Network, community, organization. The school as the ecosystem of educational innovation

Abstract

Whatever it is the starting point of any change process in education field -an individual, a classroom, a teaching team, the political system- the school is the ecosystem that welcome and shape such process. The paper reviews the current research literature about school organizations under the lens of two concepts that have transformed organizational theory: Community and network. Theoretical and methodological frameworks, conceptual maps and specific studies regarding the community and network perspectives are analysed. Such perspectives, with their own particularities, see innovation as a learning process in which knowledge is created and mobilised by a community of practice, which social ties give the process its unique characterictics. Furthermore, the paper verifies that the studies on educational innovation that take the school site as the unit of analysis are having a remarkable development in latin-american countries. The ultimate purpose of the authors is the elaboration of a unifying narrative that provides both coherence to the school innovation field and perspective for future research.