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The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic led to enormous societal changes worldwide and touched many different areas of daily life. One of the most serious restrictions to contain the pandemic was the closure of schools and kindergartens. Particularly in countries with comparatively low levels of digitalization in schools, this situation opened up opportunities for private actors to gain importance and influence in the education sector. For this article, we draw on policy network approaches and network theory to analyze Twitter discussions around digital learning and homeschooling during the period of school closures in Germany due to the COVID-19 crisis. We use social network analysis to identify the actors involved and their influences in the issue-specific Twitter communication network. In recent years, Twitter has been increasingly used for exchanges on education policy content, mainly by political and civil society actors. Our study shows that with respect to digital learning and homeschooling, it was primarily individual experts and consultants as well as corporations which influenced the discourse. In particular, it appears that Twitter is used as a forum to promote corporations' own products and platforms, including by globally operating corporations such as Microsoft and YouTube, while public actors remain barely visible.

In recent years, teachers around the world have been increasingly confronted with various expectations concerning the improvement of their classroom practices and school activities. One factor widely acknowledged to facilitate school and classroom improvement is a strong collaborative culture among teachers. As such, teachers are expected to work in teacher teams, to collaborate closely with colleagues, to co-construct classroom practices, and thus to strengthen trust relationships within the team. A growing number of researchers has analyzed how teachers address these expectations. They suggest that there is a link between teachers' embeddedness in collaboration networks and teachers' trust relationships. The present study seeks to contribute to the research literature by presenting results of Social Network Analyses (SNA) and exponential random graph models (ERGMs) on teacher collaboration in nine secondary schools in Germany (N = 366 teachers). We investigate how the involvement of teachers in co-constructive collaboration in schools, measured by the amount of team teaching (TT), relates to teachers' trust levels. Results of our analyses suggest that a high amount of TT is not necessarily related to a higher degree of trust among teachers at the school level. However, a high involvement of teachers in TT is related positively to their being perceived as trustworthy. Furthermore, the emergence of trust relations in teacher networks depends on general network characteristics, such as homophily, reciprocity and transitivity.

The rise of cross-sectoral collaboration initiatives has been widely documented. While schools and third-sector organizations share important educational goals in these initiatives, the predictors of their identification with common goals have not been examined systemically to date. This article analyses predictors of common goal identification within educational collaborative initiatives through a case study of a German initiative aimed at tackling inequality in education. By implementing a mixed-methods design -- including surveys, semi-structured interviews and social network analysis, combined with logistic regression and qualitative content analysis -- we demonstrate that an actor's identification with the common goal is shaped not only by individual characteristics, but also by his/her relative position within the collaboration. Findings of this study have practical implications for networked leadership and school principals' work and training, since they inform regarding the particular settings, skills and knowledge needed for managing cross-sectoral collaboration to the benefit of schools.

Intergovernmental organizations (IOs) increasingly promote global citizenship education (GCE) and related topics. This paper analyses the body of scholarship on GCE that focuses on teachers and interprets the development of environment-related education (ERE) within the GCE discourse. Using a novel, data-rich methodology employing Natural Language Processing and Social Network Analysis, we trace how ERE is represented within the GCE scholarship and how this representation evolved during the last ten years. We argue that ERE topics have become increasingly prominent within the GCE discourse, as a tendency toward subject-specific discourse emerged in GCE, heavily influenced by intergovernmental organizations' policies. It is important to trace and understand such transformations, given their possible influence on curricular development and classroom experiences. Future research directions and possible practical implications are discussed.

Since the UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD), far-reaching efforts have been made to implement ESD worldwide. While ESD seems increasingly to be diffused as a social innovation related to environmental education, we still know little about how the concept is implemented through social relations and what role trust plays in this process. This article applies descriptive and inferential techniques of social network analysis to study how ESD is realised through social relations in Germany and the role of trust in this context. It is assumed that innovations such as ESD, which have been launched at the global level, are employed and diffused through communication exchanges at the regional level. Empirical results from this study show that the realisation of ESD is concentrated on the regional level, demonstrating social relations with high density within the regions and a lack of links beyond regional borders. Furthermore, the links of actors involved in implementing ESD tend to be concentrated on actors from the same sector. Explanations for this can be found in conceptual differences between ESD and environmental education, which have resulted in a serious void between political decisions, educational plans and the practical implementation of ESD.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to address school-NGO interactions by analyzing the power of foundations -- a specific type of third sector organization or NGO in education. Design/methodology/approach: Data are collected through a quantitative survey, qualitative interviews, official documents, reports and websites. Social network analysis and grounded theory are used to analyze the data with the aim to develop a theoretical approach. Findings: The study identifies three dimensions, i.e. relational, structural and discursive dimensions of power. Based on the analysis of an illustrative multi-stakeholder initiative, the paper highlights the role of foundations in framing educational settings, concepts and structures of the education system as such. Practical implications: The three-dimensional power perspective offered in this paper is particularly useful for scholars investigating school-NGO interactions or multi-stakeholder partnerships in education. Furthermore, it is of crucial importance for practitioners, school principals and education administrators dealing with school-NGO interactions given that foundations seem to be increasingly able to draw on new sources of power in these interactions. Originality/value: While the number and power of the third sector in education continues to rise worldwide, there is wide consensus that NGO power in education has, to date, hardly been researched. This paper contributes to this dearth of research by uncovering foundations' different sources of power and by developing a theoretical approach for analyzing the power of third-sector organizations in education.

