part of the transdisciplinary spatial turn (Charlton et al., 2011; Gulson & Symes, 2007).

Doreen Massey is a human geographer at the cutting-edge of the relational approach to space and place. Her lifetime of work comes together in the exceptionally well-crafted treatise, For Space (2005). In this book, she explores what might happen “if we refuse that distinction, all too appealing, it seems, between place (as meaningful, lived and everyday) and space (as what? the outside? the abstract? the meaningless?)” (2005, p. 6). Instead she argues that space can be thought of as a concrete, emergent product of interrelations, with the uniqueness of a particular place stemming from its complex web of historical and contemporary relations made and not made with other places. She emphasizes that the local and the global are “mutually constituted” (2005, p. 184) and concrete: Global links are made, or not made, in physically locatable places. Massey highlights the power dimension of interrelations by referring to the configurations of links as “power-geometries” (Massey, 1992, 1997). Her work is not empty theorizing or purely an intellectual exercise but is part of a committed political project aiming to inform and to engender social and spatial justice.

Space conceptualized as a product of interrelations must involve a situation of multiplicity because interrelationships have to be between “identities/entities” (2005, pp. 9-10). Interrelation usually involves change. Thus, places are continually under construction, with the pace of change in different elements of a place varying from the relatively rapid movement of people to the normally imperceptible movement of tectonic plates. So time and space are distinct but bound together, and we can see “places not as points or areas on maps, but as integrations of space and time; as spatio-temporal events” (2005, p. 130). Place can therefore be thought of as a “bundle of trajectories” (2005, p. 119). This refers to the way that all living and nonliving elements that make up a particular place at a particular time have come from somewhere and are going to somewhere, each with their own particular “story-so-far.” The configuration of such a bundle is unique at any one time—Even if you return to the same location later on, it will not be the same place.

This radical heterogeneity of space–time creates the possibility of “the happenstance juxtaposition of previously unrelated trajectories” (2005, p. 94), where people and things relate in new ways. This juxtaposition has productive potential but can also lead to significant challenges: “Place as an ever-shifting constellation of trajectories poses the question of our throwntogetherness. . . . The chance of space may set us down next to the unexpected neighbour.” (2005, p. 151). Thus, while Massey deliberately positions heterogeneity as positive, she is also fully aware that it can cause tension and conflict, as different groups have competing claims and expectations over space. “Places pose in particular form the question of our living together. And this question . . . is the central question of the political” (2005, p. 151). Massey stresses that as each place is unique, the solution to any conflict caused by different groups’ divergent expectations of space need to be carefully tailored to the local context: “there will be no simply portable rules” (p. 162).

Massey’s ideas and the case studies in which she grounds them (e.g., Massey, 2007) are clearly related to her own “trajectory” as a researcher and academic with particular interests in urban, economic, and regional geography, with a later focus on gender, place, and space–time (Hubbard et al., 2004). Over more than 20 years, Massey’s ideas have drawn on, and often reworked, Marxist and feminist thinking in these areas. Aspects of Massey’s thinking on space have been taken up by some educational researchers to inform the substantive content of their research, for example, in understanding the production of space in teacher’s workplaces (McGregor, 2003), young people’s reading experiences (Cliff Hodges, 2010, 2012; Mackey, 2011), and the use of information and communications technology (ICT) in geography teaching (Mitchell, 2007). In this article, I would like to suggest that Massey’s formulation of space as “the sphere of a multiplicity of trajectories” (2005, p. 119) has potential to inform thinking about not only the object of research but also the overall framing of the research project in the methodology. I will illustrate this primarily through an example of case study research in which the substantive focus was young people’s understanding of a distant place (Taylor, 2009a, 2011, 2013). During this project, I aimed to achieve congruence between the theoretical framing, methodology and methods in the way that place/space were conceptualized, which led me to explore the implications of seeing the case itself (a class of students learning about Japan) as a bundle of trajectories. I will first consider implications of these ideas for methodology, then briefly reflect on data collection and analysis methods with regard to young people’s understandings of place/space.

