Understanding the social network of Moroccan teacher education faculty to leverage existing expertise and promote equitable education opportunities

• In Event: Poster Session 4
  In Poster Session: Understanding the social network of Moroccan teacher education faculty to leverage existing expertise and promote equitable education opportunities

Proposal

The Moroccan Ministries of Education recognized the vital role of preparing primary school teachers to improve citizens’ equitable access and prompt educational outcomes for citizens. Increasing coherence and collaboration between educational actors and institutions preparing primary teachers throughout Morocco is a key objective for this USAID-funded project. Increased coherence and collaboration have the potential to enhance the quality of teacher preparation by leveraging existing expertise and resources, thus mitigating disparities that currently exist between contexts and ultimately supporting equitable educational opportunities for primary students. To encourage increased collaboration, we used a highly participatory approach. Research and development groups (R&DGs) were formed to connect primary teacher preparation faculty from universities and regional training centers (i.e., CRMEFs) across all twelve Moroccan regions. Universities and CRMEFs are tasked with teacher preparation. Yet, there are few established structures designed to support communication across these types of institutions. Approximately 300 faculty members participated in RD&Gs to capture the diverse expertise of this large network while building interconnectedness across the country.

We utilized an empirical analysis of educational actor networks within the Moroccan system for preparing primary teachers. A social network analysis (SNA) provided data to visualize and quantify coherence and collaboration between higher education members involved in primary teacher education. SNA represents a social science with a theoretical framework and mathematical underpinnings based on graph theory. We developed a survey to collect data in the initial phase of this USAID project to understand the current network and alignment to key project priorities (e.g., gender equity, inclusive education). After translating the survey into Arabic, we conducted cognitive interviews with Moroccan educators to test and refine the functionality and accuracy of the survey and the terminology of the translation. We encountered two challenges. Securing a complete list of emails, as often Moroccan faculty use other modes of communication (e.g., WhatsApp). Second, sharing that this was related to Moroccan education since the email came from our university. We found it necessary to do awareness activities to increase participation. Ultimately, we surveyed 1,295 educators and analyzed 269 (25%) complete responses. We examined relevant aspects of the network by gender, region, and institution and reported centrality by calculating outdegree, indegree, and betweenness. While the response rate was low, the initial network connections are accurate, albeit underrepresented. As such, we can make preliminary conclusions. These findings show that there was a large core network with regional and institutional clusters and limited connectors between those clusters. Additionally, there were a large number of educational actors that appear to play a key role in the system but were not formally identified when initial lists of contacts were collected formally through the Ministry of Education.

During this poster presentation, we seek to gain an understanding of how other researchers have promoted coherence across multi-faceted education systems to improve teacher preparation. Additionally, we elaborate on the utility of using an SNA to quantify and visualize changes in a network over time, specifically in an international educational context.

Authors

• Tanya Pinkerton, Arizona State University

• Nicole L Thompson, Arizona State University