Teachers seeking support & developing their social networks: Two good articles

So, after the SEA conference, Kip Tellez contacted me with to share some information on research he completed a few years ago about how beginning teachers seek out support and help - a fascinating article, with some very similar findings to my research - that teachers often seek informal support persons, rather than formal, administrator types.  Lots of questions are raised by this - like, is it then possible to create formal supportive networks in schools? If so what are the characteristics of "good" formal networks vs. "bad" formal networks (I have some ideas on that one here...) 

Here is the citation to Kip's article:

Tellez, K. (1992) Mentors by choice, not design: Help-seeking by beginning teachers.  Journal of Teacher Education, 43(3) p. 214-221

Also,  Another interesting SNA article on early career teachers that was written recently by Andrew Thomas at UCLA examines the patterns of 99 beginning teachers' social networks and their attrition rates. A major finding here is that teachers with very diverse "heterogenous" networks tended to be "position-changers" - move up in the ranks. Another finding to get you thinking - and connected to some things I've been thinking about - that this coming generation of teacher have more and more ability to reach out to diverse networks - what are the implications of this for teacher attrition rates?

Here is the citation to Thomas' article:

Thomas, A. (2007) Teacher attrition, social capital, and career advancement: An unwelcome message. Research and Practice in Social Sciences, 3 (1) p. 19-47