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Leana, N. Molenaar, U. Penuel, J. Spillane, C.Frank, and others; In Russia, the methodology of network analysis applied to education is used inthe research of D.A. Alexandrov, M.M. Yudkevich and others.Despite a thorough theoretical elaboration of various issues of leadership in educationalorganizations, at present there are no Russian empirical studies that would help solve the problemof informal professional leadership in schools. As a rule, the word "leader" is seen in reference toonly the formal head of the organization.
Although in theory the concepts of leadership andmanagement are presented as not being the same, the empirical research focuses only on principals 8.The dissertation pays more attention to the methodology of research of professional informalleadership and offers detailed empirical data on the material of Russian schools.Research QuestionsThis study aims to answer following questions:●How is professional leadership distributed among representatives of the formal and informalstructure of educational organizations?●Which role in teachers’ professional development do different levels of formal structure play?●What are the main barriers in using the resourse of professional leadership for teachers’assistance and support?●What are the opportunities for developing in-school structures of professional support forteachers through the distribution of leadership?Research Purpose and ObjectivesThe purpose of the research is to investigate informal leadership distribution structure ineducational organizations using social network analysis.The objectives of the research are as follows:8As examples we can specify:Kasprzhak A.
G., Isaeva N. V. Pochemu direktora avtoritarny i chto iz etogo sleduet? // Narodnoe obrazovanie. 2015. №8. P. 52-66.Pinskaya M. A., Lenskaya E. A., Ponomareva A.A., Brun I. V., Kosaretskii S. G., Saveleva M. B. Chto my uznali onashikh uchiteliakh i direktorakh? Rezultaty mezhdunarodnogo sravnitelnogo issledovaniia TALIS-2013 // Narodnoeobrazovanie.
2015. № 6. P. 34-46.Farkhatdinov N. G., Evstigneeva N.V., Кurakin D. Y. Modeli upravleniia obshcheobrazovatelnoi organizatsiei vusloviiakh reform: opyt sotsiologicheskogo analiza // Educational Studies (Voprosy Obrazovaniya). 2015. №. 2. P. 196219.●to adapt the application of the network analysis method to the study of the informal professionalleadership in Russian general education organizations;●to compare the structures of formal administration and informal professional leadership ingeneral education organizations;●to assess the existing difficulties of professional support for teachers within the organization●to evaluate the possibilities of using the resource of informal leadership for the development oforganizations.Theoretical FrameworkThe works in the field of leadership in organization management, distributed leadership, themethodology of the network analysis formed the theoretical and methodological background.
Inthe course of the research, the methods of theoretical analysis, empirical methods (questionnaire),network analysis method, as well as statistical methods (comparison of means, Kruskal-Wallis test)were used.It is worthwhile to clarify that the network analysis originated as one of the methods ofmathematical data processing. However, the bulk of empirical works contributed to the expansion ofour understanding of the network analysis: a conceptual apparatus was formed, as well as anextensive theoretical base9.
In the framework of the methodology of the network analysis,organizations are seen as social networks, in this paper – as a set of professional relationshipsbetween employees10. This approach enables us to consider the organization holistically and at thesame time to receive data about each employee and his/her professional role in the collective.One of the main indicators of leadership in social networks is the indicator of centrality ofeach of the network participants (or nodes). Centrality is a group of metrics that allow us to9Hanneman R., Riddle M.
Introduction to social network methods // Network. University of California, 2005. Vol. 46,№ 7. P. 5128–5130.10Ushakov К. М., Кuksо Е. N. Potential of the network analysis for research in education // Narodnoe Obrazovanie.2015. № 3. P. 79-88.determine the level of significance of every node 11. For example, in this paper we use the centralityindex by degree, that is by the number of professional links with other teachers in the organization 12.Research MethodologyProcessOne of the key features of this study is that it uses the data of the consulting project "The SocialCapital of Educational Organizations", conducted by the Publishing Company "September".
Schoolprincipals can initiate this research in their teams and receive an automated report on the school. Thereport contains general information about respondents' answers, visualization of school networks ofprofessional and personal interactions, and some consulting recommendations on data interpretation.All responses are collected in a common database, which became the basis for the study.The respondents were asked to fill in the questionnaire form via the online service developedby the research group.
