Schools in developing contexts, such as Sub-Saharan Africa, are often resource poor and seek to access resources from their external environments in order to improve school performance. Critical conduits for resource access are found among the school's external network of relationships between school administrators. Using both network and…

In this article, the author discusses several good reasons for belonging to local, state, and national professional art education organizations. When one actively participates, he/she develops networks with other art educators. Professional organizations provide opportunities for professional development, service, and leadership. One's teaching…

Network structures both enable and constrain the development of social relations. This research investigates these features by comparing the development of commitments in structurally enabled and structurally induced exchange relations. We integrate ideas from the theory of relational cohesion and the choice process theory of commitment. In an…

A multiagent connectionist model is proposed that consists of a collection of individual recurrent networks that communicate with each other and, as such, is a network of networks. The individual recurrent networks simulate the process of information uptake, integration, and memorization within individual agents, and the communication of beliefs…

This article features the Family Child Care Home Education Network (FCCHEN), a groundbreaking program operated by the Riverside County Office of Education's Division of Children and Family Services. The FCCHEN is a network of family child care homes located throughout the Coachella Valley that receive funding for subsidized child care through an…

We employed a quasi-experimental design using pre/post surveys and comparisons with control groups to examine the impact of the Constitutional Rights Foundation's CityWorks (U.S.A.) curriculum. In particular, we assessed its ability to further democratic aims by supporting the development of three forms of social capital: norms of civic…

Between 1999 and 2003, the Western Massachusetts Writing Project experienced a series of changes that made it question whether it could survive as a writing project site. The convergence of retirement, unexpected death, and withdrawal of long-term financial support forced the existing leadership to develop a process to look deeply into the work of…

Women farmers are underserved in agricultural education and technical assistance. Long held social constructions of farming women as "farmwives" and in some cases "the bookkeepers" rather than farmers or decision-makers influence the direction of most educational programming delivered through extension programs in land-grant…

Lifelong learning has been linked by policymakers to economic and social wellbeing. This paper introduces the concept of training brokerage as an efficient way of meeting the needs of learners, industry and education and training providers. It presents findings from a study of the features, processes and outcomes of training brokerage arrangements…

Educational reformers in New Zealand and England have turned their attention towards network creation as a way of facilitating school improvement. The idea is that greater collaboration can drive school improvement through building professional learning communities, spreading best practice, and driving innovation in education. It is based on a…

The goal of this research is to understand how generalized exchange systems emerge when information, as the object of exchange, produces a collective good. When individuals contribute information for a collective benefit, it can create a group-generalized exchange system that involves a social dilemma. I argue that two properties of information,…

Having a "normal" professional job and doing research impose different social and personal connotations. These differences materialize at least in two clear ways. First, it is common that researchers in the making find it very difficult to communicate to their closest social network (e.g., family and old close friends) the content and the…

During the summer of 2006, Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) and union officials announced that the Pico Union area of East Los Angeles would soon be home to the Belmont Zone of Choice (BZC). The BZC encompasses the Belmont High School attendance area and will include up to 10 Belmont Pilot Schools, each with a targeted enrollment of 400…

This article presents research findings of work undertaken by a Networked Learning Community in the north of England on implementing cooperative learning in primary and secondary schools. In twelve primary and two secondary schools, in a social and economically deprived area, cooperative learning is becoming embedded. How this has been supported…

The South Australian Education Department introduced the School Entry Assessment (SEA) Policy in 2001 to help teachers assess young learners and plan relevant learning events, to help collect information about South Australian education from Pre-School to Year 3, and to facilitate collaboration within and between educational and social…