The Case as Space: Implications for Methodology

When researching young people’s understandings of place, I chose to focus on 13- to 14-year-olds studying Japan in their geography lessons, as there was little research evidence regarding older children’s representations of distant place and the way that these changed over time in an educational setting (Taylor, 2009a). I worked with one class in a comprehensive school in the East of England over a 4-month period in 2006 to build up a very detailed set of evidence of their representations of Japan and how these changed over the period of teaching, with particular regard to their understandings of diversity within and between Japan and other countries (Taylor, 2011, 2013). Findings with potential to inform teaching included the value of direct and indirect contact with young people in the distant place for challenging stereotypes and encouraging a more nuanced understanding. Massey’s formulations of space were used for the theoretical underpinning of the project with regard to conceptualization of place, but I was also interested to see how these could inform the methodology. If the case (the class) were seen as a “bundle of trajectories” or “simultaneity of stories-so-far” (Massey, 2005, p. 54), how might this impact issues such as the bounding of the case, the positioning of the researcher, issues of generalization, approach to triangulation, and ethical considerations? In practice, my thinking about the case as space evolved organically and recursively along with the conduct and communication of the case study, but for clarity and in retrospect, I will draw out five insights from Massey’s thinking about space that I found valuable. Any one of these is perhaps not unique to this particular theoretical perspective, but as a combination resulting from a particular insight into space and place, I hope they may have something to offer to other contexts.

The Case May Be Bigger Than We Think

Writers on case study (Stake, 1995; Yin, 2003) emphasize the need to be careful in defining the unit of analysis: What is the case? A case is usually seen as a concrete entity bounded within space and time, as Stake (1995, p. 2) suggests: “a specific, a complex, functioning thing.” In the project I was undertaking, the case was one class, over the 4-month period that included the unit of work on Japan. But how is “class” defined? Massey sees nonliving elements as constituting part of the bundle of trajectories as much as living ones. Thus, rather than the student members of the class being the case, in the neutral “container” of the nonliving classroom, my definition of “class” included the students, their teacher, and everything involved in their study during this period. The nonliving elements of the environment, such as furniture, posters, and teaching resources, were also part of the bundle of trajectories that made up the class at a particular moment in time. Massey’s formulation of space as “the sphere of a multiplicity of trajectories” (2005, p. 119) therefore has potential to enlarge our thinking on what constitutes the case. Pragmatically, in undertaking case study research, even with enlarged views of the case, there has to be some prioritization in terms of deployment of research resources. Thus, depending on the research questions being addressed, the students, their teacher, and teaching resources or artifacts are likely to justify greater attention than window frames or heating systems. This reminder to pay attention to the role of the nonliving environment in the case study is not an implication uniquely resulting from Massey’s work; it would also arise from use of actor–network theory (Fenwick & Edwards, 2010), as helpfully applied to the spaces of teaching by McGregor (2004). Massey perhaps gives particular breadth in the potential scope of elements of the bundle of trajectories by including geology and topography in her reflections, which simultaneously broadens the set of timescales over which change can be seen to occur.

The idea of the case as a bundle of trajectories is also challenging in terms of the researcher’s positioning. If the researcher is physically present in the classroom, how can he or she be seen as separate from the case? Massey’s ideas of space confirmed my own thinking that I could not conceptualize myself as “outside” the context I was researching. Massey suggests that our own presence, or indeed absence, contributes, in a small way, to alter spaces, to participate in their continuing production, and to make and break links. As a researcher, I was therefore enmeshed in place and part of the bundle of trajectories. For example, in the initial interviews I conducted with a subset of students, the photo-elicitation images used became part of the participants’ ideas about Japan. So, in a discussion about Japanese “hotel pods” in the first lesson of the unit of work, Jo and Fred referred to a photograph they had seen earlier in interview, creating a link of shared experience between them. Similarly, six students’ drawings of an imagined view out of a window in Japan in their first lesson were a refinement or consolidation of their previous drawings in interview. The participants’ ideas, and perhaps their identities, were changed as part of their interaction with me and my research methods, and I was changed as a person and a researcher through my experience of the web of interrelationships that made up this research space (Taylor, 2009b). Under the formulation of the case as space, such changes and interrelationships were inevitable and valuable rather than being unfortunate or distortive.

