Chapter 9: Social Network Analysis For Policy-Relevant Education Research

This chapter describes how social network analysis (SNA) has been applied in education policy research. While SNA is not a traditionally taught methodological course in colleges of education, it has been increasingly used in education policy research. The 2017 Politics of Education Yearbook presents a series of case studies that highlighted the competing networks with different visions for public education goals and governance (Marshall et al., 2017). SNA conceptualizes a policymaking or implementation process as a network of actors mobilized through coalition ties. We can conduct SNA to examine whether a policy actor (e.g., an individual or a group) occupies a central position within a policymaking network, whether the policy actor belongs to various coalitions, or whether the policy actor plays a brokering role between different stakeholders to influence the policymaking process. SNA can also be applied to study policy implementation by examining the social networks forged over the policy implementation processes and assess how the social networks facilitate or impede the policy implementation. In addition to analytical results, SNA generates graphs as part of network illustration. Such graphs can grab readers’ attention, offering a readerfriendly way to present analytical results to readers.