Broken bridges: a social network perspective on urban high school leadership
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/JEA-01-2018-0010 |
| Date | 06 August 2018 |
| Published date | 06 August 2018 |
| Pages | 562-584 |
| Author | Yi-Hwa Liou,Alan J. Daly |
| Subject Matter | Education,Administration & policy in education,School administration/policy,Educational administration,Leadership in education |
Broken bridges: a social
network perspective on urban
high school leadership
Yi-Hwa Liou
Department of Educational Management,
National Taipei University of Education, Taipei, Taiwan, and
Alan J. Daly
Department of Education Studies, University of California,
La Jolla, California, USA
Abstract
Purpose –Secondary school leadership provides multiple challenges in terms of the diversity of tasks,
multiple demands on time, balancing communities and attending to instructional programming. An emerging
scholarship suggests the importance of a distributed instructional leadership approach to high school
leadership. However, what has been less thoroughly explored is how secondary school leadership is
distributed leaders across a school district. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the social structure and
positions urban high school principals occupy in the district system.
Design/methodology/approach –This study was conducted in one urban fringe public school district in
southern California serving diverse students populations. The data were collected at three time points
starting in Fall 2012 and ending in Fall 2014 from a district-wide leadership team including all central office
and site leaders. All leaders were asked to assess their social relations and perception of innovative climate.
The data were analyzed through a series of social network indices to examine the structure and positions of
high school principals.
Findings –Results indicate that over time high school principals have decreasing access to social capital and
are typically occupying peripheral positions in the social network. The high school principals’perception of
innovative climate across the district decreases over time.
Originality/value –This longitudinal study, one of the first to examine high school principals from a
network perspective, sheds new light on the social infrastructure of urban high school principals and what
this might mean for efforts at improvement.
Keywords Innovation, Networks, Leadership, Involvement, Educational policy, Secondary schools
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
A growing body of research from across the globe indicates that school leadership is a key
contributor that is only second to classroom instructional practices for positively
influencing student learning and successful school reform efforts (Hallinger and Murphy,
1987; Leithwood et al., 2004, 2008; Spillane and Louis, 2002). School leadership is of
particular importance in urban secondary school settings as these principals balance a host
of instructional, organizational and community demands in supporting equitable and
accessible educational experiences for all students and often lack an in depth research base
upon which to draw. Given the pressing accountability demands for student learning,
secondary school leaders are expected to possess the capacity for leading reforms around
the “technical core”of schooling, namely, improving and sustaining the quality of teaching
and learning (Leithwood et al., 2004).
Instructional leadership poses additional challenges for urban high school principals
because unlike their elementary school counterparts, high school principals are often
expected to have expertise in multiple subject areas as well as manage complex
organizations that are serving large numbers of students. A growing body of work
suggests that distributed instructional leadership approaches to high school leadership in
Journal of Educational
Administration
Vol. 56 No. 5, 2018
pp. 562-584
© Emerald PublishingLimited
0957-8234
DOI 10.1108/JEA-01-2018-0010
Received 16 January 2018
Revised 17 May 2018
Accepted 17 May 2018
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/0957-8234.htm
562
JEA
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which principals support the conditions and allocate the resources necessary for
improving instructional practices may ultimately impact student learning (Bredeson,
2013; Spillane et al.,2004).Adistributedapproachemphasizestheworkofformaland
informal leaders within schools. However, there is a dearth of work in regard to the
distribution of leadership, particularly secondary school principals within a district as a
way to generate social and intellectual capital, which may be unlocked through
collaboration (Nahapiet and Ghoshal, 1998).
Previous research suggests that organizational improvement is closely linked to the ties
within and across units (Tenkasi and Chesmore, 2003). In the field of education, this has led
to the development of professional learning communities and emphasis on collaborative
structures (McLaughlin and Talbert, 1993). Most often, these types of communities are
developed to increase communication and collaboration between teachers within schools;
however, educational literature suggests that these communities, whether formal or
informal, may be necessary throughout an entire district rather than isolated within schools
to generate district-wide improvement (Spillane and Kim, 2012). Recent research has found
that informal social networks (e.g. social gathering, breakfast club, as opposed to formal,
structured meetings) facilitate the development of more enduring interpersonal
relationships that allow for transfer and exchange of tacit knowledge and complex
information necessary for organizational learning and innovation (Finnigan and Daly, 2012;
Tsai and Ghoshal, 1998). In addition, educational leaders’relational ties with administrative
colleagues and teachers are related to school learning climate and student outcomes
(Price and Moolenaar, 2015).
While there is great value in individuals’social ties for the work of educators, we still
know little about the social connectivity of high school principals in their district’s larger
networks. A growing number of studies explore the underlying pattern of networks within
districts or between district and school leaders (see Daly and Finnigan, 2010; Spillane and
Kim, 2012). However, these studies typically examine leaders’network either at the
elementary school level or across a district system of K-12 schools. Findings from these
studies although useful for understanding the distribution of leadership, do not highlight
the relationships between and among high school principals. In this study, we respond to
the gap in the literature around the relational aspect of educational leadership as a lever for
change by focusing on the eco-system of relationships in which urban high school principals
are situated. We aim to understand the social structure and the positions high school
principals occupy in this larger system and what this might mean for efforts at
improvement. In understanding these relationships, we draw on concept of social capital
and social network theory and analysis as a way to both assesses the high school principals’
capacity for accessing relational resources as well as visualize and analyze the set of
leadership ties.
Framework
Social capital as network of relations
A number of theorists have written on social capital from different perspectives in a wide
range of disciplines (e.g. sociology, economics and education, etc.). Authors such as Coleman
(1988), Portes (1998), and Bourdieu (1986) took a micro-level viewpoint considering social
capital as an individual asset (i.e. level of trust), while this paper proposes a meso-level
perspective viewing social capital as network of relations individual actor has with others
(i.e. pattern of connectivity) and such individual networks are embedded within a larger
macro system (e.g. school district). This view of social capital emphasizes the notion that
resources that are shared, exchanged or developed between sets of actors are embedded in
larger social networks from which one can draw and accumulate his/her social capital.
In other words, individual actors’volume of social capital can be determined by the extent to
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Broken bridges
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