SocioTechnical Coevolution of an eLearning Innovation Network

Abstract

This paper reports on a longitudinal study of a network of 10 special education needs schools over a span of 11 years that leveraged the opportunity offered by a government‐funded e‐learning pilot scheme initiative to further their efforts in providing the same educational opportunities to their students as those in mainstream schools. The trajectory of this network’s evolution shows that its robustness lies in the joint leadership network among the schools, and the insight and agency that this leadership network exhibited in the intentional exploration and crafting of a social structure and mechanism to support innovative developments in technology and pedagogical innovation, which we refer to as sociotechnical co‐evolution. By adopting a sociotechnical system framework to analyse the changes at the landscape, regime and niches levels, we show that in fact landscape factors play a crucial role in shaping the innovation trajectory through its influence on the niches. Network leadership, within‐school leadership and organizational infrastructures evolve and play an important role in the co‐construction of the sociotechnical regimes needed to bring about deep and widespread changes in pedagogical practice.