Using mixed methods social network analysis to study teacher collaboration for migrant inclusion in a Swedish school

Growing migration has changed student populations in many countries, challenging schools and educational systems to include students from migration backgrounds. Teacher collaboration has emerged as a key means to respond to this challenge, yet studying how teachers collaborate to mobilise support in this context poses difficult theoretical and methodological questions. This chapter presents an analytical approach which, drawing on the theory of inclusive pedagogy and mixed methods social network analysis (MMSNA), can elucidate the extent to which teacher collaborations are likely to support the inclusion of migrant students. The approach proceeds in three steps to examine: first, who collaborates to support migrant students? Second, what do inclusive forms of collaboration look like? And finally, how supportive of migrant student inclusion are collaborations likely to be? The approach, demonstrated with MMSNA data from a lower secondary school in a large Swedish city, advances knowledge on the role of collaboration for supporting diverse students and offers the potential to further theory and methods.