Teacher Ownership of Educational Reform: An Exploratory Social Network Study

• In Event: 34.095 - MTCC Roundtable Session 11
  In Roundtable Session: 34.095-5 - The Role and Perceptions of Stakeholders in Implementation

Abstract

We conducted an exploratory case study of an elementary school which implemented an ICT reform in recent years. The goal of the study was to use social network methods to examine how teacher’ social network relationships impacted their perceptions of ownership of the reform. QAP and Pearson correlations revealed that teachers had overlapping relationships in reform versus school networks in technological matters, suggesting that ICT penetrated many non-reform activities. They also indicated that teachers made ownership attributions based on directionality of relationships, associating promotion-focused ownership with incoming ties and prevention-focused ownership with outgoing ties. Findings capture an instructional tension associated with ICT between social network configurations which cultivate novelty and innovation versus those which protect or preserve traditional pedagogic methods.

Authors

• Noa Rom, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

• Ori Eyal, Hebrew University