When I started to work as a teacher I didn’t find any good guides on how to create social interaction diagrams. Therefore I decided to create my own guide.
This step-by-step guide describes the process of how to create the sociogram. About some weeks in the new school year, I usually ask the students to write down three people they work well with.
I think it is important to do this when the whole class is gathered. if someone is home from school because of sickness, wait until all children are back in school. In order to have a complete and credible sociogram, everyone needs to be involved.
And here is how I continue this work.
The “work well with” question is the first of three questions I use to ask and I start with the blue color to distinguish it from the other questions.
Every student gets the blue paper and asked to list their choices of the three classmates (very discreet).
I then collect the blue papers and continues with the two other colors: yellow for “Who would you like to play more with?” and green for “Who would you like to sit next to?”
After class I start to draw the sociogram.
First of all I draw a circle for each student.
Then I add the initals/names and start draw arrows between who chooses whom. When the whole class is drawn, you see which are popular to work with because they have many arrowheads aimed at their name.
Start count all incoming arrows for each person (circle). If there is no incoming arrow (the red circle), it might be a person that need some support from you if your intention is to carry out a group work. Green circles (over 5 incoming arrows) are the most popular persons, but remember only for this specific question: “Which person do you work well with?”.
In the sociogram you also can se which students have selected each other (indicated with a green line). The dotted green line indicates there are a group (they have selected each other).
Then you continue in the same way with the other questions. It takes some time to do this but the result is at the same time very valuable.
How often do I need to create a sociogram?
A rule of thumb that has worked for me is to use sociograms twice per school term. The first time I do it a couple of weeks into the term and then when there is about a month left of the term. It is actually very interesting to see what major changes can take place in the social interactions between students in just a few months. It is very rare (hardly ever) that the sociogram is equivalent between the different measurements. However, remember to ask the same questions in the different measurements so you can make a relevant and fair comparison.
If necessary, you may need to do a follow-up sociogram when you have been forced to take action to “correct” a skewed sociogram (where you have clearly seen exclusion or problems with class / group interactions). Then, of course, there will be more sociograms each term, and I know that some teachers do follow up with new diagrams every single month.
What are the advantages and disadvantages?
Through a drawn sociogram, you get a good opportunity to get an overview of the social constellations and group formations in the class. A big advantage is that you can clarify exclusion in a better and easier way than in many other tools. After you have taken actions to improve the group’s constellation, you can later follow up if through a new sociogram to verify the measures have had the intended effect.
As with all other documentation, you must be professional and ethical in how a it’s used, and sociograms require analysis once they are done. How should the results be interpreted and what do you make of them? It is a fairly extensive and time consuming job to compile everything. It is in a way a disadvantage when it comes to sociograms. Reading a sociogram in detail and understanding the different parts can be quite complex (not all diagrams are as easy as the best friends sociogram above…). It is important that you as a teacher don’t make wrong conclusions.
The teacher should also note which children are popular. Just because a child is contacted by many, does not mean that the child wants to play with many. Some children may find it difficult to be contacted all the time. Maybe you unknowingly place higher demands on that child?
Shall I ask only positive questions?
No, not necessarily. You can also use negatively worded sentences such as
- Who would you not want to sit next to?
- Who would you not want to work with?
- Who would you not want to play with?
The negative criterion all indicates an activity that is not very much enjoyed and liked. These criteria are aimed at uncovering resistance and rejection existing between the relationships. It shows which people do not match particularly well in the relationship.
But keep in mind that negative questions can be challenging for the student and make the student feel uncomfortable. So far, I have used only the positive questions and they have provided me with a sufficient basis for an analysis of the group and the social interactions.
Is there any sociogram template in PDF?
To get started a little faster with the creation of the sociogram, I have been looking for a ready-made template. I have found some online but they have been quite complicated and not so user friendly. So I created my own basic template that you are more than happy to use. It is very basic, but can still be a good base to start from. I have saved it as a pdf so you can easily download it by clicking the download button.
