“Now You See Me, Now You Don’t”: Responses to Teacher Turnover in School-Based Collaborative Networks

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Thursday 2:15 pm
  In Roundtable Session: Logics & Learning: Organizational Theory as a Tool for Improvement and Reform

Abstract

Commonplace phenomena like teacher shortages and rotation frequently result in changes to teachers’ coworkers, yet the role that stability of teacher work-based relationships plays in teacher collaboration and peer-learning remains unexplored. Combining qualitative interviews and social network analysis, I study two types of focal teachers (stable vs rotating) as well as their immediate school-based collaborative networks through time. I capture networks corresponding to different collaborative tasks between teachers in schools and describe their composition and evolution in terms of their members’ stability. I explore stable and rotating teachers’ responses to variation in stability in their work-based relationships and identify the ways different responses shape teachers’ experiences of learning from peers.

Author

• Eva Flavia Martinez Orbegozo, Harvard University