I’ve recently been exploring student trust in the teacher and its role in student motivation and perseverance. We know that trust is vital in social relationships and organizations, but there is remarkably little research on the role of trust in educational settings. Trust is interpersonal, and it involves a subjective judgment about the motives of others that may or may not be accurate. In teaching, students make judgments about the motives of their teacher. Furthermore, trust is most important when people feel most vulnerable and at risk of failure. Students seek trust in teachers when taking courses that are both challenging and required for their major or that cover a topic in which students feel anxious and insecure. Minoritized students who feel outside the mainstream culture of the campus will be especially sensitive to the trustworthiness of their teachers.

This long-term anthropological project set out to understand the beliefs and practices of experienced teachers and staff members nominated by students as helping them feel like they belonged in school. Analysis of study data revealed a process of mutual discernment whereby adults and young people were reading one another as they explored the possibilities of entering into learning partnerships. For the educators, study data led us to infer that their trust building strategies were largely based on imagining the student discernment process, and responding to a set of unspoken queries about them that, over time, they seem to have learned were often on the minds of students (e.g. “Why are they here?” “How much do they respect me?”). The grounded model and practice-based evidence presented here summarize the strategies and approaches educators used to respond to these unspoken queries and communicate to students various aspects of their selves and their stance, including their motivation, empathy and respect for students, self-awareness and credibility, their professional ability, and finally, their commitment to helping students and investing emotional labor in them.

Frances Frei, a distinguished professor at Harvard Business School, graces our podcast to unravel the secrets behind building trust in education. Her insights into the trust triangle—comprising authenticity, logic, and empathy—can transform how educators connect with students. Embrace the opportunity to learn how to enhance your teaching style, boost student engagement, and tackle those "wobbles" when trust falters. Frances shares her guidance on diagnosing and mending trust breaks to strengthen teacher-student relationships, ensuring that educators can maintain a nurturing and effective learning environment.

Students from negatively stereotyped or underserved groups can question whether faculty and staff may treat them fairly in interactions, grading, and other forms of evaluation. Faculty that communicate and behave in ways that engender trust and a perception of caring can mitigate social identity threat for students from these groups. In this section you will find practice recommendations designed to engender student trust in the instructional team by affirming the use of fair instructional and evaluation practices.

Why trust? The simple, often overlooked fact is this: work gets done with and through people. The Speed of Trust offers an unprecedented and eminently practical look at exactly how trust functions in every transaction and every relationship—from the most personal to the broadest, most indirect interaction. It specifically demonstrates how to establish trust intentionally so that you and your organization can forego the time-killing, bureaucratic check-and-balance processes that is so often deployed in lieu of actual trust.

Humanizing leverages learning science and culturally responsive teaching to create an inclusive, equitable online class climate for today's diverse students. When you teach online, it is easy to relate to your students simply as names on a screen. But your students are much more than that. They are capable, resilient humans who bring an array of perspectives and knowledge to your class. They also bring life experiences shaped by racism, poverty, and social marginalization. In humanized online courses, positive instructor-student relationships are prioritized and serve "as the connective tissue between students, engagement, and rigor" (Pacansky-Brock et al., 2020, p. 2). In any learning modality, human connection is the antidote for the emotional disruption that prevents many students from performing to their full potential and in online courses, creating that connection is even more important (Jaggars & Xu, 2016).