Literature Review
As the best minds of the past two centuries debated how learning occurs in the learner, the classroom has remained amazingly unchanged. Mindstorms and Logo creator Seymour Papert often challenges educators to imagine a time traveling teacher coming from the 19th century to the present and then states that the teacher as Papert (1992) said “could quite easily take over the class.” (pg. 2) The modern classroom is, as it most often has been in history, a teacher driven, top down model in which the learner is relatively powerless.
To change this thinking would require a rejection of the traditional model in which the students are viewed as “empty or evil creatures who need to be filled up, controlled, and contained” as stated by Cook-Sather (2002, pg. 9). I have found these themes to be prevalent in the Hawaiian school system.
Traditional education in the United States views the learner generally as a passive recipient of what others define as education. It is based on trust. (Cook-Sather 2002). Hoy & Tschannen-Moran (as cited in Owens and Johnson Jr. 2009 pg. 315) defined trust “as an individual’s or group’s willingness to be vulnerable to another party based on the confidence that the latter party is benevolent, honest, open, reliable, and competent.” This definition was built from the earlier work of Mayer, Davis, and Schoorman (also cited in Owens and Johnson Jr. 2009) with their addition of the idea that the trust is also conditional to the inability of one party to monitor or control the other party.
Bringing about change in the modern classroom through a mutual trust model encounters obstacles. The teacher must be an honest, open, benevolent participant in the teacher/student relationship and then both parties must be willing to be vulnerable to the other. Teachers often see this as a show of weakness, which is an invitation to classroom chaos. Moody-Wallinger (1997) stated “In teacher training programs across the country, the last thingthey tell newly certified teachers is "Don't smile before Christmas!"”
This approach to classroom management may make administrators happy when they walk the halls of their silent educational institutions, but is all but forgotten when the year end scores are reported and the school yet again fails to show progress. Perhaps the failure is one of trust, trust of teacher, trust of school, but most importantly, trust of self. Perhaps one of the failures of Hawaiian classrooms I encountered is the lack of mutual trust. The inability to recognize that trust is a two-way street and the act of not being trusted is considered a judgment of ones character (Bottery 2004). Bottery describes four stages of trust:
Teachers arrive to school the first day with Roll trust. Teachers may show themselves to be unworthy of that trust if students feel not trusted. Rules and consequences are often the focus of school and classroom learning. This focus on behavior control may give students the impression that they are inherently not trusted.
Low trust environments can be a lost opportunity for both the learner and the teacher, according to Abrams as cited by Mooradian, Renzl, and Matzler (2006) “Trust leads to increased overall knowledge exchange, makes knowledge exchanges less costly and increases the likelihood that knowledge acquired from a colleague is sufficiently understood and absorbed that a person can put it to use.” (p. 65)
Increasing the amount of knowledge exchanged between teacher and learner and the ability of the learner to apply that knowledge should be the goal of educators. If we can find ways to create a safe environment built on mutual trust between teacher and learner we may see a significant change in the classroom-learning environment. Being trusted fosters a sense of positive self-esteem and self-worth while being mistrusted produces feelings of anger, deflated self-esteem, powerlessness, and a distrust of those displaying the lack of trust. (Bottery 2004)
Much of the research conducted on the topic of student trust has been on college-age students. (Owens & Johnson Jr. 2009) In my Literature Review I have extrapolated from sources on the idea of trust relationships as they pertain to learning in general. As I further examine building a room of respect and trust for my Action Research I will use the following statement as a guide.
A person’s ability to trust waxes and wanes according to the types of relationships they have experienced in their past and how they internalize those experiences over time. (Owens and Johnson Jr. 2009)
Trust appears to be a key element in the creation of a constructivist classroom for several reasons. The basic social aspect to constructivist learning theory requires social interaction, it is through the self analysis of experience for the express purpose of communicating the experience to another, the examination of the experience through the eyes of another that allows understanding to occur (Dewey 1916). The traditional classroom allows for little interaction and thus little opportunity to reach the level of understanding Dewey mentions. The teacher must trust a classroom full of children to either stay on task or self correct to task. Secondly when Dewey (1916) was speaking of the cultural influence of societies he stated that the “unconscious influence of the environment is so subtle and pervasive that it affects every fiber of character and mind.” (pg 21).
In summary, a person’s ability to trust waxes and wanes according to the types of relationships they have experienced in their past and how they internalize those experiences over time (Owens and Johnson Jr. 2009).
