Mapping Their Terrain: Teacher Leaders Wielding Social Network Theory for Educational Change

Presentation Type

Poster

Faculty Advisor

Mika Munakata

Access Type

Event

Start Date

26-4-2023 1:45 PM

End Date

26-4-2023 2:45 PM

Description

In this poster, we present research on teacher leadership networks and a network mapping tool we developed to analyze the social networks of science teacher leaders from the Wipro Fellowship program and assess their use of human capital. To frame this study, we used social network theory to analyze educational change through the connected network of actors (Daly, 2010). Our primary research question is How can the construction of social network maps (SNM) and project-oriented professional development be leveraged to support teacher leadership identity? Social network theory promotes the use of mapping to deepen the understanding of one's perceived group connections. However, there is no standard process to create such maps. Further, SNM are often created by researchers through an interview process rather than by participants themselves. We address these gaps by developing a tool to create SNM as it relates to each fellows’ district-based leadership initiative. We facilitated the development of SNM to enable teacher leaders to analyze their available human capital. Through an initial coding of the participant SNM and follow up interviews, we found that, while the SNM tool provides the space to illuminate stakeholders, Wipro Fellow participants were unclear about how this tool could be used to analyze their use of human capital as a means to impact their project. This finding suggests the need for targeted professional development that would support teachers to use this tool to plan and implement their teacher leadership initiatives.

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Apr 26th, 1:45 PM Apr 26th, 2:45 PM

Mapping Their Terrain: Teacher Leaders Wielding Social Network Theory for Educational Change

In this poster, we present research on teacher leadership networks and a network mapping tool we developed to analyze the social networks of science teacher leaders from the Wipro Fellowship program and assess their use of human capital. To frame this study, we used social network theory to analyze educational change through the connected network of actors (Daly, 2010). Our primary research question is How can the construction of social network maps (SNM) and project-oriented professional development be leveraged to support teacher leadership identity? Social network theory promotes the use of mapping to deepen the understanding of one's perceived group connections. However, there is no standard process to create such maps. Further, SNM are often created by researchers through an interview process rather than by participants themselves. We address these gaps by developing a tool to create SNM as it relates to each fellows’ district-based leadership initiative. We facilitated the development of SNM to enable teacher leaders to analyze their available human capital. Through an initial coding of the participant SNM and follow up interviews, we found that, while the SNM tool provides the space to illuminate stakeholders, Wipro Fellow participants were unclear about how this tool could be used to analyze their use of human capital as a means to impact their project. This finding suggests the need for targeted professional development that would support teachers to use this tool to plan and implement their teacher leadership initiatives.