Vocational training centres are conceptually regarded as key players in the knowledge generation and dissemination processes that take place within innovation systems. However, the literature does not provide conclusive evidence of their influence on the generation, development and dissemination of innovations. The goal of this paper is to analyse…

Knowledge regarding social information is commonly believed to be derived from sources such as formal relationships and interviews and can be plotted as complex networks. We explored whether social networks can also be extracted through other means by using language statistics. In three computational studies we computed first-order and…

Research indicates that teamwork, communication, self-directed learning, and problem-solving skills are strongly linked to individual academic and professional success, yet little is known regarding how college educators and employer trainers learn to better teach or train others in these valuable skills in postsecondary and employment STEM…

The purpose of this research was to explore the construct of teacher influence and consider it in the context of transformational leadership. Furthermore, it also investigates how to more broadly define teacher leadership liberating it from its reliance on specific district/school-assigned roles to include the belief that all teachers are capable…

Regional professional learning networks support school change by linking principals to others engaged in similar change work. While increasingly prevalent, little is known about the factors that contribute to the formation of ties between network members, or how knowledge moves across the network. Using social network analysis, this study examined…

Bourdieu carved out a distinctive analytical niche for his reflexive sociology. His epistemological tool of field analysis, sometimes coupled with statistical correspondence analysis, is particularly powerful when deciphering the matrix of objective structures and subjective structures within social spaces (field) where agents vie for positions…

The recent model of Networked flow (NF) mapped out factors underlying optimal creative collaboration in blended spaces (physical and digital). NF conceives creativity as an evolving network bridging material and symbolic resources of the creative collaboration process at both inter and the intra-group levels. First, this model posits that optimal…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of individual difference variables and social relationships on student learning outcomes of short-term study abroad programs. Design/methodology/approach: This study used a social network analysis (SNA) approach to examine the effects of friendship, advice and communication networks on…

We show how policy makers converged to support similar reforms on a major educational issue: teacher effectiveness. Our study demonstrates the importance of idea brokers--actors that facilitate connections between preferences in policy networks and promote consensus around new policy ideas. Our study is based on analysis of testimony from 200…

This paper finds its origins in a multidisciplinary research group's efforts to assemble a review of research in order to better appreciate how "spatial reasoning" is understood and investigated across academic disciplines. We first collaborated to create a historical map of the development of spatial reasoning across key disciplines…

The purpose of this research is to examine activities carried out on Twitter, which is a social media platform, on April 2 Autism Awareness Day; network structure in Turkey and in a global context, interaction patterns, the important nodes, user profiles, hashtag usage, and social mode within the context of the Twitter messages and discourses. In…

This mixed methods study followed an explanatory sequential design to explore the formation, development, and evolution of a formal online teacher community of practice (CoP). The online CoP supported 382 teachers as they implemented the instructional conversation (IC) pedagogy, a collaborative conversation-based pedagogy for culturally and…

Purpose: This study aims to uncover divergent collaboration in makerspaces using social network analysis to examine ongoing social relations and sequential data pattern mining to invesitgate temporal changes in social activities. Design/methodology/approach: While there is a significant body of qualitative work on makerspaces, there is a lack of…

Modern science standards emphasize knowledge-in-use, i.e., connecting scientific practices with content. For knowledge to become usable in knowledge-in-use performances, students need well organized knowledge networks that allow them to activate and connect sets of relevant ideas across contexts, i.e. students need integrated knowledge. We…

This research note discusses opportunities and challenges of using online survey engines for social network analysis (SNA) data collection and assessing sample size and representativeness. The discussion is based on a case study of SNA data collection for a pilot research on health-relevant policy networks in Canada. Our approach demonstrates how…