Aspects of school mindfulness and dimensions of faculty trust: Social processes in elementary schools

Mindfulness and trust are both important and relevant components of healthy school climates, but there exists a paucity of research concerning the influence of trust on developing mindful behaviors in schools. Thus, the primary goal of this study is to explore the relationships between three salient dimensions of faculty trust and two important aspects of school mindfulness in elementary schools.;The general hypothesis of this study is that faculty trust will be positively related to school mindfulness; however, both faculty trust and school mindfulness are viewed from the multi-dimensional perspective. Thus, the research addresses what dimensions of faculty trust best predict each of the aspects of school mindfulness.;Researchers collected data from 109 elementary schools throughout the south-central region of the state of Texas. One-half of the school's faculties were administered the Omnibus Trust Survey, while the remaining participants were administered the Mindfulness Scale instrument. Additional data came from statewide reports received from the Texas Education Agency. The unit of analysis in this study was the school.;Descriptive statistics were calculated for all the variables employed in the study. Correlation coefficients were computed for each of the dimensions of faculty trust with each aspect of school mindfulness. Additional testing of the variables was performed using multiple regression analysis. Furthermore, factor analysis was conducted on both the Omnibus T-Scale and the School Mindfulness instrument.;The general hypothesis that faculty trust would be positively related to school mindfulness was supported; however, different dimensions of faculty trust were more or less important depending on what aspect of school mindfulness was targeted. Moreover, the instruments employed in this research were found to have solid factor structures comparable with their theoretical underpinnings. Finally, although faculty trust was used as the independent variable, the direction of causality is not clear. In fact, it is suspected that the relationships between faculty trust and school mindfulness are reciprocal.