Abstract:

Research findings identify trust as a major factor of human relationships and as essential in schools, affecting the quality of every stakeholder’s experience, and influencing the level of school identification. Scientific literature on organisations has pointed out how trust enhances the possibilities of an organisation attaining its goals. Studies about schools underline the importance of trust in the context of the various relationships among their members, adults and students alike, and its correlation with learning and personal satisfaction. School identification is verified as an important characteristic of a positive school experience and correlated with trust. Trust is reported to affect interactions at personal and institutional levels and to influence the identification of individuals with the communities they are part of. This work presents a synthesis of scientific literature about trust and school identification, so as to allow a panorama view of what trust is, how it happens and what it makes happen. As an interpretive literature review, it attempts to make sense of the various conclusions of different studies and analysis, following scientific research since the late 90s and presenting them so as to reach a contribution for a completive theory of trust, in educational communities in which students, teachers and other stakeholders feel integrated, even and specially when undergoing difficult conditions as those that the pandemic has brought. The focus on students’ trust in their teachers becomes therefore more robust, enabling a wider framework of analysis.

Keywords:

Trust in organisations, identification with organisations, trust in educational settings, student-teacher trust, student identification with school.