Currently reading Van Houtte & Van Maele (2012) “Students’ sense of belonging in technical/vocational schools versus academic schools: The mediating role of faculty trust in students”

I have found very little research on how or why teachers trust their students — until Rachel sent me this article and now my mind is blown. I’ve heard people say before that development of university teaching is decades behind school teaching, and it looks like this might be the case when it comes to thinking about trust in students!

Van Houtte & Van Maele (2012) investigate teachers trusting students, and in setting up the background for their study write: “When teachers perceive the students at their school to be trustworthy, they may be more willing to risk vulnerability to students based on the feeling that the students are benevolent, reliable, competent, honest, and open (see Tschannen-Moran & Hoy, 2000)” and I had a quick look at that article but could not be bothered to read it today — there is this huge body of trust research in schools that I was not aware of! It also discusses how you go from individual relational trust to collective trust, and trust in students as a school characteristic and an aspect of social capital present in school, and of in-school intergenerational bonding. Rabbit hole waiting to be explored!!

And even more here: “From the literature, it is obvious that teacher–student bonding is crucial with respect to students’ socialization in school. After all, strong teacher–student relationships are significant in accounting for the level of social capital available in the students’ social networks through a transmission from teachers to students (Coleman, 1988; Stanton-Salazar, 1997; Stanton-Salazar & Dornbusch, 1995)” and here: “Obviously, students notice whether they are trusted, and students who experience trust from their teachers will be less likely to divert energy into self-protection (Ennis & McCauley, 2000; Tschannen-Moran, 2004) and will more easily engage in supportive relationships with teachers, which in turn expands the level of social capital that students have available in their educational environment (Stanton-Salazar, 1997). As such, teachers’ trust is a form of teacher-based social capital available to students (see Croninger & Lee, 2001; Smyth, 2004) that indicates the presence of a supportive educational student environment.”

Anyway. Van Houtte & Van Maele (2012) investigate teachers trusting students by comparing “technical / vocational schools” vs “academic schools” in Belgium, where students were placed based on their perceived (non-growth mindset understanding of) academic ability. They refer to earlier research that shows that being placed in a “lower track” can lead to students developing an “antischool culture” to compensate for status deprivation, which includes norms of disengagement from learning. Students in such “lower tracks” also reported lower sense of belonging to the school than students in academic tracks. But sense of belonging is also influenced by perceived teacher support. They had in earlier work already demonstrated “a lower faculty trust in students in technical/vocational schools as compared with academic schools” as well as a lower job satisfaction in the non-academic schools “because they trust their students less because of the students’ poor study culture“. “This diminished (faculty) trust in students may have detrimental effects in a teaching context because teaching well necessitates faith that people may grow and develop (Hansen, 1998)“.

In their study, they look at kids who are mostly 15 or 17 years old in their study, and the corresponding teachers. They then do a lot of statistics (with a — let’s say interesting — way of distinguishing between “native and immigrant” students: “the principal criterion was the birthplace of the students’ maternal grandmothers. If these data were missing (only 1% missing of the total sample, N = 11,872), we considered their mothers’ and fathers’ nationalities because most immigrant students are second or third generation and have Belgian nationality. Non-West European birthplaces and nationalities, such as Turkish, Moroccan, Italian, and Greek, were considered foreign descent.” I get so triggered by this kind of stuff! My own maternal grandmother was born in South America, where I have never been in my whole life (and neither has my own mother)), and find that “[f]aculty trust was positively […] and significantly […] related to students’ sense of belonging” and that “native students’ sense of belonging was significantly more affected by faculty trust than migrant students’ sense of belonging“. They find that “[i]n terms of strengthening students’ connectedness to a technical/vocational school environment, our results indicate that strengthening teachers ’ level of trust in students could be crucial“, but they don’t suggest how that could be done. They conclude that “being surrounded by caring adults is a crucial factor in students’ sense of belonging in school and that this does means not only having trusting teachers around, but also having supportive parents“, which sounds sensible. But again, what can we do about it?

Van Houtte, M., & Van Maele, D. (2012). Students’ sense of belonging in technical/vocational schools versus academic schools: The mediating role of faculty trust in students. Teachers college record, 114(7), 1-36.

Luckily I still have some un-published dip pics for all the posts I am writing today! :-D

Not all days are equally sunny…