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Trust at Ground Zero: Trust and Collaboration Within the Professional Learning Community

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Trust and School Life

Abstract

Schools are embracing professional learning communities (PLC) as a way to enhance student learning. Trust is a critical element in fostering the type of school culture necessary for effective teacher collaboration in PLCs. This qualitative research examined how trust developed and its role in facilitating collaboration within one school’s learning community—operating under challenging conditions—as they began the implementation of PLCs. The study gathered data from focus groups with the school’s teacher teams over two years. Using constant-comparative analyses, findings grounded in the data indicated that trust played a critical role in the development of collaborative teaming within this challenging school context. Teachers developed high relational and competency trust within their teams, although not across teams or with administration, creating the cohesion necessary to support sharing instructional practices and informal collaboration. However, given the lack of professional development for PLCs, teachers were not engaged in the formal practices of PLCs. Fiedler’s (1965) Contingency Model of Leadership Effectiveness provided a lens from which to examine how leadership affected trust development within the school’s learning community. Findings support Fiedler’s (1965) model that in challenging contexts, a leader with a relationship-motivated orientation is less effective than a leader with a task-motivated orientation.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Brigham Young University, 306 MCKB, 84602, Provo, UT, USA

    Pamela R. Hallam, Shannon K. Dulaney & Julie M. Hite

  2. Brigham Young University, 210 L JSB, 84602, Provo, UT, USA

    Hank R. Smith

Authors
  1. Pamela R. Hallam
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  2. Shannon K. Dulaney
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  3. Julie M. Hite
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  4. Hank R. Smith
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Pamela R. Hallam .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium

    Dimitri Van Maele

  2. University of Oklahoma, Tulsa, Oklahoma, USA

    Patrick B. Forsyth

  3. Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium

    Mieke Van Houtte

Appendix A

Appendix A

Focus Group Questions

Q1 What types of collaboration have you been involved in: (a) grade level (c) school-wide (c) other?

Q2 What do you currently perceive as your effective collaboration team practices? Can you give some examples from your experience?

  1. a.

    Typically, what topics have been discussed during team collaboration meetings?

  2. b.

    What types of data are used as a part of your collaboration meetings and how

  3. c.

    How would you evaluate the use of time during these meetings, and has an agenda and/or agreed upon format been used to drive your discussions?

  4. d.

    How has that changed, if at all, from when you first started collaborative teams last fall?

Q3 What have been challenges to your team’s ability to collaborate effectively? Can you give an example from your experience? (If all procedural, ask: what is the role of relationships?)

Q4 How important is trust in your relationships with your collaborative team teachers? Why?

Q5 What is your understanding/meaning of “trust” or “trustworthiness”?

Q6 How do you know when someone trusts you?

Q7 How do you demonstrate to someone that you trust him or her?

Q8 If trust were on a scale from 1–5 (1 being low and 5 being high), how would you describe trust at level “1”? How would you describe trust at level “5”? How would you rate the level (1 low, 5 high) of teacher-teacher trust within your collaborative teams when you first started as a team? How would you rate it now?

Q9 What can be done to improve the level of trust within your collaborative team?

Q10 To what extent, has the team openly discussed issues of relationships and trust?

Q11 Describe a significant trust experience within your team?

Q12 What happens on daily or weekly bases that affect trust between you and your team members?

Q13 As you have participated in collaborative team meetings, how have you seen other team members interact in a way that affected the level of trust within the team?

Q14 If you were to write your own dictionary definition, how would you define the word “trust?”

Q15 How do you decide when to trust someone—if you were to write a recipe for building trust, what would be the ingredients? What is the most important aspect for you in developing trust?

Q16 What role do you think trust plays in the effectiveness of a team like yours?)

Q17 How has the principal influenced trust within your collaborative team?

Q18 How has the team leader influenced trust within your collaborative team?

Q19 Is there anything else you’d like to share about the development of trust or its role in collaborative teams?

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Hallam, P., Dulaney, S., Hite, J., Smith, H. (2014). Trust at Ground Zero: Trust and Collaboration Within the Professional Learning Community. In: Van Maele, D., Forsyth, P., Van Houtte, M. (eds) Trust and School Life. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-8014-8_7

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