Lewicka (2022) investigates how trust in higher education institutions is build (and rebuilt). This is a much broader question than the one that we have investigated, but I recognize many of the elements that we saw in our study, too. I had to redo their figure in order to process it, and here is my summary.
The assumption that teacher-student relationships are important has been around for a long time and is probably uncontested. But when it comes to describing what exactly makes a good relationship, there is no consensus yet, and many aspects, like a sense of belonging, or the teacher caring, or trust in teachers, have been investigated. Here comes my summary of some of the relevant literature on trust that students have in teachers, and how that trust can potentially be fostered and grown.
In April, I will be teaching one afternoon in a course on “developing and leading courses at LTH”, on what we traditionally called “belonging”. Here are my thoughts so far. Would love some feedback!
In my series of things-I-want-to-say-in-an-upcoming-workshop-but-suspect-I-might-skip-to-make-time-for-participants’-topics, here one slide about a recent study I did with my colleagues Rachel Forsyth and Peter Persson when we got the chance to ask a question in the student-led “SpeakUp Days” survey at LTH. And it turns out: Student trust teachers who show that they care about students (most typically by asking questions, listening, and responding), and that show teaching skill.
Our work as academic developers at CEE is based on how we think that relationships between teachers work, and using that to influence their conversations in a way that improves teaching. Here is (part of) the literature we base this understanding on (a lot of this from in-house research, or close collaborators).
Now that my working assumption is that trust is essential for student learning, what about trust that our “students”, i.e. the participants in our academic development workshops, have in us? Does that work in a similar way, or how is it different?
You might have noticed that I am exploring different concepts of what makes a good teacher-student relationship recently: belonging, caring, and most recently, trust. Why am I not just picking one? Short answer is that teacher-student relationships are really complicated, and those three are only some of the facets that are important, but there is no understanding yet of how they overlap or interact. Below I am writing a review of two articles that show just how many other factors are involved and how complicated it is to understand what’s going on.
After having read about “trust moves” that teachers report making (Felten et al., 2023), and currently working on figuring out what makes students trust their teachers (Persson et al., 2023), I now really need to sort out my reading of “trust” literature, which means putting it in my external memory, aka my blog. So here we go…
I am currently doing this super interesting research project on trust with my colleagues Peter Persson and Rachel Forsyth. Rachel and colleagues developed a model for “trust moves” that teachers employ, but are those moves actually effective in building trust? What makes students trust their teachers? That’s what we investigate in a pilot study that we’ll present at LTH’s teaching and learning conference in December. Read more about it below or here.
(Featured image: Me trusting my freediving instructor)
Last summer, I sat in the botanical garden with Rachel Forsyth and had a super interesting conversation about the importance of trust between teachers and students, and what I do to help build it with my own students — as an interview as part of one of her research projects. And now there is a publication (Felten et al., 2023) that explores the topic further and suggests a conceptual model for building trust in the classroom!