Networks in Education: Making Use of Social Network Analysis in Educational Research

With its wide range of applications, social network analysis has found its place in a number of scientific fields. In educational research, social network analysis has the potential to uncover and investigate yet unknown configurations of relationships among actors in education. This paper provides an introduction to the issues, techniques, and applications of social network analysis in educational research. It first surveys the basic terminolog y and concepts in social network analysis. Using the example of a small network, it demonstrates basic network calculations at the level of both the individual actors and the network as a whole. Furthermore, the paper provides a brief overview of studies in the field of educational research that have employed social network analysis. Using the example of a fictional classroom and five research questions, the main part of the paper demonstrates the application of social network analysis in educational research ranging from crosssectional descriptive analysis to dynamic inferential analysis. Step by step, it introduces a range of methods and interprets their results. In addition to centrality, clustering, and connectedness measures, the example contains permutation tests used for significance testing with network data, exponential random graph models (ERGM), and separable temporal exponential graph models (STERGM). Finally, the paper discusses challenges related to the application of social network analysis.With its wide range of applications, social network analysis has found its place in a number of scientific fields. In educational research, social network analysis has the potential to uncover and investigate yet unknown configurations of relationships among actors in education. This paper provides an introduction to the issues, techniques, and applications of social network analysis in educational research. It first surveys the basic terminolog y and concepts in social network analysis. Using the example of a small network, it demonstrates basic network calculations at the level of both the individual actors and the network as a whole. Furthermore, the paper provides a brief overview of studies in the field of educational research that have employed social network analysis. Using the example of a fictional classroom and five research questions, the main part of the paper demonstrates the application of social network analysis in educational research ranging from crosssectional descriptive analysis to dynamic inferential analysis. Step by step, it introduces a range of methods and interprets their results. In addition to centrality, clustering, and connectedness measures, the example contains permutation tests used for significance testing with network data, exponential random graph models (ERGM), and separable temporal exponential graph models (STERGM). Finally, the paper discusses challenges related to the application of social network analysis