Learning How to Learn
Mapping tool baseline
Teaching and Learning Research Programme
Annual Conference Papers
5th Annual Conference, 22-24 November 2004
Cardiff Marriott Hotel
The design and use of a mapping tool as a baseline means of identifying an organisation’s active networks
Alison Fox & Robert McCormickThe Open University
NB: This paper was presented at an internal TLRP conference; if you wish to quote from it please contact the authors directly for permission. Contact details for each project and thematic initiative can be found on our website (
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L3 mapping baseline paper TLRP 22Nov04.doc
Learning How to Learn
Mapping tool baseline
The design and use of a mapping tool as a baseline means of identifying an organisation’s active networks.[1]
Alison Fox & Robert McCormickThe Open University
Paper presented to the TLRP Annual Conference, Cardiff Marriott, 22-24 November 2004
© Learning How to Learn Project team
Abstract
As part of the ‘Learning How to Learn in Classrooms, Schools and Networks’ project, a mapping tool and associated interviews were devised to capture practitioners’ views of the networks their schools and LEAs are involved with. This paper charts the development and use of the mapping task, including its trialling, and the first stages of analysis. The task was open-ended asking respondents to represent ‘with whom’ and ‘how’ their organisation communicates. LEA advisers offered an LEA-based perspective and both headteachers and school project co-ordinators offered a school-based perspective. 43 maps have been collected from 17 schools and 5 LEAs. Initial discussion of the range of map structures offered is presented. In all cases it was possible to extract from the maps a list of people, groups, places and events, what are termed nodes, and information about how these nodes were connected, termed links. Most maps were organised around one or, in some cases, two central nodes. Descriptive analysis of both nodes and links has been used both to give respondents feedback on their maps, incorporating them in the validation of further analysis, and for comparative purposes. A sample of maps and the associated interviews generated by four LEA advisers from three LEAs and six Headteachers and five project co-ordinators in six schools in a single LEA is discussed. Theoretically, the development of the mapping tool draws on three main areas of work - sociograms dating back to the 1930s, social network analysis, currently largely being developed by Finnish researchers, and the work of Pearson and Somekh (2000) in mapping children’s representations of the virtual world of computers.
Introduction
This paper is an exploration of the way graphic network maps can be used to understand the nature of school and LEA networks. It examines the extent to which analyses can be made across the variety of maps that result when teachers and LEA advisers are asked to represent their networks and, for a sample of maps, also explores the use of associated commentary and interview transcripts. This initial exploration is by nature descriptive and therefore limited, and does not, for example, analyse particular maps or use interpretative frameworks. (These aspects will be the subject of later papers.)
Background
The work presented is part of the ESRC funded project entitled ‘The Learning how to learn’ (L2L) project. This is a four-year project (Jan 2001-March 2005) involving four universities (Cambridge University, King’s College London, the Open University and Reading University) working with five Local Education Authorities (LEAs), one Virtual Education Action Zone (VEAZ) and, initially, 43 schools. It explores learning how to learn practices at three levels - in classrooms, in schools and in networks. This paper explains the development of a mapping tool used to represent the networks being used by school, LEA and VEAZ contacts in the project.
All schools in the project are linked by a website that includes resources, facilities to record logs of activity (and reflections on them), and an electronic discussion area. In addition the co-ordinators from each school have an opportunity to meet twice a year during the project. It was envisaged that there would be networking among the project schools. This networking would involve the sharing and creation of new practices of learning how to learn.
Some of the project schools were part of a VEAZ set up to encourage networking between consortia of schools across geographically broad areas. Such networking was planned to be based on the use of electronic communication technologies such as web-conferencing and interactive websites. Five of the project’s schools were in a VEAZ and one school in a second VEAZ was attached to the project.
During the course of the project the National College of School Leadership (NCSL) also provided an impetus to collaboration between clusters of schools (NCSL, 2004), with the creation of the Networked Learning Communities (NLC) programme (Cordingley, 2003). This programme encourages schools to work collaboratively with one another, LEAs and with Higher Education Institutions (HEIs).[2] The NLC programme involved three groups of schools in the L2L project.
The project’s research effort into ‘networks’ and ‘networking’ is focussed on those facilitated or ‘formal’ networks that we have considered as discrete entities, though we are interested in some aspects of networking across all the project schools. The ‘network team’ within the research project addresses the following project research question:
Investigate how educational networks, including electronic networks, can support the creation, management and transfer of the knowledge and skills of learning how to learn;
The team set itself sub-questions, several of which relate specifically to electronic activity in such networks. However, it quickly became clear, even in the VEAZs, that there was a dearth of such activity to monitor. These aspects of networking have not been ignored and a questionnaire, concerning ICT skills and practices and school-level audit of ICT facilities, has been used in networked schools to go some way to addressing these questions. As noted earlier, electronic activity was encouraged and facilitated via the development of an interactive project website et al, 2003). One sub-question, however, asked is to take a broader view of networking:
Do such forms of networking reflect existing patterns of collaboration and interaction or are new forms being developed?
