Network Logic - Index of

Network logic
strategy-building through action plans
organising for linkage among participants with different
perspectives and potential contributions.
There appears to be some overlap between ‘these eight processes that
we consider essential for the creation of a network’ and the key
ingredients of the NWP, but there are also real differences. The NWP
study emphasises, among other factors:
teachers teaching professional colleagues about their best
practices
teachers honouring and respecting the knowledge of
colleagues
teachers writing as well as meeting and talking
teachers getting feedback on their learning and actions
teachers rotating through a variety of roles.
How are these differences to be explained? This takes us back to the
need to determine the strength of the evidence for NWP, since in their
turn the 1990 networks were largely assumed to be successful. Is
NWP demonstrably more successful than its predecessors and thus a
more reliable source of sound evidence of what makes for success?
Does the current evidence on NWP replace the ‘key ingredients’
suggested in 1992? If our knowledge about networks is accumulating,
can we now with confidence proclaim what works and what does not?
Understanding networks
Over the intervening 10 to 15 years, interest in networking, as well as
its associated literature, has grown dramatically, but this is not well
reflected in the Lieberman and Wood report. Today we have a better
grasp of the issues of both the structure and culture of networks.
Networks have many different kinds of structure. Does the NWP have
a distinctive structure that differs from those studied in 1990? Indeed,
exactly what kind of structure does NWP have? We are told that the
networks are organised locally but linked nationally. What are the
82 Demos