Measuring Distributed Teacher Leadership Networks Using Social Network Theory

Amanda Mattocks mattocks@uw.edu

ABSTRACTI analyzed the social network of teachers at my high school for the purpose of determining the distributed leadership so that established teacher leaders could converse about how to improve collegial interactions. By surveying the faculty and using instructional coach data, I crafted spreadsheets identifying who each person interacted with and how often they collaborated. I loaded the interactions into Gephi, which generated sociograms, visualizing the social network of the school. I noticed that 1) instructional coaches met with over half the faculty, 2) the primary collaboration happened in departments, 3) the technology integration specialists worked with the most teachers, and 4) new faculty were less connected. Based on this data, the instructional coaches will collaborate in the Spring of 2017 about a new focus on integrating new faculty as well as working with departments that had fewer reported connections. This study helped me understand the social network of teacher leaders at my school as well as helped formal teacher leaders become more effective agents of change.

RELEVANCEIn my high school, where I teach social studies, there is already an established teacher leader program. There are three instructional coaches, two technology specialists, department heads, and new teacher mentors. Because my high school has an already established, paid, formal teacher leaders, my action research study would be better suited to analyze the effectiveness of the formal teacher leaders by quantifying the school social network and formal leader interactions with the hopes of helping formal leaders target their connections.

RESEARH QUESTIONS What departments receive the most/least amount of teacher leader support? Where are the ties between teachers the strongest and weakest? In which areas can teacher leaders celebrate success and in which areas do teacher leaders need to focus more energy. How do the teacher leader services align with the school improvement plan about diversity and collaboration?

METHODS

To measure teacher interactions, I recorded each time teachers collaborated to improve student learning. Then imported the spread sheet of recorded connections into Gephi, a sociogram software. Each teacher shows up as a node or a dot on the graph. Every time they connect, Gephi generated a line. The more connected to a dot, the bigger it grows. The more times two teachers collaborated, the darker the line. If nodes below are towards the center or surrounded by other nodes, they are highly connected. If nodes below are around the outside they are disconnected from the social network. Each node on the backside is colored based on their department. The action research paper also qualifies the nodes by gender and experience. I gathered the data through the coaching records of collegial interactions, a survey with 42 out of 89 faculty responding, and the master schedule to pair teaching partners.

Coaching Sociogram Survey Sociogram Combined Data

Measuring Distributed Teacher Leadership Networks Using Social Network TheoryAmanda Mattocks mattocks@uw.ed

KEY FINDINGSTeachers averaged 2.86 connections each, with a weighted average of 4.837.

Thirteen percent of the faculty, according to the data gathered, are “disconnected”.

Math, Special Education and Fine Arts are more isolated.

Teacher leaders create school-wide connections between clusters of teachersTeachers report primarily working with their departmentsDepartments generally distribute leadershipThe instructional coaches connected with 60% of the teachers but did not connect with 34 faculty members14 teachers worked with multiple instructional coachesCoaches work heavily with college and career readiness, history and science departments but not special education Coaches are formally cross-departmental but tend towards working with teachers in similar content

IMPLICATIONSThe evidence showed that the school is relatively connected. These statistics need to be celebrated, and I hope to share out with the entire faculty so that a departmentally focused teachers can get a big picture look at the school’s social network.

In addition to sharing out with the entire faculty network, coaches can learn from this data to improve their practice. Adding a fine arts coach could help connect isolated departments in the lower wings of the building. Coaches could also increase their efforts to work with less connected departments like special ed. Gender and experienced colored graphs also provide more information about how the coaches could work closer with new teachers.

Personally, knowing the social network of the school only encourages me to get more connected with other teachers and utilize the available professional growth opportunities.

Social Network Organized by Location Social Network Reported by a Survey Social Network Established by Coaches

Social Network Colorized by Department