The Case Is Relationally Complex

If the number of elements in the bundle comprising the case is larger than we might anticipate, then the complexity of relationships within the case is potentially substantial. When in the same location, the students, teacher, and researcher interact, sharing or withholding their knowledge, beliefs, and attitudes. Interaction with the nonliving elements of the bundle provides a whole other dimension, for example, in this case, photographs taken by young people in Japan and electronic discussion boards were important in creating opportunities for a developing understanding of diversity within Japan (Taylor, 2013). Links not made may be as interesting as links made—As the class met, certain representations were taken up, communicated, and changed, others were not (Taylor, 2011).

The relational complexity expands exponentially when wider family and cultural contexts are taken into account. While this case study was of a class, each individual in that class belonged to a whole series of nested and intersecting groups on a range of scales (family, village inhabitants, people who watch The Simpsons, U.K. residents, and so on). This brings back the issue of bounding. On one level, this case was easy to bound within time and space, as the physical entities within the class came together at specific times and in specific locations over a 4-month period. However, as Goode and Hatt (cited in Stake, 2005, p. 444) recognize, a person is hard to bound: “it is not always easy for the case researcher to recognise where the child ends and the environment begins.” This chimes with Massey’s (2005) assertion that

the “lived reality of our daily lives” is utterly dispersed, unlocalised in its sources and repercussions. . . . Where would you draw the line around the lived reality of your daily life? . . . If we really think space relationally, then it is the sum of all our connections, and in that sense utterly grounded, and those connections may go round the world. (p. 184-185)

Even if our case remains those elements physically present in a location, it has a (concrete) global dimension.

To a great extent, such relational complexity is familiar to the case study researcher, but Massey’s work gives a helpful reminder that the uniqueness of any one place (or case) derives from its contemporary and historical links. The nature of the students’, teacher’s, and my own global links and experiences, contemporary and past, formed the uniqueness of this particular case. For example, the teacher’s relationships with Japanese visitors as a child and her participation more recently in a study tour to Japan had a major influence on the conceptual and substantive aims for her students’ learning and the teaching strategies she used. Similarly, each student had a unique web of family links and histories, which, along with their interests and everyday experiences created a unique constellation of shared and individual representations of the country. My own context and history were also enmeshed in the case: With another researcher, it would have been a different bundle of trajectories. Massey’s relational thinking about space reminded me to consider each learner as an individual, to research informal and formal learning, to pay attention to students’ sociocultural settings, and to consider how their interests and concerns as individuals interacted with the nature of their learning in groups.

The uniqueness of the case also has implications for issues of generalization, again an area familiar to case study researchers. As every place is unique, every case is also unique to its point in space–time, but that does not mean that it cannot be of interest or relevance to other places, other spaces when appropriate. In the context of local struggles over space, Massey suggests a process of building equivalences to construct a “common cause” (2005, p. 182). While the context is somewhat different, there are perhaps similar processes of negotiation to be undertaken when sharing learning between case studies (local instances with wider relational links). Perhaps there are insights here for Stake’s naturalistic generalization (Stake, 1995). In my case study, the findings suggest ways forward for selecting and deploying teaching strategies to support students in learning about distant places (Taylor, 2011), but for understanding of this aspect of education to move on, further insights from other cases are needed.