This paper examines the implementation of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) in Germany and explores the possibilities of Social Network Analysis (SNA) for uncovering influential actors in educational policy innovation processes. From the theoretical perspective, an actor's influence is inferred from its relative position within issue-specific information flows and the trust placed in its capacities and expertise, instead of relying on an actor's openly expressed role and policy preferences. Drawing on techniques from quantitative SNA enables to analyse the social interactions as well as the frequency and type of information exchange amongst actors in a particular issue area. Empirically, I focus my attention on the educational innovation of ESD, which has been initiated at the global level, but is mainly put into practice at the national or regional level. Data for the study come from mixed mode interviews with a standardised questionnaire. The interviews were conducted and analysed using egocentric and complete SNA. I find, amongst others results, that NGOs and governmental actors occupy significantly more central, prestigious and influential network positions than schools in the course of implementing ESD in Germany. Furthermore, school representatives exhibit few and weak relations, and mostly share links with other formal education actors.

In recent years, partnerships between schools and non-system actors, that is, cross-sector alliances, have become increasingly important in education systems around the world, raising concerns and doubts regarding the influence of non-school actors in educational management and leadership. In these debates, trust is regarded as a key element for the success of cross-sector alliances. Although both trust and cross-sector alliances have been increasingly studied in education research in recent years, an investigation of the role of trust in such relationships is still missing. This article analyzes relational trust in cross-sector alliances in education in order to contribute to further theory building. To this end, it implements a qualitative design based on semi-standardized interviews with 21 individuals responsible for managing an illustrative cross-sector alliance. Interviews are analyzed with the help of an approach based on Grounded Theory. The analyses result in a five-dimensional theory of trust in cross-sector alliances, comprising (1) individual attitude, (2) time, (3) professional affiliation, (4) power, and (5) multiplexity. The theoretical approach developed in this article has practical implications for networked leadership and school principals' work and training as it provides information regarding the skills and knowledge needed for managing cross-sector alliances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

(1) Background: Rural areas are characterised by a higher number of volunteers compared to urban centres in Germany. In this context, cultural and arts education is one of the largest voluntary sectors. However, an increasing decline in (cultural) volunteering can be observed. To counteract the decrease, it is important to strengthen regional cooperation and social networks, which are based on trust. The connection between trust, volunteering, and social networks has already been examined, but we still do not fully understand the emergence of trust in the link of cultural education cooperation and networks in rural areas. (2) Methods: A total of 34 semi-structured interviews in combination with egocentric network maps were conducted in four rural regions. The interview data were audio-recorded, transcribed, and analysed using qualitative content analysis. (3) Results: Four dimensions of trust-building were identified: 1. presence and spatial proximity, 2. multiplexity, 3. third party, and 4. community spirit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Volunteering plays a central role in cultural and arts education in rural areas in Germany. However, a decrease in the num‐ ber of volunteers in structurally weak regions can be observed in recent years. This poses existential challenges for cultural and arts education. The promotion of social networks and regional cooperation, as well as a sense of place, can counteract this decline. This article aims to explore how sense of place influence cooperation and thus social networks between actors of different institutions in the context of cultural and arts education in rural areas. A total of 34 interviews and egocentric network maps were conducted with different local actors (e.g., volunteers in the theatre association, mayors, etc.) in four municipalities. The data were analysed using qualitative content analysis. Our results show that, through active participa‐ tion in cultural events and associations, new cooperation is created and maintained, which also expands the social network. This active participation can be positively influenced by the existing attachment to the region and cultural places. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Measuring the influence of international public administrations has traditionally been conducted with 'offline' data, using interviews, surveys or official documents. However, an emerging strand of the literature argues that influence can also be observed 'online', with data based on online social networks, such as Twitter. Our contribution aims at bringing these two strands closer together. We triangulate offline data from a large-N survey with online data from Twitter to examine to what extent they provide distinct theoretical and methodological insights into the role of international public administrations in global governance. As a case study, we use the policy area of global climate governance, an issue area where the influence of international public administrations has raised increasing scholarly interest. Our findings show that international public administrations occupy potentially influential positions in both 'offline' and 'online' networks. They are more often central actors in the survey network than in Twitter network, but in both networks, they constitute the primary source of issue-specific information. Points for practitioners: First, online social networks provide practitioners with opportunities to connect and interact with other political actors and help shape public discourse through communication. Second, online social networks provide important forums for societal actors who aim to protect global public goods. Third, online social networks offer actors the opportunity to shape values and norms, and to persuade persons or organizations beyond one's own circle. Therefore, it is particularly important that online communication strategies are carefully designed and implemented in view of their potential power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on the importance of networks in schools including collaboration on school teaching learning processes, structures of social relationships in schools and educational research. Topics include processes of quality development in schools, cooperation between schools and universities and education policy.

Despite the relevance of education-specific negotiations under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the influential role of the secretariat therein, research in this area is still scarce. We contribute to closing this research gap by exploring how the UNFCCC secretariat becomes involved in and has latent influence on the education-specific debates surrounding global climate conferences and the related information exchange on Twitter. Our analysis extends previous findings by combining theories and methods in novel ways. Specifically, we apply social-network theory and derive data from participant observations and Twitter, which enables us to analyze the role and influence of the UNFCCC treaty secretariat within education-specific negotiations. We find that the secretariat increases its influence by strategically establishing links to actors beyond the negotiating parties and show that it occupies a central and influential position within the education-specific communication networks in UNFCCC negotiations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]