Making Sense of Teachers' Communities of Practice with Social and Epistemic Network Analysis

该项目将采用社会和认知网络分析来调查教师如何形成实践社区（cop）。实质性贡献：cop——一群具有共同目标感和长期支持的行为者（Lave & Wenger, 1991）——可以促进创新和改善学生成绩，但教师建立这种社区的机制尚未得到实证调查。该项目将提供关于变革机制（例如，教师如何影响彼此对实践的理解）的原始描述，以形成cop作为塑造行为者的意义形成过程并被其塑造的社会网络。跨学科：结合教育理论（教师代理和cop），计算机科学中最近发展的数据分析技术（认知网络分析）和高级社会网络分析，博士生将开发cop作为社会网络的新操作，以对教师互动的结构和内容随时间的变化进行实证分析。该学生将在苏格兰的四所学校（约200名教师）收集数据，使用基于网络的日志，要求教师报告他们在向同事或其他人寻求支持的特定情况下的感想（每个学期至少一个条目，超过三个学期）。学生将对日志数据进行内容分析，以构建认知网络（基于代码共现），同时对社会网络结构进行定量分析。结合使用，社会和认知网络分析将能够调查有目的的模式互动，以识别具有高度一致目的和相互支持的网络，这是cop的特征。

The project will employ Social and Epistemic Network analysis to investigate how teachers form Communities of Practice (CoPs). Substantive contribution: CoPs - groups of actors who share a sense of purpose and support over time (Lave & Wenger, 1991) - can facilitate innovation and improved student outcomes, but the mechanisms through which teachers build such communities have been empirically under-investigated. The project will provide an original account of change mechanisms (e.g. how teachers influence each other's understanding of practice) in formation of CoPs as social networks that shape, and are shaped by, actors' sense-making processes. Interdisciplinarity: Bringing together educational theories (teacher agency and CoPs), data analytic techniques recently developed in computer sciences (Epistemic Network Analysis) and Advanced Social Network Analysis, the PhD student will develop a novel operationalisation of CoPs as social networks to conduct empirical analysis of change in both structure and content of teachers' interactions over time. The student will collect data in four schools in Scotland (about 200 teachers) using a web-based log asking teachers to report their reflections on particular situations in which they approached colleagues or other people for support (at least one entry per school term over three terms). The student will conduct content analysis of log data to construct epistemic networks (based on code co-occurrences) in concert with quantitative analysis of social network structures. Used together, Social and Epistemic Network analysis will enable investigation of the patterned purposeful interactions to identify networks with high levels of alignment in purposes and mutual support that characterise CoPs.