This paper presents an analysis of a National Network of school leaders. The analysis is part of a large-scale Evaluation Research project . The National Network was set up as part of a reform project to improve the outcomes of Indigenous learners in Australian schools. The plan was for a national network of 60 hub schools and 240 affiliate schools to form a scalable and sustainable network to support reform in individual school sites.Original plans for the Network were based on the assumptions that 1) it would become self sustaining after an initial implementation period; and 2) that the Network would grow and expand over time until it included a large number of schools across eight separate educational jurisdictions.

The analysis is positioned within school reform research internationally, as it answers to questions about effective supports and connections for school reform in low SES and culturally diverse schools. The National Network was set up as a structure to facilitate the transfer of ideas, advice and learning around a network of high performing schools. Its aim was to facilitate the conduct of messages that carry ‘stories of success’ as a way to support continued improvement of practice in the Network schools. In this way it was set up to act as an advice network (see for example Blau, 1955; Lazega, E., Mounier, L., Snijders, T., & Tubaro, P., 2009), that is the structure was set up to act as a set of paths or connections through which advice and innovative ideas could circulate around the members of the Network.

Socio metric approaches and the study of social networks focus on the patterns and structures of relations between individuals and emerge from graph theory and information science as well as sociology and cognitive psychology. The idea that networks are important in modern society is not new in education research, however the emergence of new methods of data analysis have provided new tools to investigate their place in the every day practices of institutions such as schools. This paper draws on sociometric understandings to enable an analysis of the flexible and dynamic networks of relationships that play out as school leaders connect around issues of school reform for improving the outcomes of students in schools.

The aim of this section of the Evaluation Research was to investigate how the National Network of school leaders developed over the duration of the four-year reform project. The research questions aimed to unpack the assumptions of sustainability and scalability and can be expressed as:

1. How does the National Network of school leaders develop over time?
2. What are the implications of network growth for how the National Network functions? (scalability)
3. What is the network structure of the National Network and how does it relate to specific characteristics of the leaders and their schools (eg school type, location and % of Indigenous students)? (sustainability)

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