Uncovering influence through Social Network Analysis: the role of schools in Education for Sustainable Development

Abstract

This paper examines the implementation of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) in Germany and explores the possibilities of Social Network Analysis (SNA) for uncovering influential actors in educational policy innovation processes. From the theoretical perspective, an actor’s influence is inferred from its relative position within issue-specific information flows and the trust placed in its capacities and expertise, instead of relying on an actor’s openly expressed role and policy preferences. Drawing on techniques from quantitative SNA enables to analyse the social interactions as well as the frequency and type of information exchange amongst actors in a particular issue area. Empirically, I focus my attention on the educational innovation of ESD, which has been initiated at the global level, but is mainly put into practice at the national or regional level. Data for the study come from mixed mode interviews with a standardised questionnaire. The interviews were conducted and analysed using egocentric and complete SNA. I find, amongst others results, that NGOs and governmental actors occupy significantly more central, prestigious and influential network positions than schools in the course of implementing ESD in Germany. Furthermore, school representatives exhibit few and weak relations, and mostly share links with other formal education actors.     

Play's importance in school

The purpose of this study is to contribute knowledge on and gain an understanding of elementary school teachers' perspectives on the function of play in children's learning processes. The study is qualitative with a hermeneutical approach and has George Herbert Mead as a theoretical frame of reference. Interviews have been carried out with seven teachers. The material was interpreted into four main categories: learning, development, teaching, and socialisation. Play used in school results in positive social effects, as pointed out by the teachers. The social and the academic skills that play brought to the children were also made obvious in the study's findings.     

Assessing term effectiveness in the interactive information access process

This study addresses the question of whether the way in which sets of query terms are identified has an impact on the effectiveness of users’ information seeking efforts. Query terms are text strings used as input to an information access system; they are products of a method or grammar that identifies a set of query terms. We conducted an experiment that compared the effectiveness of sets of query terms identified for a single book by three different methods. One had been previously prepared by a human indexer for a back-of-the-book index. The other two were identified by computer programs that used a combination of linguistic and statistical criteria to extract terms from full text. Effectiveness was measured by (1) whether selected query terms led participants to correct answers and (2) how long it took participants to obtain correct answers. Our results show that two sets of terms – the human terms and the set selected according to the linguistically more sophisticated criteria – were significantly more effective than the third set of terms. This single case demonstrates that query languages do have a measurable impact on the effectiveness of query term languages in the interactive information access process. The procedure described in this paper can be used to assess the effectiveness for information seekers of query terms identified by any query language.     

The (Un)Common Instructor: A New Role for Medical Librarians Beyond Information Literacy

University common reading programs provide a shared experience as students transition into college life and develop critical thinking skills. Typically in such programs, all students in an incoming class read and discuss the same book. Conversely, the University of Florida Honors Program’s (un)common reads facilitates the same skills development through multiple small sections, each focusing on a different book and each with flexible and innovative assignments and activities. Health Science Center librarians have taught in these (un)common reads since the spring semester 2010–2011. This article describes librarian involvement in this program as well as the ensuing benefits for students, librarians, and the university at large.     

Organizational response to decline in the academic marketplace

In the last twenty-five years institutions of higher education and the academic market-place have undergone considerable change. A period of rapid growth and expansion was followed by a period of shrinking resources and decreasing growth. The effects of organizational decline on personnel management and on the formal structure of the academic hierarchy are examined in Israeli universities. The data show that in the non-growth period standards for faculty selection and advancement have not been formally altered, although actual practices have resulted in prolonged time periods between promotions and until tenure is obtained. The most salient change that has taken place is a continuous process of proliferation of the academic hierarchy by addition of new tracks and ranks to the main regular faculty track, and the increasing use of these positions particularly for new hires. This is consistent with other studies which found that organizational complexity may increase under conditions of decline. The effectiveness and functions of this process as an adaptive response to environmental scarcity are discussed.     

Blurred Boundaries or Conflicting Epistemologies

In this article, I discuss how information activists and journalists in Egypt claimed to acquire knowledge about the world, looking particularly at the period of 2012 and 2013, during which the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces and Mohammed Morsi in turn were leading the country. Taking a point of departure in anthropological fieldwork with information activists and journalists in Egypt, I show that information activists and journalists often had very similar practices and goals, which at times made the boundaries very blurry. Yet I argue that there was a significant distinction between the epistemologies of information activists and journalists. Information activists claimed to acquire knowledge about events from being part of them, whereas journalists claimed to acquire knowledge about events from observing them without taking part. Relatedly, information activists and journalists had significantly different relationships with their audiences.