Trust in schools

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Trust has been called the âfoundation of school effectivenessâ (Cunningham and Gresso, 1993) and yet studies of trust in schools are scarce. Trust allows individuals to focus on the task at hand, and therefore, to work and learn more effectively. Productive relationships build effective schools. Rotter (1967) asserted that being able to trust that others can be believed is an important variable in all human learning. Distrust, on the other hand, causes people to feel uncomfortable and ill at ease, provoking them to expend energy on assessing the actions and potential actions of others (Fuller, 1996).

Wayne Hoy and his colleagues have engaged in over a decade of research on trust in schools. They have found teachersâ trust in their colleagues as well as their principal are important elements of the trust in a school setting. Faculty trust in both colleagues and the principal has been linked to school effectiveness (Hoy et al., 1992; Tarter et al., 1995), as well as to positive school climate (Hoy et al., 1996; Tarter et al., 1989), and principal authenticity (Henderson and Hoy, 1983; Hoy and Henderson, 1983; Hoy and Kupersmith, 1986).

(Tschannen-Moran & Hoy, 1997: 341)

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Bibliography

• Cunningham, W.G. and Gresso, D.W. (1993), Cultural Leadership, Allyn Bacon, Boston, MA.

• Fuller, E.J. (1996), Conflict or congruence? Faculty, parent, and student trust in the principal, paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, New York.

• Fuller, E.J. (1996), "Conflict or congruence? Faculty, parent, and student trust in the principal", paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, New York.

• Hoy, W.K. and Kupersmith, W.J. (1985), "The meaning and measure of faulty trust", Educational and Psychological Research, Vol. 5, pp. 1-10.

• Hoy, W.K. and Kupersmith, W.J. (1986), "Principal authenticity and faculty trust: key elements in organizational behavior", Planning and Change.

• Rotter, J.B. (1967), "A new scale for the measurement of interpersonal trust", Journal of Personality, Vol. 35, pp. 651-65.

• Tschannen-Moran, M. & Wayne Hoy (1997). Trust in schools: a conceptual and empirical analysis. Journal of Educational Administration, 36(4), 334-352. PDF (Access restricted)