What the Research Says

To date, few large-scale studies have focused specifically on teacher-principal or teacher-teacher trust in relation to school improvement and student learning. Much of the available research consists of single-school or single-district studies that do not sufficiently control for other factors likely to influence changes in school performance. Trust remains a difficult quantity to measure, let alone link causally to concrete outcomes such as scores on standardized tests.

Perhaps the largest and best-known current study of trust in schools is Bryk and Schneider’s 2002 analysis of the relationships between trust and student achievement. Trust in Schools: A Core Resource for Improvement discusses their 10-year study of more than 400 Chicago elementary schools. Findings are based on case study data as well as surveys of teachers, principals, and students conducted by the Consortium on Chicago School Research. A series of Hierarchical Multivariate Linear Model analyses were used to control for other factors that might also affect changes in student achievement.

By analyzing the relationship between a school productivity trend indicator and periodic survey reports, Bryk and Schneider were able to establish a connection between the level of trust in a school and student learning. While they are careful to clarify that trust in and of itself does not directly affect student learning, they did find that "trust fosters a set of organizational conditions, some structural and others social-psychological, that make it more conducive for individuals to initiate and sustain the kinds of activities necessary to affect productivity improvements" (p. 116). This occurs in four broad ways:

• Trust among educators lowers their sense of vulnerability as they engage in "the new and uncertain tasks associated with reform."
• Trust "facilitates public problem-solving within an organization."
• Trust "undergirds the highly efficient system of social control found in a school-based professional community" (p. 116). Staff members understand their own and others’ roles and obligations as part of the school community and need minimal supervision or external pressure in order to carry them out.
• Trust "sustains an ethical imperative…to advance the best interests of children," and thus "constitutes a moral resource for school improvement" (p. 34).

In short, Bryk and Schneider’s work indicates that while trust alone does not guarantee success, schools with little or no trust have almost no chance of improving. Other noteworthy findings of their study are that trust among teachers is more likely to develop in small schools with 350 or fewer students, that the stability of the school population increases the likelihood of trust, and that trust is more likely to be found when teachers and parents have had some degree of choice between schools. In other words, "voluntary association" is more likely to lead to trusting relationships than situations in which teachers and students are simply assigned by administrators or district policies to particular schools.

Two other researchers who have published extensively on the issue of trust in schools are Wayne K. Hoy and Megan Tschannen-Moran. They developed a Trust Scale to measure the level of trust in schools and examined the interrelationships of faculty trust in students, teachers, principals, and parents (Goddard, Tschannen-Moran, & Hoy, 2001; Hoy & Tschannen-Moran, 2003). The scale was developed in a number of phases: the development of items to measure facets of trust; a check of content validity with an expert panel; a field test with teachers; and a pilot study with 50 teachers in 50 different schools from five states.

Hoy and Tschannen-Moran’s Trust Scales were subsequently used and tested in three additional large-scale studies, drawing on 97 Ohio high schools, 64 Virginia middle schools, and 143 Ohio elementary schools. Findings suggested that when there was a greater perceived level of trust in a school, teachers had a greater sense of efficacy—the belief in their ability to affect actions leading to success. Trust tended to be pervasive: when teachers trusted their principal, they also were more likely to trust staff, parents, and students. The studies also suggested that faculty trust in parents predicted a strong degree of parent-teacher collaboration. These results have been used to develop a self-assessment tool for schools to measure levels of teacher trust in the principal, their colleagues, students, and parents, as well as levels of principal trust in teachers, students, and parents.

Tschannen-Moran (2001) also conducted a study in which she examined relationships between the level of collaboration in a school and the level of trust. The results indicate a significant link between teachers’ collaboration with the principal and their trust in the principal, collaboration with colleagues and trust in colleagues, and collaboration with parents and trust in parents. If collaboration is an "important mechanism" for finding solutions to problems, trust will be necessary for schools "to reap the benefits of greater collaboration" (p. 327).

As with the connection between increased educator trust and student achievement, the relationship between trust and collaboration is not one of simple cause and effect. Instead, it would appear that trust and collaboration are mutually reinforcing: the more parties work together, the greater opportunity they have to get to know one another and build trust. At the same time, as Tschannen-Moran’s (2001) study indicates, the level of trust already present in the relationship influences parties’ willingness and ability to work together. The greater the trust between teachers and principals, the more likely it is that true collaboration will occur.

For a summary of other relevant studies on trust in schools, as well as links to the Trust Scales for teachers and principals, see the Appendix and Resources sections.