Abstract
The authors describe the intellectual journey associated with developing the concept of relational trust, a measure of social interactions within schools that has often been associated with increased levels of achievement. After detailing the lead author’s development of relational trust and its use in researching elementary schools in Chicago in the mid-1990s, the authors describe their recent effort to apply a relational trust framework in the creation of a high-school intervention intended to increase college attendance rates in low-income urban and rural schools. This intervention, The College Ambition Program (CAP), places graduate student researchers in local schools to run CAP Centers, or spaces within the school for mentoring, tutoring, assistance with course counseling, college planning, and financial aid assistance. Within the CAP schools, students who participated in specific CAP college preparation activities were more likely than other students to: engage in preparation activities for college entrance exams, such as the ACT test and the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT); take the ACT test multiple times, complete forms for the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA), and seek other scholarships or private loans. The authors conclude with several suggestions for future trust research, specifically using more nuanced measures that can accurately link relational trust to actions tied to specific school and student outcomes.
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Acknowledgment
The College Ambition Program is funded by the National Science Foundation (#0929635), P. I. Barbara Schneider. The opinions expressed here are those of the authors and do not represent the views of the National Science Foundation, the Institute of Education Sciences, or the U.S. Department of Education. This research was also supported by the Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, through grant R305B090011 to Michigan State University.
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Schneider, B., Judy, J., Mazuca Ebmeyer, C., Broda, M. (2014). Trust in Elementary and Secondary Urban Schools: A Pathway for Student Success and College Ambition. 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_2
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