Do I Trust Sending My Kid Back to School?

A suburban elementary school experiences an emergency evacuation. This evacuation event reveals trust and safety concerns. Some parents, staff members, and children express safety concerns, and a key school staff member questions the judgment of another staff member during the emergency event, exacerbating existing tensions between the two. The principal must move the school community forward, while re-establishing trust and addressing safety concerns. Frameworks for repairing trust and trust in schools are considered.

Teacher-Principal Trust

Trust is the keystone to creating enduring relationships and interconnectedness among people. Trust also plays a pivotal role in human social and organizational interactions. Trust is needed for any organization to create good networks. It is an impetus for cressating relationships with employees, as well as for building healthy societies. To be trusted in an organization, a leader such as a school principal must possess integrity, truthfulness, and transparency. Therefore, when defining trust, the role of trust in schools and what a school principal must do to be trusted by teachers should be explored. It is worth knowing what a trusting principal does or means to a school and the impact on a school, teaching, and learning.

Organizational Trust in Schools

Trust is increasingly recognized by scholars and practitioners alike as a vital element of high-functioning schools. Schools that cultivate high-trust environments are in a better position to accomplish the challenging task of educating a diverse group of students in a changing world. Trust supports schools’ effectiveness and persistence in reform efforts, as well as a culture of innovation and continuous learning. It is also a source of social and financial capital for schools. And most importantly, trust is closely related to student outcomes. Therefore, the study of trust is important because it can support these vital functions in schools. There are a number of conceptual and measurement issues, however, that make the study of organizational trust in schools a challenge. One of the ongoing challenges is how to best define trust, and how we might understand the characteristics trustors assess in making trust judgments. Making clear distinctions between the act of extending trust and being trustworthy is important and will help advance the study of trust relationships in schools. There are also issues with level of analysis, as trust as an organizational property may function differently than at the interpersonal level. Another challenge is the dynamic nature of organizational trust, which may change dramatically with a change in leadership or a major conflict between various factions of teachers. There are a number of promising directions for future research about organizational trust in schools. These include how to foster initial trust, how to sustain trust over time, and how to rebuild broken trust. It would also be useful to delve more deeply into the role trust plays in educator innovation and learning, and why trust seems to play such a potent role in creating the conditions for learning.