Collaboration and the need fortrust

Abstract

Reform efforts increasingly promote collaboration – admonishing principals to include both teachers and parents in democratic decision processes and encouraging teachers to work toward greater collaboration with their colleagues. The hypotheses that the level of collaboration was related to the level of trust was supported in bivariate correlational analyses. There was a significant link between collaboration with the principal and trust in the principal, collaboration with colleagues and trust in colleagues, and collaboration with parents and trust in parents. Canonical correlation reinforced the importance of trust in predicting the overall level of collaboration within a school. Among the set of trust variables, trust in clients was most influential in predicting the set of collaboration variables. Collaboration with parents was the most potent of the collaboration variables in this analysis. These finding argue for the importance of trust in nurturing collaborative relationships.