“If I don’t trust my teachers, how can I learn then?” – why LTH students trust teachers, and what we can do to increase their trust

Abstract

Most teachers would agree that it is desirable that their students trust them. And many teachers reflect already on what they can do to actively build trust with their students. Based on interviews with teachers, Felten et al. (2023) developed a model for teacher-initiated “trust moves”, for example teachers displaying their expertise in their disciplines, building personal, caring relationships, being authentic in their interactions, and share their values and how they are acting on them. But to our knowledge what makes students trust teachers hasn’t been explored yet, and if what teachers employ as “trust moves” actually is perceived as something that students are likely to base trust on.

We attempt to fill this gap by interviewing students in higher education from several engineering programmes about what trust means to them relating to their learning experiences at the Faculty of Engineering LTH, Lund University, what they feel makes them trust or distrust a teacher, and what would make a teacher more trustworthy to them. We interpret the student responses of the semi-structured interview based on the Felten et al. (2023) model. We end by suggesting “trust moves” that teachers can initiate based on the interviews, and open up for a discussion of what this might mean for learning and teaching.