Innovative Methods to Study School System Dynamics

Abstract

The transformations currently underway in many school systems point towards teachers becoming actively engaged in research, as well as finding ways to bring new educational research knowledge into school classrooms. In this paper, we discuss two methodological approaches that have strengthened our own research of schools systems: Social Network Analysis and the Social World Arenas framework. We suggest that these analytical approaches are useful tools for studying complex adaptive systems in education and provide the means to improve teachers’ scholarship of teaching and learning.