Promoting Educational Innovations and Change through Networks between Higher Education Teachers

Autor/inn/en	Stasewitsch, Elena; Dokuka, Sofia; Kauffeld, Simone
Titel	Promoting Educational Innovations and Change through Networks between Higher Education Teachers
Quelle	In: Tertiary Education and Management, 28 (2022) 1, S.61-79 (19 Seiten)Infoseite zur Zeitschrift PDF als Volltext Verfügbarkeit
Zusatzinformation	ORCID (Stasewitsch, Elena)
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	gedruckt; online; Zeitschriftenaufsatz
ISSN	1358-3883
DOI	10.1007/s11233-021-09086-0
Schlagwörter	Educational Innovation; Educational Change; Social Networks; Network Analysis; Higher Education; College Faculty; Foreign Countries; Germany + Suchen Sie Ihr Suchwort? Instructional innovation; Bildungsinnovation; Bildungsreform; Social network; Soziales Netzwerk; Netzplantechnik; Hochschulbildung; Hochschulsystem; Hochschulwesen; Fakultät; Ausland; Deutschland
Abstract	Innovation in higher education teaching is essential to respond to global challenges and actively improve teaching (e.g. through new technologies), necessitating the implementation of educational reform programmes that fund educational innovations. Although currently deployed strategies frequently promote networks between innovators to diffuse educational innovations, little is known about the efficiency of these networks or whether they promote innovation diffusion. This study investigates a network comprising 88 higher education teachers who received funding for their educational innovations in a German university. We collected longitudinal data by asking higher education teachers from whom they adopted innovative teaching ideas and requesting self-reports on innovative teaching climate. Our findings show that the teachers' social network had a smaller path length and more clustering than might be expected by chance. This observation might indicate that the examined educational innovation network exhibits a small-world property and allows efficient exchange of ideas among the teachers. In line with our hypotheses, the network's initial tendency toward hierarchy and homophily decreased over time in response to strategies and network interventions. In summary, this study provides initial empirical support that educational reform programmes can create efficient educational innovation networks, facilitating innovation diffusion and promoting change in higher education teaching. (As Provided).
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Erfasst von	ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Washington, DC
Update	2024/1/01