Trust and School Life

DIMITRI VAN MAELE is a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Sociology, Research Group CuDOS, at Ghent University (Belgium). His research interests are mainly situated within the fields of the sociology of education, the sociology of organizations, and educational leadership. During his doctoral studies he has focused on exploring antecedents and consequences of teacher trust in school. After obtaining his PhD he was appointed as research coordinator of an interuniversity project which explores the effectiveness of gender-sensitive strategies with regard to academic achievement, school retardation, the motivation to learn and the aspirations of boys and girls in secondary education. His work has been published in international peer-reviewed journals, such as Educational Administration Quarterly, Teaching and Teacher Education, American Journal of Education, Oxford Review of Education, and Teachers College Record.

PATRICK B. FORSYTH is professor of education at the University of Oklahoma and co-director of the Center for Education Policy. His research, all organized under the rubric of schools as organizations, has focused on collective trust, organizational structure, work alienation, and professionalization. He has served the American Education Research Association as Division A vice president and member of Executive Council and The University Council for Educational Administration as director for fifteen years. Together with Curt M. Adams and Wayne K. Hoy, he authored Collective Trust: Why Schools Can't Improve Without It (Teachers College Press) in 2011.

MIEKE VAN HOUTTE is professor in Sociology at the Department of Sociology, Research Group CuDOS, at Ghent University (Belgium). Her research interests cover diverse topics within the sociology of education, particularly the effects of structural and compositional school features on several outcomes for students and teachers, and educationalinequality. Additionally, she supervises projects within the domain of LGB studies. Her work has been published in journals such as Journal of Curriculum Studies, Journal of Educational Research, School Effectiveness and School Improvement, Sociology of Education, Youth & Society, and American Educational Research Journal. She chairs the Flemish Sociological Association and is member of the board of the Flemish Forum for Educational Research, and vice-president of the Research Network Sociology of Education of the European Sociological Association.

This book samples recent and emerging trust research in education including an array of conceptual approaches, measurement innovations, and explored determinants and outcomes of trust. The collection of pathways explores the phenomenon of trust and establishes the significance of trust relationships in school life. It emboldens the claim that trust merits continued attention of both scholars and practitioners because of the role it plays in the production of equity and excellence. Divided into four parts, the book explores trust under the rubrics of learning, teaching, leading and bridging.

The book proposes a variety of directions for future research. These include the simultaneous investigation of trust from the prospectives of various trusters, and at both the individual and group levels, longitudinal research designs, and an elaboration of methods.