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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Connections---A Study of Leadership and Influence.

Connections---A Study of Leadership and Influence.

Palmer, Lisa A.

Paperback

General Education

Currently unavailable to order

ISBN10: 1243976020
ISBN13: 9781243976024
Publisher: Proquest Umi Dissertation Pub
Pages: 212
Weight: 0.85
Height: 0.45 Width: 7.44 Depth: 9.69
Language: English
Leadership in schools can be conceptualized in many ways. One increasingly powerful theory of leadership is to consider leadership as distributed or stretched across a school's faculty. A school's faculty can be conceptualized as a social network, and an individual's influence can be represented as one's social capital. Understanding the various dimensions of social capital and social networks is critical to one's ability to effectively lead via a distributed model of leadership. There is a growing body of literature on how networks facilitate the creation and access of social capital. Although they are characterized by three different perspectives - external, internal, and social networks - this study focused on the social networks within one high school, with particular emphasis on the participants and how they understood the patterns within their own networks. There is much research on the structural and relational embeddedness of social capital and how knowledge and information flow through a network; however, there is very little work that connects both the structural and relational aspects. This study attempted to do this by focusing on the characteristics associated with influential individuals and organizational structures that facilitate or hinder opportunities for influence and leadership. By utilizing a process called social network analysis, the researcher was able to examine the ties among individuals within the networks, and to understand how information flows within those networks. By analyzing these data, one can begin to understand why some individuals become so influential within a network. This study utilized mixed methods which included a quantitative portion in the social network mapping and analysis used to identify influential individuals, and a qualitative portion which included a survey instrument and participant interviews. This research was designed specifically to study teacher leadership at the high school level because of its relatively unique and complex department structure. The intent of this study was to provide formal school leaders with a greater understanding and appreciation of how teachers in this school made sense of individuals' social capital and the associated influence so they could foster an environment which would support greater opportunities for teacher leadership.

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