Title

Using social network analysis to develop relational expertise for an instructional change initiative

Authors

Kathleen Quardokus Fisher, Department of Earth and Environment and STEM Transformation Institute, Florida International UniversityFollow
Ann Sitomer, Oregon State University
Jana Bouwma-Gearheart, Oregon State University
Milo Koretsky, Oregon State University

Date of this Version

5-16-2019

Document Type

Article

Abstract

Background

Change leaders (faculty, administrators, and/or external stakeholders) need to develop relational expertise, recognizing the perspectives of others, to enable emergent, systemic change. We describe how change leaders of a grant-funded instructional change initiative developed relational expertise by analyzing faculty relationships and social subgroups to identify who was involved in discussions about teaching and learning and what specific topics were discussed.

Results

Faculty discussions focused on daily classroom needs. Faculty who were in different departments or schools were mostly disconnected from each other, and faculty within these units often had subdivisions among them.

Conclusions

Faculty lacked opportunities to discuss education, specifically, systems-level perspectives. The change leaders created organizational structures to catalyze communities, including an action research fellowship program, to support faculty in education discussions.

Comments

Originally published in the International Journal of STEM Education.

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Recommended Citation

Quardokus Fisher, Kathleen; Sitomer, Ann; Bouwma-Gearheart, Jana; and Koretsky, Milo, "Using social network analysis to develop relational expertise for an instructional change initiative" (2019). Department of Earth and Environment. 51.
https://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/earth_environment_fac/51