Exploring the Relationship between Teacher Networks and Adopting Equity-based teaching strategies

Research shows that belonging to teacher networks plays a crucial role in professional learning as they facilitate knowledge sharing, collaboration, and support. Teacher networks can become a social infrastructure that strengthens and sustains teachers' commitment to adopting new pedagogical approaches. In particular, teacher networks offer teachers a sense of community, overcoming the feelings of isolation that sometimes accompany the challenging work of promoting equity. While existing research provides insights into the role of teacher networks in promoting equity, there is a need to measure the impact more specifically. In this study, we address this need and explore the effects of teacher networks on teachers' adoption of research-driven lessons designed to encourage students, in particular women, to pursue undergraduate physics majors. Our study participants are 80 high school physics teachers who received the lessons through a one-day professional development program in summer 2024. Throughout the school year, teacher participants had opportunities to interact with one another and with regional teacher leaders recruited and trained to implement the program. The data for the study is from teachers' responses to surveys administered before the summer program and at the end of the school year asking about participants' network before and after they join the program (e.g., who they know in the program), and whether they implemented the interventions. We define facilitators as the network nodes in each region and the number of connections each participant has with the facilitator (e.g., they know the facilitator) as the strength of their network. We used logistic regression to model the likelihood of implementing the lessons, using network strength as a predictor variable. The results can contribute to understanding the effect of teacher networks on sustaining the impact of PDs and possible ways of measuring it.