The Case Is Radically Dynamic

If place is formulated as a bundle of trajectories, it is inherently dynamic. Each element of the bundle of trajectories has come from somewhere and will, to a greater or lesser degree, contribute to and undergo change during their coexistence in a particular location. Consider the myriad of interactions producing changes within and between the living and nonliving elements of a class during a 1-hr lesson. What implications does such radical dynamism have for case study methodology? I found that this “bundle of trajectories” approach helped me to remember that the “class” was not as stable an entity as it might sound. It changed over time not only in terms of the particular combination of its members on a certain day (see graphic representation of a subset of the “bundle” in Figure 1) but also because each person in the class on a particular day was not the same person they were the previous time the group met. Each person’s trajectories were different between points of meeting in terms of experiences at home and in school, which media they had engaged with, and relationships and conversations renewed or broken off. Of course, not all these changes could be tracked, and most would not have been relevant to substance of this particular project; however, some had bearing on representations of Japan. This obviously has implications for data collection methods, which will be discussed later, but it also shows the care needed when bounding the case in time, to allow sufficient opportunity to appreciate its dynamism. Studies made at single or dual time-points will have to work harder than longitudinal studies to explore the change inherent in a “bundle of trajectories.”

Figure 1.

Diagram showing presence of selected class members over the unit of work.

The insight from Massey’s work that it is impossible to encounter the same place twice may also have implications for triangulation in case study research. If the case is radically dynamic, then the more positivist approach of using multiple sources of information to ascertain a single truth about the object of research is not going to work. If people’s representations of Japan are partial, context-dependent, and liable to change over time, then inconsistencies within a person’s representations between different data sources, even those made on the same day, may be regarded as interesting, rather than problematic. This fits with Flick’s (2000/2004) suggestion that multiple perspectives are taken as a “strategy leading to a deeper understanding of the issue under investigation, and thereby a step on the road to greater knowledge” (p. 179), through establishing diversity rather than refinement to singularity.

The Case Involves Radical Heterogeneity

Any group of people, even a class in a “normal” comprehensive school in the east of England, is incredibly heterogeneous when you scratch below the surface. Each person has their own unique trajectory, as discussed earlier, involving dynamic family context, particular experiences of living and traveling, school career, histories of reading and media use, extra-curricular pursuits, tastes, and interests. Students’ trajectories and identities interact with teaching and educational research activities, often with surprising results. Who would have thought that a couple of Year 9 (13- to 14-year-old) boys might be fascinated by classical Japanese building styles? Or that another member of the class, on eating tofu (bean curd) stir fry for the first time might reflect “I did feel like I was just about being released from prison for about 20 years because I [had] missed something, something so good . . . ”? Of course, the examples that surprised me say as much about my expectations as they do about the students themselves, but I suspect that I am not alone in experiencing frequent (and usually pleasant) surprise regarding young people’s interests and reactions. The interests, questions, and views of a group of 30 students, when given the opportunity to emerge within a supportive classroom context and/or during carefully devised research activities, are certainly radical in their heterogeneity. To engage with them, an in-depth, qualitative approach with multiple data collection methods is clearly necessary.

Massey’s ideas of “uninvited juxtaposition” and the “surprise of space,” when previously unrelated or heterogeneous elements are brought together in the same location also apply within the space of the case; in my example, the class during the complexity of a lesson. The “uninvited neighbour” is a common classroom situation! It is a sad reflection that the expression of the creative diversity described above is not always encouraged within the classroom context. However, Massey suggests that even when certain groups try to control a space (e.g., by gated communities or internet exclusivity), these boundaries are frequently transgressed (e.g., by hackers). Similarly, even when the teacher’s aim is control and closure rather than openness, subversion may create openness again. Though the teacher in my case had strong views on the topics she wanted to explore with the class, particularly regarding everyday life and culture in Japan, she was also open to students’ ideas and interests. Thus, there were various points, particularly when the class was smaller than usual, when students pushed the boundaries of conventional place studies, asking questions about food norms, the role of a geisha, and cartoon styles (Taylor, 2011). These questions and resulting discussion indicated boundaries of existing knowledge as well leading to sharing of new ideas.

In a research context, the “uninvited neighbour” might be the researcher, video camera, or audio recorder, as much as another student. This leads to engagement with issues of power and ethics.

