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

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

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.