ANALYSING TEACHERS¿ RELATIONSHIPS TO INVESTIGATE TERTIARY EFFECT AND WORK-RELATED OUTCOMES

The aim of this dissertation is to investigate the influence of teachers' social networks on various aspects of their professional and personal attitudes. In particular, it focuses on teachers' stereotypes and biases, which may represent antecedents of the so-called tertiary effects of social origin on educational inequalities—namely, the often unconscious ways in which schools and their agents contribute to the reproduction of these inequalities. The use of Social Network Analysis (SNA) offers an innovative contribution to this field by exploring how stereotypes and biases are shaped and reinforced through interpersonal relationships, depending on both the characteristics of the individuals within the network and the structural features of the network itself. The dissertation begins with a theoretical overview of tertiary effects and teacher biases, followed by two empirical chapters based on original data collections that address the role of teachers’ social networks. The first study draws on the tradition, relatively underexplored in Italy, of network research among teachers, and investigates how collegial interactions influence job satisfaction and self- efficacy. The second study, which bridges the SNA approach and the literature on tertiary effects, examines how teachers’ networks impact the development and persistence of stereotypes related to educational inequality. The main contribution of this work lies in proposing a relational perspective for analysing teacher biases, offering a novel implementation of Social Network Analysis within this context. The findings highlight the importance of considering teachers’ social networks in the analysis of both their professional outcomes and their role in perpetuating educational inequalities.