An Exploratory Study of the Factors Related to Levels of Trust Between Faculty and Administrators

The relationship between teachers and administrators is an important professional relationship in the field of education. However, as humans are flawed beings the perception of what is true is not always true and our ability to make positive changes is not always within the teacher’s and the administrator’s grasp. This study examined two primary points in this relationship, trust and control. The perspectives of, of these two groups, toward one another as they relate to the administrator’s evaluation of the teacher’s job performance and how these perspectives can enhance or diminish the teacher’s and or the administrator’s trust in the other. This then, leads to the issue of control. How much control does the teacher perceive to have to affect a positive change upon the relationship with the administrator and what are the areas that the teacher can control to affect this change? Also, how much control does the administrator have to affect positive change in the teacher’s performance. An electronic survey was sent out to every administrator in the state of Missouri in our public-school systems and asked to take the administrator survey and then forward the teacher survey to the teachers in their buildings. The data was collected and aggregated and shows that both teachers and administrators have a perception of a lot of control, though in different ways, within their working relationship. Administrators rated personal interaction as their primary source for determining trust in their teachers and teachers rated consistence in the enforcement of school policy as the most sensitive area affecting their trust in the administrator’s leadership