To change this thinking would require a rejection of the traditional model in which the students are viewed as “empty or evil creatures who need to be filled up, controlled, and contained” as stated by Cook-Sather (2002, pg. 9). I have found these themes to be prevalent in the Hawaiian school system.
Traditional education in the United States views the learner generally as a passive recipient of what others define as education. It is based on trust. (Cook-Sather 2002). Hoy & Tschannen-Moran (as cited in Owens and Johnson Jr. 2009 pg. 315) defined trust “as an individual’s or group’s willingness to be vulnerable to another party based on the confidence that the latter party is benevolent, honest, open, reliable, and competent.” This definition was built from the earlier work of Mayer, Davis, and Schoorman (also cited in Owens and Johnson Jr. 2009) with their addition of the idea that the trust is also conditional to the inability of one party to monitor or control the other party.
Bringing about change in the modern classroom through a mutual trust model encounters obstacles. The teacher must be an honest, open, benevolent participant in the teacher/student relationship and then both parties must be willing to be vulnerable to the other. Teachers often see this as a show of weakness, which is an invitation to classroom chaos. Moody-Wallinger (1997) stated “In teacher training programs across the country, the last thingthey tell newly certified teachers is "Don't smile before Christmas!"”
This approach to classroom management may make administrators happy when they walk the halls of their silent educational institutions, but is all but forgotten when the year end scores are reported and the school yet again fails to show progress. Perhaps the failure is one of trust, trust of teacher, trust of school, but most importantly, trust of self. Perhaps one of the failures of Hawaiian classrooms I encountered is the lack of mutual trust. The inability to recognize that trust is a two-way street and the act of not being trusted is considered a judgment of ones character (Bottery 2004). Bottery describes four stages of trust:
- Calculative is the lowest level of trust based on the mathematical-type calculations of how trust worthy a newly met person is.
- Roll trust is the trust which comes with a given title that carries with it some form of socially expected weight, Doctor, Police and Teacher earn this type of automatic trust.
- Practice trust is the process of confirmed or disconfirmed assumptions of those that previously fell in the Calculative or Roll trust categories, however have had significant time to prove ones self to be trust worthy
- Identificatory trust is the highest level of trust built over years and ending in an intuitive understanding of how the other will react to a given situation
Teachers arrive to school the first day with Roll trust. Teachers may show themselves to be unworthy of that trust if students feel not trusted. Rules and consequences are often the focus of school and classroom learning. This focus on behavior control may give students the impression that they are inherently not trusted.
Low trust environments can be a lost opportunity for both the learner and the teacher, according to Abrams as cited by Mooradian, Renzl, and Matzler (2006) “Trust leads to increased overall knowledge exchange, makes knowledge exchanges less costly and increases the likelihood that knowledge acquired from a colleague is sufficiently understood and absorbed that a person can put it to use.” (p. 65)
Increasing the amount of knowledge exchanged between teacher and learner and the ability of the learner to apply that knowledge should be the goal of educators. If we can find ways to create a safe environment built on mutual trust between teacher and learner we may see a significant change in the classroom-learning environment. Being trusted fosters a sense of positive self-esteem and self-worth while being mistrusted produces feelings of anger, deflated self-esteem, powerlessness, and a distrust of those displaying the lack of trust. (Bottery 2004)
Much of the research conducted on the topic of student trust has been on college-age students. (Owens & Johnson Jr. 2009) In my Literature Review I have extrapolated from sources on the idea of trust relationships as they pertain to learning in general. As I further examine building a room of respect and trust for my Action Research I will use the following statement as a guide.
A person’s ability to trust waxes and wanes according to the types of relationships they have experienced in their past and how they internalize those experiences over time. (Owens and Johnson Jr. 2009)
Trust appears to be a key element in the creation of a constructivist classroom for several reasons. The basic social aspect to constructivist learning theory requires social interaction, it is through the self analysis of experience for the express purpose of communicating the experience to another, the examination of the experience through the eyes of another that allows understanding to occur (Dewey 1916). The traditional classroom allows for little interaction and thus little opportunity to reach the level of understanding Dewey mentions. The teacher must trust a classroom full of children to either stay on task or self correct to task. Secondly when Dewey (1916) was speaking of the cultural influence of societies he stated that the “unconscious influence of the environment is so subtle and pervasive that it affects every fiber of character and mind.” (pg 21).
In summary, a person’s ability to trust waxes and wanes according to the types of relationships they have experienced in their past and how they internalize those experiences over time (Owens and Johnson Jr. 2009).