An electronic network is a bounded entity, made up of a finite number of people and using explicit communications (messages). It is possible to document these communications, who has initiated them, read them or responded to them. Their analysis is not straightforward, but there is a substantial literature on this (see Cook and Ralston [2004] for a review). Similarly, social network analysis has developed techniques where all those who are part of possible networks are known (e.g. within an organisation; see Hakkarainen et al, 2004). Situations where networks are unknown, and include a variety of people, places, and organisations (such as faced within this project) are somewhat under-researched. Consequently no ready-made techniques are available to collect data on such networks.
We therefore had to assess the nature of the ‘existing patterns’ to ground further theoretical and analytic work. If they are not principally electronic, what are the patterns and mechanisms of school networking? How could we define the actual, active, networking related to schools and LEAs? These networks would include both formal networks (e.g. NLCs or VEAZs), and ‘informal’ networks.
Our analyses draw on earlier, broader, sociological work dating back to the 1930s about the patterns and structure of group relationships (e.g. Moreno, 1932). How these are represented symbolically and spatially is a long-standing preoccupation of sociometrists. Moreno (1932) produced some of the earliest diagrams, termed sociograms, as a ‘tool of exploration’ for the ‘structural analysis of a community’. In the latter half of the twentieth century, the use of computers and statistical techniques, such as factor analysis to map more elaborate forms of data, moved the evolution of sociograms into a new realm. From the 1990s specialized sociometric software such as Krackplot, Netvis and Multinet effectively reduced the need for visualization skills or creativity on the part of the researcher.
Little theoretical work has been done about the nature of educational networks, especially those to create and share ideas of teaching and learning (e.g. Jackson, 2002, McCormick et al, 2003, & McCormick, 2003). Because of the lack of theoretical work and ready-made techniques, we developed an exploratory mapping tool as a baseline representation of an organisation’s active network. The rationale for the use and development of this tool is charted here. Data were collected in the second year of the project (2002/3) from a sample of schools. Secondly, pilot and initial, descriptive analyses of the maps collected are outlined, including how this analysis is being used to give feedback to respondents in schools and LEAs. Data, drawn from the entire map set (43 respondents), and a sample of 15 of them, are discussed. Links to these other literatures are made throughout the paper. Given the novelty of this enterprise, more questions than answers are raised in the analysis.
Theoretical considerations
The importance of networking over the past five years has become increasingly important for educational reform: the government’s setting up of VEAZs and, more recently, the work of the Innovations Unit (SEEVEAZ, 2004; Hargreaves, 2003). These initiatives stand alongside the NLC programme. A European overview of networking for educational reform has been undertaken by the European Research Network for ICT in Schools of Tomorrow (ERNIST), and in a preliminary paper Buchberger et al (2003) emphasise that care needs to be taken with such a fashionable concept. Indeed little clarity is to be found amongst the rhetoric of the UK educational organisations in the definitions of ‘networks’ and ‘networking’. The NCSL approach is based on collaboration with teachers, leaders and pupils central to their networks, but little has been written about the suggested mechanisms for the networks and networking.[3]
Hargreaves (2003), writing in a policy connection, offers little sound theoretical or empirical basis for the processes of generating and sharing new knowledge about teaching and learning. He, and others writing academically about educational networks, look to analyses of networks elsewhere; e.g. business or electronic networks (Hakkerainen et al, (2004). McCormick (2003) concludes that those who discuss teacher networks offer us little understanding of the mechanisms of networks, e.g. Lieberman (1999) and Lieberman & Grolnick (1996) focus on a limited aspect namely a group of teachers meeting for professional development activity outside of school, which might subsequently have an impact on the school. Little of their work focuses on the network or networking outside of such meetings.
To explore, in largely a grounded way, ‘networking’ and ‘networks’ with a concern for the creation and sharing of knowledge, we focused on ‘communication’ and used the following definition of ‘networking’:
the systematic establishment and use (management) of internal and external links (communication, interaction, and co-ordination) between people, teams or organisations (“nodes”) in order to improve performance. (van Aalst, 2003 p[?])
We considered a network asa set of nodes (people, groups and organisations)and the links that connect them. In this project ‘networking’ is the systematic establishment and use of nodes and links, mainly external, but also internal to the organisation (school/LEA/VEAZ/NLC) to create and share ideas of teaching and learning.
