School Climates and the Development of Social Trust in Younger Generations

• In Event: Youth Civic Engagement and School Community, Climate, and Culture: Reciprocal Possibilities

Abstract

Social trust—the belief that people generally are fair and trustworthy—is considered a psychological disposition that underpins democratic governance. Individuals with higher levels of social trust are more tolerant of different perspectives, more committed to the common good, more likely to help solve community problems by joining organizations and pitching in. The purpose of this paper is to examine the developmental foundations of social trust and the factors in schools that promote it.

We begin with the premise that public schools act as mini-polities in which younger generations develop an affective understanding of citizenship and the rights and responsibilities associated with membership in political community. But the climate for learning is key: students’ feelings of inclusion at school, of solidarity with fellow students/citizens, and of mutual respect for differences shape their democratic dispositions and inclinations to act on behalf of the common good. National studies indicate that students’ sense of connectedness at in high-school predicts their civic engagement in adulthood. We argue that social trust is implicated in these relationships and that particular practices in schools matter. The paper examines three factors that contribute to social trust: the climate of tolerance created by teachers, the sense of group solidarity felt by students, and the opportunities that service learning projects offer for challenging group stereotypes and enlarging students’ sense of the civic community for which they are responsible.

Data to test these claims come from two sources. The first is a longitudinal survey study following more than 1000 5-12th graders, their teachers, and parents over three years. Students were surveyed annually in classrooms across eight school districts (reflecting diversity in ethnicity and social class) in a northeastern and a midwestern state. Survey items tapped students’ social trust (i.e., the classic items used to measure beliefs that people generally are fair and trustworthy) as well as scales tapping their feelings of solidarity with fellow students and their perceptions that teachers facilitated a civil climate for learning (encouraging a respectful and free exchange of diverse opinions). The second data source are responses from an ethnically and socioeconomically diverse group of more than 600 high-school students to open-ended questions about what they had learned from participating in service learning projects.

Results from the longitudinal study show that social trust declines with age, is lower among females, and that a student’s social trust measured in one year is highly predictive of his/her social trust in the following year. However, social trust also is boosted over time by students’ feelings of school solidarity and by the civil climates for learning created by their teachers. Results from the qualitative study indicate that participation in community service may boost social trust because students have direct contact with people who are members of stereotyped groups (e.g., elderly, homeless), understand them as fellow citizens, and appreciate the ties that bind citizens together.

Authors

• Constance A. Flanagan, University of Wisconsin - Madison

• Les Gallay, University of Wisconsin - Madison