The Case Is Political

Massey (2005) emphasizes that the negotiation of multiplicity in places poses a challenge: the relational politics of the spatial. The negotiation of different aims, expectations, individualities, and desires within the space of the classroom is familiar to any teacher. Each lesson I observed as part of this research included phases of conflict, however low level, in expectations over behavior and learning. However, such conflict was rarely directly relevant to my own research as it did not tend to be over representations of Japan. For my aims, the more macroscale power-geometries in terms of the negotiation of diversity between the Japan and other countries was more relevant and have been explored elsewhere (Taylor, 2013). However, the overall approach to such framing posed some questions regarding application of Massey’s work to the classroom setting. As mentioned earlier, Massey’s work is positioned within a critical theoretical perspective with commitment to social and spatial justice. Does this mean that a case study informed by her work should also come from a critical perspective? While I have sympathy with Massey’s project, my own work was from an interpretive theoretical perspective, seeking to understand the complexity of the meaning dimension regarding young people’s representations of Japan. Its main aim was not to uncover unequal power relations within the classroom nor within the young people’s representations, although such dimensions were noted when they were relevant to the project. Instead, the focus was on understanding the nature and processes of the young people’s learning. However, this does not mean that all representations of the distant place were seen as of equal value educationally, or that there was no interest in engendering change as a result of the study (Taylor, 2013). Indeed, findings from the project have suggested ways forward in helping young people develop a more nuanced understanding of distant place, based on examples of teaching strategies seen to support this during the study (Taylor, 2011). A directly evaluative approach to the processes of teaching might be productive in a different case and with different access and ethical agreements. However, if this was the aim, then action research involving the teacher in a cycle of evaluation and development of their own teaching strategies, might be more appropriate, as the teacher is then an active and empowered agent of change. The role of an external researcher can then shift to that of a critical friend.

Although the research did not involve the challenge of handling explicitly evaluative research in an ethical manner, it was still important to take my own positioning within the power-geometries of the case seriously. The practices of ethics are a response to a situation of unequal relational power (normally a position of strength on the researcher’s part). The researcher enters a series of relationships with a particular outcome in view. There is no avoiding the fact that a successful outcome will benefit them personally or professionally, but there is also the hope that the knowledge created will be to the general good. In this case, the usual types of ethical and safeguarding practices were used, but I also paid particular attention to the relational power dynamics between myself and other participants in the case, as I was able to perceive them. The nature of these power-geometries presented issues to wrestle with throughout the fieldwork and into analysis and communication, where I was particularly conscious of issues of authority and authorization involved in writing the case.

One aspect of the substantive focus of the project that raised ethical issues was the possibility that students might make racist assertions. Within the classroom, boundaries were set up and breaches responded to by the teacher, as part of her standard role. My job in that context was just to listen and to note contributions. However, I was also conscious that the topic I was investigating, did risk intentionally or unintentionally provoking racist comments during any additional methods used. Various studies (e.g., Barrett, 2007; Jaspars, van de Geer, Tajfel, & Johnson, 1972; Johnson, Middleton, & Tajfel, 1970; Krzywosz-Rynkiewicz, 2002) asked children to express attitudes regarding people from certain countries, their responses then being accepted without judgment by the researcher. As a geography educationalist, I did not want to create opportunities likely to provoke racist views so I designed methods, as outlined in the following section, which avoided eliciting a stereotyped response regarding a whole people group.

Overall, I found considerable congruence between Massey’s construction of space as “the sphere of a multiplicity of trajectories” (2005, p. 119) and the construction of the case. Her ideas had helpful implications for the framing and practice of case study research, not only at the level of methodology but also practically for methods of data collection, analysis, and communication of the case.

Researching Place: Implications for Methods

In this section, I will consider some implications of Massey’s ideas about place and space for methods of researching young people’s understandings of space/place. I will concentrate on methods of data collection but will also include brief consideration of methods of analysis and constructing/communicating an account of the research. While the focus of my application remains the type of case study research discussed above, some examples of data collection methods given are from studies using other methodologies, and many approaches discussed could be used in a wider range of methodological contexts.