Rationale for the mapping tool
The tool itself was inspired by Pearson & Somekh (2000) who used a similarly structured mapping task with pupils, to encapsulate the children’s perceptions of the virtual world of computers and computer systems. Children were given brief training into concept mapping techniques, then asked to generate maps with images and text (nodes) connected by links. The mapping task we developed from this required LEA advisors and teachers (mainly headteachers or project co-ordinators in the school) to visualise the networks their schools were involved in and to show all the communications made, and how they were made. There are two dimensions to the representations offered on the maps produced: conception and perception. Those offered by children in the Pearson & Somekh project involved more conceptions than those in our maps i.e. they are principally concept maps. Both sets of maps also display perceptions of the nodes and links. Our tool encapsulates the respondent’s perceptions of the organisation’s networks. Both types of map capture conceptions and perceptions of nodes and links that are in fact concrete.
Our mapping task was open-ended and therefore connections with any networks of the school were not imposed by the researcher. Headteachers and co-ordinators from the same school offered us two different perspectives. Respondents were encouraged to explain what was foremost in their mind as they compiled their map and, for some, this auditory commentary was transcribed. Context and meaning were added as they talked through their drawing.
In the case of most headteachers, and LEA/VEAZ advisers, a semi-structured interview was also conducted, exploring: the roles of the respondent both in the L2L project and in networking more generally; the directionality of links; specific examples of the transfer and impact of ideas of teaching and learning. These interviews generated further data in terms of nodes and links that are considered in this paper. The project also generates a range of other data, particularly with respect to tracking exemplar sharing and exchange of knowledge, which will be analysed at a later date.
The main utility of the mapping task is its ability and potential to capture a perceived snapshot, of significant actors, places, events and relationships in creating and sharing ideas of teaching and learning, elaborated and explained through available commentary.
Mapping tool development
Trialling
The task was devised in November and trialled in December 2002 with four individuals associated with one of the LEAs. This allowed the trying out of different prompting questions, to encourage the respondent without being leading. These prompts were limited and formalised in the final task.
The task itself
There are three conditions for data collection, as indicated in Table 1. The majority of maps (75%) were accompanied by a commentary transcript (column 1); 86% of these also included a transcribed interview. (The transcript and map together will henceforth be termed a ‘map data set’.) In one case co-ordinators carried the task out as a group with one researcher setting the task for all. In other cases, it was posted to them for completion remotely. Four different researchers were used to set the task (either individually or in a group situation).
Table 1: Completed mapping tasks according to conditions of completion
Task and interview administered by researcher (transcribed)
/Completion of task only with researcher present (but no interview)
/Remote individual completion (no researcher present)
10 LEA contacts3 VEAZ contactsa
15 Headteachersb
4 Co-ordinators / 7 Co-ordinatorsc / I Headteacher
3 Co-ordinators
Total numbers of schools represented: 17 (11 with both headteacher and co-ordinator; some headteachers, particularly in primary schools, were also co-ordinators.
Total number of LEAs represented: 5
Total number of VEAZs represented: 2.
a One VEAZ contact requested to complete the map after the interview.
b Two headteachers requested to complete the map after the interview and declined to carry out the warm-up task.
c 4 interviewed by researcher in a group setting.
Respondents were initially asked to carry out a warm-up task to familiarise them with the style of the task and to represent relationships visually. They were told, on a piece of A3 paper, “To represent the communications you make as an individual.” The focus was explained as, “Show with whom and how you keep in touch and communicate i.e. personally rather than just professionally.” The results of this warm-up task were not kept because of their personal nature. The respondent then, on a fresh sheet of A3 paper, carried out the main task:
Show how you visualise the networks your school/LEA/VEAZ are involved in. Show with whom all communications are made involving the organisation and how they are made.
They were prompted “To check you have included everyone (the shapes) with whom the organisation communicates. Do the links best represent the way you want to show how communications happen?” and “Would a key be helpful if there are different types of link or shape?”
We were not sure that respondents would be willing to draw anything or that the exercise might be seen as trivial for busy professionals. It was also expected that some respondents, depending on learning preference, would have issues with being asked to represent activities visually. In the event it was mainly well received, with varying levels of encouragement, everybody produced a map; many concluding it had been a useful exercise. Figures 1 and 2 are samples of the kind of maps drawn, though the range of representations is very large, hence the desire to find ways of isolating common features across them.
Figure 1:an example of a school based map drawn by a headteacher &
Figure 2:an example of an LEA based map drawn by an LEA senior adviser here
Pilot analysis
A list of the nodes (with whom communications are made) and the links (the communications) were then compiled and categorised. The analysis of these was partly grounded, using a variety of team discussions around maps, and partly based on network concepts from existing literature (e.g. Hakkarainen et al, 2004). These concepts included: informal communications and personal relationships, termed ‘embedded links’; key places as potential ‘social areas’; temporary activities termed ‘knotworks’; and brokers. In addition the relative strength of links between nodes was explored. The preliminary data were presented in an exploratory paper drawn from seven maps (James et al, 2003).