Research on Social Networks in Schools – More Highlights from AERA

One of the most exciting sessions I attended at AERA was a panel exclusively focused on the use of social network analysis to study teachers’ work and communities.

Nienke Moolenaar, a Ph.D. student from the University of Amsterdam presented a study on the social networks of teachers in Amsterdam schools (the co-authors include Bonne Ziljstra and Dr. Peter Sleegers).  Their study is massive – including almost all of the teachers in the district.  They are interested in looking at the ways that teachers’ different types of social networks (friendship, professional, etc.) are related,  and the relationship between levels of trust between teachers and within the school are related to characteristics of the networks.  Moolenaar et al’s initial findings are quite thought provoking. First, she found some contradictions between levels of trust between teachers and within the school (you’ll have to read their paper to get more detail on this). Second, they found that teachers’ professional networks were much more inclusive and widespread than friendship networks.  This is a promising finding, in my opinion – that professional work does not have to rest exclusively on friendship, but rather on the collaborative work and projects that teachers do.

 Dr. Alan Daly, assistant professor at the University of California-San Diego presented  (co-authors Kara Finnegan & Jose Manuel Bolivar) a longitudinal study of social networks in schools.  This is one of the first whole-district, longitudinal SNA studies to be done.  Daly et al are interested in the ways networks change as a reform effort is being implemented.  I found their tie characteristics interesting – for example, one type of tie they examined were “risk” ties – that is, who in your network takes risks or do you see as a risk-taker?  Also, it was interesting to see the movement over time – to see who became more isolated and pushed to the periphery (again, please look for their papers to read more detail on the study)

 Finally, another fascinating SNA study was presented by Allison Atteberry (co-author Dr. Tony Bryk) from Stanford University.   Their study examines the social networks of teachers as they relate to literacy coaches in a school.  Their research shows how important a coach or mentor can be in bridging ties between teachers in a school and sharing information.  To read more about the study, you can visit their website at: www.iisrd.org

There was another session with researchers the MIECT study project that focused exclusively on teachers’ networks.

Doctoral Student, Ben Pogodzinski focused on issues of mentoring and commitment – his findings are similar to several other recent SNA studies in one regard – the importance of “informal” mentoring relationships over formal mentoring relationship.

Another presenter, Nathan Jones, discussed his work with Peter Youngs on the attitudes of early-career teachers throughout their day.  Low & Youngs used an interesting technique to gather data – a sort of paging system that beeped teachers randomly throughout the day to ask them about what they were doing at that time and how they were feeling. The study had interesting findings around the proportional differences in the kinds of activities that regular and special education teachers engaged in throughout the day.  Further, I was particularly interested in their finding that teachers were generally “happier” during instruction time than when interacting with colleagues.  Of course – and we don’t necessarily need a study to prove this -- they were least happy filing paperwork J

Mark Low presented a paper that contrasted the networks and commitment levels of teachers in public schools versus catholic schools. There were some initial findings that indicated important differences in the commitment levels of Public versus Catholic schools – this study is still in progress and more analysis on the data will probably be available soon.

In addition to the sessions, I met another SNA researcher, Alison Fox, from Cambridge University, who presented her paper on the social network of early career teachers. She works with several scholars in England – Patrick Carmichael (CARET, Cambridge), Robert McCormick (Open University) and Richard Procter (I of E).  They have been researching teacher learning and communities in England for several years now, and have a website dedicated to all of their research: www.tlrp.org