Implications for Data Collection Methods

When researching relationships between young people and place, the underlying conceptualization of place used by a researcher will clearly influence their choice of data collection methods. There may be a deliberate choice to focus on a particular aspect of place, made explicit to the researcher’s audience, or it may be that a particular view of place can be inferred as underpinning their research from the type of methods and focus taken. For example, Gould and White (1974) focused on knowledge and preferences for places, so they typically asked young people to list places known or to put places on a map into rank order according to where they would like to live. Results were then plotted on maps to make knowledge or preference surfaces for different groups. While this worked well for its specified aim, it left out much of the richness of place understanding, as the nature and meaning of places and the links between them were not explored. Three implications of Massey’s (2005) relational conceptualization of place as a bundle of trajectories to the case study research I was undertaking on young people’s understanding of a distant place were as follows:

As the conceptualization of place and the case emphasized complexity and diversity, multiple methods were necessary to respond to different aspects of students’ thinking about place and the variety of young people within the class.

As place and the case were seen as a unique bundle of trajectories resulting from past and contemporary links, data collection methods were needed to enable relationships internal and connected to the case to be explored, including power issues when relevant.

As the place and case were seen as a nexus of time–space, it was important to use methods that enabled exploration of change in students’ representations of the distant place over time, including their prior experiences.

Table 1 shows the set of data collection methods used in the study discussed above. In selecting these, I aimed to balance the need for an in-depth, longitudinal approach, with manageability at the analysis phase. Hence, while many activities were carried out at a whole-class level, indeed many of these being normal classroom practices, the most intensive research activities such as in-depth interviews were with a subset of six students.

Table 1.

Summary of Data Generation Methods in Distant Place Case Study (Taylor, 2009a, 2011).

Technique	Detail and context
Observation and recording, transcription	All lessons—audio, video, field notes, photographs when appropriate (whole class)
In-depth interviews, transcription	With selected students before unit started and at end
	With teacher at three points over unit
	Interviews included drawing and photo-elicitation exercises
Collection and photocopying of written work	Classwork by selected students or whole class (including material from an electronic message exchange with Japanese students)
	Homework by selected students
	Japan quiz sheet (word association, drawing, writing, map task) (whole class)
	End of unit evaluation (whole class)
Lesson reflections	Selected students—audio reflection
	Teacher—written reflection
	Researcher—research diary
Collection/documentation of resources used in class	Collecting or photocopying copies of sheets, books, PowerPoint presentations, DVDs, photographing artifacts

While the types of activities being used were mostly not novel (see summary of methods from related research in Table 2), the consistent usage of so many methods over a medium-term timescale was innovative for this research area. Although Picton (2008) and Harrington (1998) had considered change in young people’s representations of a distant place over a unit of work in geography, they had compared data from the start and end of the unit. In this case, a considerable bank of evidence for young people’s representations was generated for every stage of the teaching period. For example, for one event, an intensive, experiential day of workshops on Japan, the following data were available: digital video, digital audio, photographs, field notes, audio postlesson recordings by four students, written reflection by the teacher, and photocopies of the written reflections completed by students in their next lesson. The use of multiple sources for one event afforded a series of checks when an issue of accuracy was at stake (e.g., the precise words a student had used). More importantly, it enabled a range of representations of Japan to be communicated through different methods, giving opportunities for the rich and nuanced picture required in response to the first implication, above, to emerge. Different “angles” on place were seen from different methods, such as word association, drawings, and classroom dialogue.

Table 2.

Examples of Data Collection Methods From Research About Children’s Understandings of Distant Places.

