Using Social Network Analysis to Understand Links Between Teacher Leader Roles and Student Achievement
Authors: Carl Hanssen, DeAnn Huinker

« Back to Poster Hall
5. Conclusions

Distributed leadership continues to be a major MMP focus and there is initial evidence that indicators of distributed leadership are related to student achievement results in schools.  Results show that the MTL and MTS roles are somewhat important.  However, what may be more important is the overall strength of the network and extensive communication between multiple teachers across the school.  For the MMP, the extent to which the MTL and MTS can enable and facilitate creation of these communication networks may be an important consideration for ongoing professional development efforts.

Still, the implications for teacher education are still being considered.  Within schools, the MTL model presumes that the MTL is providing professional development to teachers, either in group settings or one-on-one in the classroom.  One indicator of the impact of this development may be the extent to which the MTL is perceived as a leader for mathematics in that school building.  And, as discussed previously, the In-Degree metric provides an indication of this.