This study investigates whether educators' cognitive and structural social capital is associated with perceptions of innovative climate in charter schools. We explore a new concept to assess educators' cognitive social capital, namely network intentionality, meaning the extent to which an educator is intentional in connecting and interacting with others. We hypothesize that network intentionality (cognitive social capital) is related to the extent to which educators perceive their school's climate to be innovative, but that this relationship is dependent on the educator's position in their school's social network (structural social capital). Findings suggest that the relationship between cognitive social capital and perceptions of innovative climate is partly mediated by structural social capital. In other words, those educators with high network intentionality, as evidenced by an orientation towards connecting others, also perceive the school's climate as being more innovative, partly because this strong network intentionality is associated with more out-going relational activity. This work provides unique insights into the factors that may be associated with teacher collaboration in successful charter schools serving traditionally underserved populations, and suggests ideas for schools wishing to support teacher collaboration and innovation.

The authors, faculty members in the new Graduate School of Education at the High Tech High schools in San Diego, discuss three trends that are reshaping our world and the ways we get work done. They then discuss the implications of these trends, both for how we educate our young and how we train and develop our teachers. Positing a reciprocal relationship between teacher education and school reform, the authors insist that if teacher education is to play a role in changing schools, it must itself change.To that end, they propose an approach to teacher training and professional development situated entirely in K-12 schools. They outline design principles for such an approach, illustrated with examples from the High Tech High Graduate School of Education.

In a working paper on sustainable well-being, the Sitra Foundation (2015) emphasizes schools as centers of transformative action to address the twin challenges of diversity and complexity in the emerging world: The future school has to answer the needs of an increasingly complex and global world and raise youth to collaborate and work in networks with people from different backgrounds. Instead of studying theory alone, learning happens by experiencing together. The problem to be solved is outlined together and knowledge is gathered and assumptions tested in concrete experiments outside the school building. (p. 17)