Teaching that Matters for Migrant Students, or TEAMS project for short, uses TRAC log to capture the interactions of teachers and other school staff around supporting migrant students' integration in schools. Migrant students are defined as both first and second generation of students whose families moved from another country, and whose mother tongue is different from the official language(s) of instruction in the receiving systems.
TEAMS uses mixed-method social network analysis to collect data about teachers’ networks of support and collaboration, and ethnographic fieldwork in 6 schools form Sweden, Scotland and Finland to understand how teachers work with other actors within and beyond school to facilitate migrant students learning, cross-cultural socialisation and a sense of belonging to the school community.
TEAMS project is supported by the NordForsk’s Joint Nordic-UK Research Programme on Migration and Integration (Project no. 94935). The team gathers 15 researchers form the Universities of Edinburgh, Jyväskylä, Turku and Stockholm University, led by Dr Nataša Pantić form the University of Edinburgh. If you would like to discuss a study of migrant education in your context, please contact us at migrant-education@ed.ac.uk. Learn more
Agents of Change Toolkit (ACT) project develops a toolkit for schools and teachers for planning, implementing a and evaluating change towards the achievement of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The toolkit consists of a step-by-step guide and resources such as serious games to enable an accessible, structured and engaging way of thinking through whole-school approaches to achieving the SDGs in different contexts. TRAC tool is incorporated in the ACToolkit to map collaborative networks in change processes.
Supported by the Scottish Universities Insight Institute, ACT project is a collaboration between researchers from the Universities of Edinburgh (Nataša Pantić), the Glasgow School of Art (Daisy Abbott), University of Dundee (Dianne Cantali) and professionals from the City of Edinburgh Council (Rosie McColl, Alison Humphreys), Glasgow City Council (Rachel Binnie) and Learning for Sustainability Scotland (Betsy King).Learn more
Making SENse of Teachers' Communities of Practice with Social and Epistemic Network Analysis is an interdisciplinary PhD project conducted by Barbara Dzieciatko at the University of Edinburgh, funded by the ESRC, supervised by Dr Nataša Pantić (Education), Professor Dragan Gašević (Informatics) and Dr Gil Viry (Sociology).
The project uses TRAC to conduct Social and Epistemic Network (SEN) analysis to understand change mechanisms in social practices of teachers’ Communities of Practice (CoPs) – a form of collaboration characterised by shared purposes and mutual support that can make a difference in teachers’ practices and students’ learning. Making SENse project asks how do teachers build such communities in the first place? CoPs are examined as social networks that shape and are shaped by teachers’ sense-making processes.
Teacher agency for inclusion and the development of professional communities: A social and epistemic analysis study in schools of Santiago de Chile is a research project carried out by Dr. Constanza Herrera Seda and Dr. Jaime Retamal Salazar of the University of Santiago de Chile; Lic. Constanza Cárdenas Alarcón and Dr. Hugo Torres from the University of Chile, Dr. José Fuentes Sepúlveda from the University of Concepción, and Dr Nataša Pantić from the University of Edinburgh.
The collaboration of teachers with other actors in their community (for example, colleagues, families or other professionals) has been identified as an essential aspect to become agents of educational change. In this sense, the development of communities of practice, characterized by having shared purposes and support networks, allows teachers to collaborate to promote the participation and learning of all students, especially those who belong to vulnerable groups. International research has found evidence that collaboration between teachers is key to moving towards inclusive education. Nevertheless, there is still not enough scientific evidence to understand how teachers build these communities of practice and how teacher agency develops based on their constitution. This research project seeks to understand the development of the teaching agency for inclusion based on the analysis of social and epistemic networks of professional communities in six Chilean schools in the city of Santiago. This research considers the context of Chilean educational policy and the working conditions of Chilean teachers. Schools are diverse in their funding, socioeconomic context, and internal organization. This investigation consists of two stages, the first will use the TRAC tool and the second will be based on group interviews.
During the Covid pandemic educators showed a great deal of ingenuity in sustaining relationships, and supporting students remotely, involving various services, or forming on-line groups on social media platforms. The crisis reminded us that people, rather than physical buildings make the learning communities.
The research project The impact of Covid-19 on teaching practices, supported by the British Academy, uses TRAC alongside interviews to address an urgent need to understand how teachers have sustained relationships during crisis, and what can be learned from these experiences to inform virtual internships for teachers. The project is a collaboration between researchers from Monash University (led by Dr. Yi-Shan Tsai) and the University of Edinburgh (Dr. Nataša Pantić).Learn more