Written	Visual methods	Oral and other
Word association (Leigh & Snellock, 1991)	Drawing pictures (Picton, 2008)	Structured interviews (Barrett & Short, 1992)
Selecting descriptors by underlining words (Hibberd, 1983)	Drawing maps (Axia, Bremner, Deluca, & Andreasen, 1998)	Semistructured interviews (Barrett, 1996)
Assigning words on cards to categories (Harrington, 1998)	Arranging country shapes (Barrett & Farroni, 1996)	Class discussion and focus groups (Pike & Clough, 2005)
More extended written responses (Inokuchi & Nozaki, 2005)	Choosing tents and roommates (Krzywosz-Rynkiewicz, 2002)
Email messages (Holloway & Valentine, 2000)	Placing dolls on rating scales (Stillwell & Spencer, 1974)
Rating scales (Johnson, Middleton, & Tajfel, 1970)	Photo-elicitation (Graham & Lynn, 1989)
Listing places (Gould & White, 1974)

Note. References indicate examples of projects and are not exhaustive, also some projects used more than one data collection method.

The “naturally occurring” opportunities for representation were complemented by the interviews and reflections, each of which afforded the opportunity to communicate different strands of ideas regarding Japan through different genres (audio diary, written reflection, drawing, discussion). These were particularly valuable for exploring relational links and past times of informal learning, as required by the second implication. For example, through interviews, I was able to explore the students’ and teacher’s prior experience of media representations of Japan as well as their personal and family travel histories. Without these data, key insights into the relational nature of their representations of Japan would not have been available (Taylor, 2009a).

Each lesson activity afforded opportunities for different strands of ideas regarding Japan to be represented (food in one activity, clothing in another, a wide range in another), and certain topics were returned to in lessons and in the final interviews, allowing changes to be tracked (Taylor, 2011). The nature and processes of change could be seen in terms of individual representations and the way these shifted and evolved as they were communicated within the group, as required in response to the third implication. Overall, the use of this combination of data collection methods, congruent with the implications of Massey’s thinking about space and place, enabled production of a rich and detailed set of representations of Japan over the 4-month period.

While this example focuses on students’ representations of distant place, the implications identified from Massey’s work in terms of methods for exploring diversity, relationship, and change are the same for a study of young people’s local area. For example, the interdisciplinary WRePlace project used a similar range of written, visual, and verbal data such as interviews, recordings of classroom dialogues, children’s maps, family trees, and fiction/nonfiction texts to explore the place-related identities of two classes of 9- to 10-year-old children (Wyse et al., 2012). When young people have direct access to the place being studied, some additional data collection methods such as shared walks and photographs by young people can also be used (Cele, 2006; Hart, 1979; Schäfer, 2012).

Implications for Analysis and Communication

The space of analysis and writing is also a “meeting place,” where different data, each with their own trajectories, come together with the researcher to create something new. Empirical data are juxtaposed with selections from the literature over time, together with insights and inspirations from the researcher’s everyday life, communication with friends and colleagues, and so on. In this way, the process of analysis and writing is its own “space–time,” involving the heterogeneity of different sources, the “surprise of space,” as different elements are related together and change over time as the process continues through the stages of analysis and communication. So in the same way that space, being the dimension of multiplicity, may lead to the unexpected neighbor and the possibility of conflict, the space of research (no less a physical space) gives the possibility of creativity when different sources (data to data, literature to literature, data to literature, and so on) are juxtaposed. For example, during fieldwork, I consulted literature about Japan (e.g., Benedict, 1946/2005; Martinez, 1998) that challenged my taken-for-granted categorizations. I found I had absorbed the popular binary of traditional/modern regarding diversity within Japan, so from that time I avoided talking about “sides” when interacting with students and the teacher in school, but noted this use by others. This way of thinking about the space of analysis and writing resonates with Crang’s encouragement to think of the process of analysis as “an active and material one, one that involves making connections—and divisions—and where material is combined, recombined, decontextualised and recontextualised.” (Crang, 2003, p. 143).

Most analysis involves some form of categorization prior to recombination. The distant place project discussed in this article used a system of coding to aid reference and juxtaposition of elements from different data sources, balanced with a more holistic approach, particularly for visual data. When analyzing data from the WRePlace project mentioned above (Taylor, 2010), I experimented with a simpler system of a priori coding using key elements from Massey’s construction of place as a bundle of trajectories: relationship (relationality), change, diversity (heterogeneity), and power. These codes were applied to data sources including lesson transcripts, interview and focus group transcripts, written classwork and drawings, and provided a series of useful lenses on children’s place-related identities seen as arising from their unique positioning within a bundle of trajectories.

