Building Trusting Relationships for School Improvement: Implications for Principals and Teachers. By Request Series.

This booklet examines the issue of trust within the context of school improvement. Specifically, it looks at teacher-teacher and teacher-principal relationships. Drawing on existing research and the experiences of individual schools, it offers a summary of current literature and identifies specific steps that educators can take to increase the level of trust in their schools. It discusses in some detail the following topics: (1) the key components of trust, which are benevolence, reliability, competence, honesty, and openness; (2) what the research says about trust; (3) the obstacles to building and maintaining trust in schools; (4) building trust between principals and teachers; and (5) building trust among teachers. Included in the booklet are profiles of 2 schools working on school improvement, summaries of 6 research projects on trust in schools, a list of additional resources, and 30 references. (WFA)