All the school staff took part in the research, apart from the technicalworkers. The questionnaire consisted of three parts: the first part specified the portrait of therespondents (gender, age, the length of service, the job position, the subject area, etc.), the secondpart asked the questions directly about the interactions within the school (the frequency of classattendance, the participation in school groups or teams, conflict resolution, the level of trust, etc.).And in the third part, with the help of sociometric questions, professional and personal interactionsin the collective were revealed.The consulting approach determines the nature of the dissertation study: it is aimed both atan empirical analysis of general trends and on the further consulting recommendations for schoolhears.Research SampleThe research sample was formed voluntarily.
Pre-school and vocational educationorganizations also participated in the study, but these data were excluded from consideration. In1112Bonacich P. Power and centrality: A family of measures //American Journal of Sociology. 1987. Vol. 92. №. 5. P.1170-1182.Freeman L. Centrality in social networks conceptual clarification // Soc. Networks. 1979. Vol. 1. № 1968. P. 215–239.addition, schools with less than 21 employees were excluded from the analysis.
Organizations thatdid not fill 80% of the staff filled the questionnaire in the final database. Thus, the total number ofparticipants in the study was 34,596 respondents from 715 schools in Russia. The return rate was97.8%, which is probably due to the consulting nature of the research and the personal interest of theschools heads in precise results.The sample was further divided into eight subgroups depending on the geography. Sevensubgroups are regional projects, when a significant number of schools from a specific territoryparticipated in the study (Sverdlovsk, Tyumen, Yaroslavl, Ulyanovsk regions, the Republic ofTatarstan, the Yamalo-Nenets autonomous region, TIANO of the Moscow region).
The eighthsubgroup are schools from all other regions that participated in the project separately.We can not talk about the representativeness of the sample for the Russian Federation.However, it was representative for some regions (for example, the Tyumen Region, the Republic ofTatarstan), and it can be assumed that the results will be similar in regions that are in a similar socioeconomic situation. In addition, a significant amount of collected data allows us to talk about somegeneral trends that can be found on the territory of the Russian Federation.The organization of the researchThe classic metric for informal leadership in similar research (for example, J. Spillane, E.Camburn)13 is “indegree centrality” that reflects the number of professional ties of each participantin school interactions.However, in addition to the indicator of indegree centrality, several other metrics have beenproposed in this research:First, the number of reciprocal ties for all respondents was analyzed.
Within the framework ofthis research, one of the key factors for professional growth within the school is a high level ofsocial capital (M. Fullan, E. Hargreaves, K. Leana) which is based on mutual interest of teachers toeach other. Reciprocal ties are more stable and less likely to decay over time (J. Spillane, M.Fullan). The indegree centrality is rather an indicator of prestige, the availability of resources (forexample, managerial ones), while a high number of reciprocal ties testifies the presence of outgoing13Spillane J. P., Kim C. M. An exploratory analysis of formal school leaders’ positioning in instructional advice andinformation networks in elementary schools //American Journal of Education.
2012. Vol. 119. №. 1. P. 73-102.Spillane J. P. et al. Taking a distributed perspective: Epistemological and methodological tradeoffs in operationalizingthe leader-plus aspect //Journal of Educational Administration. 2008. Vol. 46. №. 2. P. 189-213.interest, willingness to support professional exchange. Thus, professional leaders within theframework of this dissertation are those employees who can maintain stable mutual relations withtheir colleagues.Secondly, for the analysis of professional leadership, two slightly different sociometricquestions were used, as well as the sum of both matrices. This allows us to view professionalleadership as a complex phenomenon.
So, all employees were asked to indicate no more than fivecolleagues for each of the following issues. The addition of the matrices was used to expand thechoice of up to 10 employees, reduce the potential errors of random choices, and present ageneralized indicator of professional leadership.When facing professional problems, which of your colleagues do you consult, whoseassistance do you seek?Name the colleagues, whose classes for various reasons (help, acquaintance with others'experience, etc.) do you attend at present?The question base was formed in the framework of the study "Social Capital of EducationalOrganizations" 7. Based on the answers, network matrices were formed, as shown in the examplebelow (see Table 1).
Numbers from 1 to 10 in the headings correspond to the school employees,number 1 in the table rows stands for the outgoing connections (or outdegree centrality). The sum ofincoming connections (or indegree centrality) for each employee is calculated as the sum of positiveresponses.Table 1 – Network Data Sample11IndegreeCentrality23456789 100000000000100100002010000030010012100104001040115002012031140005011061100171101008110000090100010010000000000462123103OutdegreeCentrality02Based on the answers to both the questions, first the indicator of the indegree centrality of allthe employees for each question was calculated separately. Then the aggregate index was calculatedon the basis of network matrices addition.
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