Using Social Network Analysis to Explore Formal Leadership in Educational Settings: Benefits and Challenges

Author(s):

Michael Jopling(presenting / submitting)Mark Hadfield(presenting)

Conference:

ECER 2013

Network:

26. Educational Leadership

Format:

Paper

Session Information

26 SES 03 B, Novice Teachers, Prinicpals and Prospective Leaders

Paper Session

Time:

2013-09-10

17:15-18:45

Room:

D-307

Chair:

David Gurr

Contribution

This paper draws on the findings of a three-year, government-funded study of Early Years Professionals Status (EYPS) in England which was completed in 2012. EYPS was introduced in 2006 to enhance quality in early years provision, influenced by the findings of the EPPE study (Sylva et al, 2010), which suggested that quality in early years provision was associated with having graduate leaders and high quality interactions in a play-based curriculum.

Theoretically, the study drew on established notions of quality in early years provision (Fenech, 2011), theories of agency and professionalism (Miller & Cable, 2011), and insights from research into early years leadership (Whalley, 2008), teacher leadership (York-Barr & Duke, 2004) and organisational leadership (Hannah & Lester, 2009). EYPs’ agency and leadership were regarded as both individual and collective in nature, in that they were able to take direct action themselves, but were also able to draw on support and resources from colleagues in their settings and their professional networks to effect change and improvements.

The study had a range of interrelated objectives. It set out to investigate if EYPS was achieving its aims by examining the following areas:

EYPs’ views on their ability to carry out their roles since gaining EYPS
EYPs’ practice in relation to: outcomes for children; impact on leadership roles in early years settings; and impact on other aspects of early years settings, such as the quality of practice and interactions.
EYPs’ career pathways and trajectories
EYP’s further training or professional development.
The issues faced by EYPs in integrating children’s perspectives into their approaches to improving the quality of provision.

This paper focuses primary on the use of social network analysis (SNA) in conjunction with other data to trace and explore the development and influence of EYPs’ leadership.

Method

This paper focuses on the use of SNA longitudinally to map the flow of relationships among EYPs and their colleagues and to build up a picture of the professional community and formal and informal leadership relationships in each setting. Using SNA was designed to allow us to validate, contextualise and problematise the evidence emerging from the interview and observation data relating to leadership practice among EYPs and their colleagues. This enabled us to explore over time the extent to which patterns of social interaction between leaders and others in settings changed and evolved and how this related to and influenced leadership and the ways in which it was distributed in settings (Spillane & Orlina, 2005). Largely qualitative, the study was based on case studies of 30 settings in England and a repeated national questionnaire survey. The case studies drew on observations of the learning environment and interactions between adults and children, SNA, document analysis, and qualitative interviews with EYPs, setting leaders and staff, to explore quality improvement and practice leadership in EYPs’ settings. Each setting was visited between four and five times during the research.

Expected Outcomes

The paper builds on the outcomes of the completed longitudinal study (Hadfield et al, 2012) in which SNA was central to developing an understanding of the extent to which EYPs’ perceptions and descriptions of leadership patterns and practices in settings matched leadership on ground. Bringing SNA data together with interview and observation data allowed us to overcome some of the conceptual and methodological limitations identified in both some uses of SNA (Helms et al, 2010; de Lima, 2010) and leadership research (Hallinger & Heck, 1996). It also enabled us to explore leadership as a process of mutual influence among EYPs, their colleagues and settings, drawing on Pitner’s (1988) ‘reciprocal effects’ model, and to suggest a conceptual shift in which practice leadership was differentiated from organisational leadership. The study found that EYPs took very different approaches to developing practice leadership. The paper suggests that using SNA to trace leadership flows and relationships can offer a more nuanced picture of educational leadership practice and practice leadership, which is not reliant on leaders’ perceptions of how they lead. The paper concludes with a brief summary of the broad implications for the use of SNA in educational leadership research.

References

De Lima, J.A. (2010) Studies of networks in education; Methods for collecting and managing high-quality data, in Daly, A.J. (ed.) Social Network Theory and Educational Change. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard Education Press, 243-258 Fenech, M. (2011) An Analysis of the Conceptualisation of ‘Quality’ in Early Childhood Education and Care Empirical Research: promoting ‘blind spots’ as foci for future research. Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood, 12(2): 102-117. Hallinger, P., & Heck, R. H. (1996). Reassessing the principalʹs role in school effectiveness: A review of empirical research, 1980‐1995. Educational Administration Quarterly, 32(1), 5‐44. Hannah, S and Lester, P (2009) A multilevel approach to building and leading learning organizations The Leadership Quarterly 20, 34–48 Helms, R., Ignacio, R., and Brinkkemper, S. (2010). Limitations of Network Analysis for Studying Efficiency and Effectiveness of Knowledge Sharing. The Electronic Journal of Knowledge Management, 8, 1: 53-68 Miller, M. and Cable, C. (2008) Professionalism in the Early Years Workforce. London: Hodder Pitner, N. (1988). The study of administrator effects and effectiveness. In N. Boyan (ed.), Handbook of research in educational administration. New York: Longman, 99-122 Spillane, J.P., and E. Orlina. 2005. Investigating leadership practice: Exploring the entailments of taking a distributed perspective. Leadership and Policy in Schools 4, 3: 157

Author Information

Michael Jopling (presenting / submitting)

University of Wolverhampton

School of Education

Walsall

Mark Hadfield (presenting)