The written or oral outcomes from any research project can each be seen as a “bundle of trajectories” (Massey, 2005) with different voices from the empirical research and the literature being given (or not given) the opportunity to “speak” (Crang, 2003). This creative space is one in which the researcher has significant power. Decisions about even seemingly minor matters, such as whether to include original spellings in quotations from students’ written work are heavy with issues of authority and authorization. Similarly, the researcher can choose how much of themselves to reveal or hide in their work, at least at an explicit level, while other members of the bundle of trajectories do not normally have such opportunities.

Conclusion

Overall, from these explorations, I conclude that Massey’s formulation of space as “the sphere of a multiplicity of trajectories” (2005, p. 119) has a series of implications applicable to case study methodology in educational research. In particular, these are useful for thinking through the way the case is bounded in space–time, its relational complexity, dynamism, heterogeneity, and political dimension. Conceptualizing the case as space also raises interesting questions about the nature and relationships between living and nonliving elements, including the researcher, which may make up the case. These implications at the methodological level can then inform choices over methods of data collection, particularly regarding the need for multiple methods that explore the complexity of relationships and change over time. They can also yield useful insights regarding methods of data analysis and communication of the case, for example, in the area of juxtaposition of different elements from data and literature, and issues of power and authorization in writing.

While these ideas could apply to a case study with any substantive focus, they have particular significance when that substantive focus is itself concerned with young people’s understandings of place. The researcher’s own conceptions of place, whether implicit or explicit within their work, will inevitably influence their choices of methods for collecting data on young people’s understandings of place. I have argued that using Massey’s (2005) ideas of place as a bundle of trajectories to influence these choices can give opportunities for rich and nuanced understandings of place to be represented. Of course, other projects may choose to focus on a particular aspect of children’s understandings of place, such as locational knowledge alone, and therefore a different selection or subset of methods is appropriate. However, even in this situation, there is merit in starting from a wider understanding of ways of conceptualizing place, to ensure that those choices are informed and the researcher is conscious of those aspects to which they are currently not paying attention. Thus, there is a need for coherence and consistency between theories of space/place and data collection methods used.

The implications of Massey’s conceptualizations of space for methodology and methods might be challenging in terms of amounts of data generated in longitudinal work, particularly when timescales are more than a few months. Some level of compromise is inevitable in research work, given that funding and personnel availability are finite, but at least these choices can be intentionally and explicitly made. There is still considerable scope within the substantive field of research on young people’s understandings of place/space for longitudinal case study work exploring how local and distant places are represented and the nature and processes of change in those representations over time. This research needs to cumulate from a range of sociocultural contexts and has potential to inform teaching in a range of subject areas internationally as well as more general understandings of young people’s experiences of the world.

In terms of methodology, one challenge raised indirectly by Massey’s work is the issue of power and authorization within research. It is one thing to be aware of the power-geometries of relationships between those involved in the case, but should we also be aiming to address these? Those working with the methodology of participatory action research are actively exploring possibilities in this direction (Schäfer, 2012). Could case study researchers learn anything from this, or is it simply a matter of different research aims needing different methodologies? While such deliberations may be a step removed from the substantive focus of Massey’s work on conceptualization of space, place, and space–time, I think they are in keeping with its spirit of challenge to norms of power and promotion of spatial justice. In this article, I hope to have demonstrated the potential of Massey’s work to inform, to challenge, and to enliven the practice of case study research in educational settings.

Footnotes

Author’s Note

Some of the author’s empirical work cited in this research received funding from the Ordnance Survey Children’s Geographies Award 2006.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Author Biography

Liz Taylor is a senior lecturer in geography education in the Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge, UK. Her research interests focus on children and young people’s understandings of place and space, geography education, and curriculum design.

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