The Effect Of Trust Between Teacher And Student On Student's Behaviors

Trust between student and teacher makes education effective because it facilitates active communication, bridges gaps and enhances mutual understanding. By using a verity of research method such as questionnaire, interview, and content analysis, this research discussed the specific dimensions of student trust in teacher as well as teacher trust in student among primary and middle schools, developed respective questionnaires accordingly, analyzed the characteristic and current status of mutual trust and studied the effectiveness towards student and its process. The analysis data covers 2300 students (from grade 4 to grade 8) and 1100 teachers in 18 urban primary and middle schools in Wuhan, Hubei province, China.The conclusions are the following:1. Dimensions of trust between teacher and studentThere are three dimensions with regard to teacher trust in student and student trust in teacher respectively. The student trust in teacher is built upon the understanding to teacher's teaching skills, reliability and benevolence; while the teacher trust in student is set up on student's learning aptitude, honesty, and psychological closeness to teacher. Although the two kinds of trust are developed similarly in terms of ability and moral trait in nature, the actual meaning towards each party is different.2. Respective questionnaire development of student trust in teacher and teacher trust in studentThe exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis indicated that the questionnaires had high reliability and validity. The questionnaire of student trust in teacher consisted of 20 item, Cronbach's a coefficients of three subscales is from 0.858 to 0.885. The repeated reliabilities are from 0.661 to 0.763.The questionnaire of teacher trust in student consisted of 18 items. Cronbach's a coefficients of three subscales - learning aptitude, honesty, and psychological closeness to teacher, is from 0.878 to 0.913. Confirmatory factor analysis indicated that this questionnaire has high construct validity.3. Characteristics and developing trend of trust between teacher and studentStudent's trust in teacher is absolutely high, but the trust declines when studentsmove forward from grade 4 to grade 8. Students tend to give higher trust to their chair teacher than other teachers. No gender difference is found among students.Teacher's trust in student scores absolutely high too. Not come singly but in pairs, teacher's trust in student declines gradually when students grow up. Chair teacher in the class tends to trust more their students than other teachers do. Teacher tends to give more trust in girl students than boys.Trust between teacher and student is a mutual conception. That means if a teacher gives trust to a student, the student trusts the teacher back. But the trust between teacher and student is moderately correlated.4. Effect of the mutual trust on student's behaviorMutual trust between teacher and student has various influences on student's behavior, such as self-efficacy, satisfaction to teacher, obedience to teacher, perceived teacher-expectancy, and academic achievement. Student trust in teacher has direct impact on student's social skill self-efficacy, satisfaction to teacher, obedience to teacher, perceived teacher-expectancy, but the influence to satisfaction, academic self-efficacy, and academic achievement is indirectTeacher's trust in student has direct impact on student's negative teacher-expectancy, academic self-efficacy and academic achievement, while has indirect effect on student's social skill self-efficacy, satisfaction, and obedience to teacher.