Discourse network analysis and its use in education

This chapter introduces discourse network analysis (DNA), a method that uses network science to examine actors’ beliefs and the resulting debates, and demonstrates its use in the field of education. DNA is based on qualitative coding of textual documents and quantifies actors’ statements into networks to scrutinise key structural features of debates, such as coalitions, opinion leaders, polarisation, and ideological frames. The chapter outlines a ten-step procedure for coding and analysing discourse networks, including research design and understanding different network types. The network types focus on different aspects of a debate, such as actors, beliefs, and time. A tutorial with a small legislative dataset from UK higher education policy provides hands-on learning for academics and practitioners interested in analysing education policy debates and reform, teachers’ educational practice, or classroom discussions as temporal networks, to understand group dynamics and belief systems within academic and professional contexts.