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The Pennsylvania State University The Graduate School College of Education EDUCATIONAL COLLABORATION NETWORKS AND LEADERSHIP IN CHILE AND LATIN AMERICA: A SOCIAL NETWORK ANALYSIS A Dissertation in Educational Leadership and Comparative & International Education by Juan Pablo Queupil Quilamán © Juan Pablo Queupil Quilamán Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy August 2016 The dissertation of Juan Pablo Queupil Quilamán was reviewed and approved by* the following: Nona A. Prestine Professor of Education Dissertation Advisor Co-Chair of Committee Roger C. Shouse Professor of Education Co-Chair of Committee Jacqueline A. Stefkovich Professor of Education Rachel A. Smith Professor of Communication Arts and Sciences Kai A. Schafft Professor of Education In Charge of Graduate Program in Educational Leadership iii ABSTRACT Collaboration has become an indispensable tool for promoting, improving and increasing investigation, and educational researchers are not outsiders to this phenomenon. However, little is known about collaborative efforts among educational scholars in Latin America. In order to address this gap in our knowledge, a Social Network Analysis (SNA) is used to examine the relationships and patterns that emerge from a dataset of co-authored scholarly publications among Higher Education Institutions (HEI) in Chile and Latin America, taking into account a purposeful dataset retrieved from Web of Science (WoS). Based on several sociograms and networks’ centrality indicators (density, degree, betweenness, and closeness), along with bibliometric results, this study focuses on detecting which educational actors are in positions of leadership in the collaborative networks, exploring the existence of clusters, and identifying what countries, institutions and scholars are acting as positive contributors in the collaborative network as a whole. Thus, at the country level, it was found that 5 out of the 19 Latin American countries are totally unconnected within the collaborative network: Costa Rica, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Paraguay. Interestingly, most of them are smaller countries located in Central America. Conversely, bigger nations such as Mexico, Argentina and Brazil have higher number of publications along with respectable inter-country rates of collaboration. This situation allow them to display higher centrality indicators. The case of Brazil is outstanding, since it is the only country in the region where the official language is Portuguese. More surprisingly is the case of Chile, which is an isolated and relatively small country in South America; however, it presents the highest centrality indicators, leading the network in terms of degree centrality (number of direct connections among the actors of the network), betweenness (suggesting a strategic position on paths within the network), and closeness (interacting quickly with other actors in the network). Even though Chile and the bigger nations of Latin America form a distinctive pattern of collaboration and leadership, the network as a whole has a density of 0.193, which means that only 19.3% of the potential connections occur in this network. This indicates that, at the country level, the network has the potential to improve its interconnectedness. Taking into account the performance of Chile, additional analysis is conducted for this country at the institutional and scholar levels, along with an exploration of clusters (social groupings within networks), and the examination of the international dimension of the collaborative efforts at the scholar level. At the institutional level, a total of 45 HEI were publishing papers, and 13 of them were not coauthoring educational articles through inter-institutional collaboration. In this case, the density of the iv network is 0.0515 (5.15%). In other words, only 102 collaborative efforts between two or more institutions were actually made, among a potential total of 1,980 connections. In addition, a cluster analysis is appropriate for this large network. In this case, it was detected 7 different clusters that are grouping different institutions together. Most of these clusters seem to follow a geographical distribution, grouping universities from the central or central-south regions of Chile. Universities from either the extreme North or South regions are actually part of the group of unconnected institutions. Thus, Chilean universities that are leading collaboration also have the highest centrality indicators. These institutions are Pontifical Catholic University (PUC) and University of Chile (UCH). To a lesser extent, other institutions such as PUCV, USACH, and UDP also have leadership roles but within their own clusters. UDP is the only private institution established after 1981, following a major educational reform that allowed the creation of private HEIs, and with the exception of PUCV, all the mentioned institutions are located in Santiago, the capital city of Chile. Moreover, UCH and PUC are the oldest universities in the country, usually recognized for their long-traditions and prestige. At the scholar level, researchers were ordered alphabetically and assigned to the same order that a Microsoft Excel sheet uses (i.e., A, B, C, …, Z; AA, AB, …, AZ; BA, BB,…, BZ; …, ZA, ZB, …, ZZ; AAA, AAB, and so on). In order to detect a potential advancement of the network, the analysis was separated into two spans of time: between 1941 and 1999, and between 2000 and 2014. Before 2000, the network had a total of 83 scholars, and 35 of them were not coauthoring articles at all. This explains the low density of the network, with just 1.9% of the potential connections occurring. In addition, 14 clusters arose, but most of them involved either just 2 authors or just one article. In this regard, just one cluster (the bigger one) stands out over the rest, which actually contains the only leadership role detected – scholar VK– who is the only one with a betweenness centrality different than zero, and also has the highest degree centrality, along with the lowest farness (i.e., the highest closeness within its own cluster). Interestingly, most isolated scholars and those grouped in smaller clusters are located in Chile. The biggest cluster is mostly formed by scholars located abroad, with the exception of VK, who focus all their collaborative efforts with colleagues who are outside Chile. Since 2000, a total of 635 scholars have been publishing papers, and 23 of them single-authored their articles. The network has a density of 0.009, which means that only 0.9% of potential connections were evidenced. However, taking into account the density of the network before 2000, the increase in the number of authors compared with the period before 2000 (from 83 to 635), and the decrease of unconnected scholars (from 35 to 23), it is possible to argue that, since 2000 the network achieved a respectable density. In addition, 112 different clusters (labeled from G1 to G112) were detected, most of them grouping 2, 3, 4 or 5 scholars. Nevertheless, some clusters group 11 to 80 scholars, representing several disciplines of subfields within educational research. Actually, in the bigger clusters, more intense v collaboration and leadership roles were detected: 15 scholars have a more significant role and relatively higher centrality indicators, having the ability to communicate and interact with other nodes from sub- structures within the network, even connecting some clusters. In this regard, the role of scholar QP was the most relevant. Furthermore, most collaboration is promoting international partnerships, taking into account that almost 70% of the clusters present at least one scholar located outside Chile, and most unconnected scholars are located within Chile. Finally, 9 authors appeared in both analyzed periods of time, and 4 of them increased their centrality indicators, when the periods before and since 2000 are contrasted. QP is one of the researchers that appears in both periods. This scholar was the most prolific and coauthored all their articles (a total of 39). The results of this study seem to indicate several patterns and factors that affect collaboration and leadership in the analyzed context. Firstly, when a zoom-in/zoom-out examination is executed (i.e., a global perspective, passing through country, institutional and scholar level analyses), with a special focus on Chile, each network appears to be apt for concentration of collaboration following particular patterns in different ways. Moreover, collaboration rates and sociograms vary greatly across the mentioned levels, where leadership roles align with few actors. Based on the analysis at the scholar level, it seems that networks increase constantly by the accumulation of new actors, and the latter preferentially join already well-connected actors and neighborhoods, forming disciplinary clusters or research fields. On the other hand, the roles of geography, language, and technology seems to vary across levels. Thus, at the country level, most countries are connected –even Brazil, the only country where the official language is not Spanish. Nevertheless, most unconnected nations are smaller and located in Central America. For the Chilean case, most papers were found in journals where the official language is English (74%). Also, most unconnected universities are located in the extreme North or South regions of the country. Furthermore, most scholars located in Chile are collaborating with colleagues located abroad, probably