When students can self-select their group members, a common assumption is that students prefer to select friends from similar cultural backgrounds. However, when teachers randomize students in groups from different cultural backgrounds, students are "forced" to work together. The prime goal of this study is to understand the impact of…

Although researchers often acknowledge the importance of linguistically rich interactions in the academic language development of emergent bilingual students, few studies have explicitly examined the role of linguistic peer support and the underlying structure of social relationships in the second language learning experiences and outcomes of…

This study examined career paths to becoming the Senior Student Affairs Officer for men (n = 151) and women (n = 99) at 4-year institutions. Descriptive statistics and network analysis of resume data revealed that an average of 20 years and six job changes led to the position. Most started careers in residential life or student activities,…

Massive open online courses (MOOCs) continue to attract press coverage as they change almost daily in their format, number of registrations, and potential for credentialing. An enticing aspect of the MOOC is its global reach. In this paper, we will focus on a type of MOOC called a cMOOC because it is based on the theory of connectivism and fits…

Intervention studies in school systems are sometimes aimed not at changing curriculum or classroom technique, but rather at changing the way that teachers, teaching coaches, and administrators in schools work with one another--in short, changing the professional social networks of educators. Current methods of social network analysis are…

Email is considered as one of the most widely accepted computer-mediated communication tools among university students. Evidence from the present literature shows that students make a significant amount of their course-related communications (e.g. discuss a topic with peers) using this tool. This study explores the dynamics of an email…

Although all of the schools in the target school system adhere to a school improvement process, achievement scores remain mediocre or stagnant within the overseas school in Italy that serves children of United States armed service members. To address this problem, this study explored the target school's improvement process to discover how…

Construction requires the knowledge and experience of craftsmen. The knowledge and experience is gained through local coordination and local adaption at points of installation, which classifies the work as complex production. Information generated at these points of installation can be valuable in understanding how and why workers make decisions,…

Language serves as a primary tool for structuring identity and loss of language represents the loss of that identity. This study utilizes a social network analysis of Ktunaxa speech community activities for evidence of internally generated revitalization efforts. These behaviors include instances of self-organized emergence. Such emergent behavior…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the role of leadership and its influence on innovation at a two-year college, paying particular attention to the network structure, the influence of leadership (formal and informal), and environmental influence. The goal was to learn about the nature of innovation at two-year colleges by studying the…

Drawing on the embeddedness, varieties of capitalism and macrosociological life course perspectives, we examine how institutional arrangements affect network-based job finding behaviors in the United States and Germany. Analysis of cross-national survey data reveals that informal job matching is highly clustered among specific types of individuals…

Within coalitions of consumer advocates formed to advance health insurance coverage expansions, engaging in united advocacy activities soon after formation might be an important precursor to attaining coalition effectiveness in shaping policy. In this article, the authors apply social network analysis (SNA) to examine how organizational…

Arguments regarding the high prevalence of interpersonal collectivism in Japan typically hinge on the assumption that Japanese communication networks are more enduring, frequently contacted, and dominated by kin and work ties than networks in Western countries. However, this assumption has not been examined using nationally representative data.…

Online environments can cultivate what have been referred to as 21st century skills and capabilities, as youth contribute, pursue, share, and interact around work and ideas. Such environments also hold great potential for addressing digital divides related to the development of such skills by connecting youth in areas with fewer resources and…

While many innovative teaching strategies exist, integration into undergraduate science teaching has been frustratingly slow. This study aims to understand the low uptake of research-based instructional innovations by studying 21 successful implementations of the Student Centered Active Learning with Upside-down Pedagogies (SCALE-UP) instructional…