Cori Brewster & Jennifer Railsback on Building Trusting Relationships between Education Colleagues

Trust arises from individuals fulfilling obligations with each other: individuals share vulnerabilities with each other (i.e., when one expresses vulnerability and the other shares back vulnerability of their own). This statement is not a definition of trust but it does illustrate the main condition that must exist for trust to form.

Trust may not translate directly into improved student achievement, but it creates the conditions—both structural and socio-psychological—that make positive changes possible. Without trust, programs meant to improve enhanced student achievement are not likely to take root or be successful.

Brewster & Railsback suggest a number of steps educators and institutions can take to improve trust between colleagues:

• Engage full faculty in activities and discussions related to the schools’ missing, vision, and core values.
• Make new teachers feel welcome.
• Create—and support—meaningful opportunities for teachers to work collaboratively.
• Identify ways to increase and/or improve faculty communication.
• Make relationship-building a priority.
• Choose a professional development model that promotes relationship-building.

Lastly, building trust means avoiding a couple of missteps. First, it’s not enough to merely create opportunity for trust-building; the institution needs to take active steps to actually create it. Second, trust-building won’t happen as the result of a “program” to build trust; instead, actively “re-culturing” the institution is the only viable alternative.

citation: Cori Brewster & Jennifer Railsback. “Building Trusting Relationships for School Improvement: Implications for Principles and Teachers.” [Portland, OR:] Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory (Education Northwest), Sept. 2003. http://educationnorthwest.org/sites/default/files/trust.pdf