名古屋高等教育研究

第 9 号（2009）

A Leap of Faith:
The Role of Trust in Higher Education Teaching
Bruce MACFARLANE＜Abstract＞
The importance of trust to ‘good’ teaching in higher education iscomparatively neglected compared to work focused on the use oftechniques to develop active learning and reflective processes. This
paper applies concepts from the management and marketing literature to identify why students entering higher education must do solargely on the basis of trust or a ‘leap of faith’. It also presents a setof 25 actions that can result in the erosion of student trust in university teachers based on McKnight and Chervany’s (2001) meta-categories – benevolence, integrity, competence and predictability.
While the paper rejects an over-simplified analogy between higher
education and other service industries, it is contended that identifying
and closing expectation ‘gaps’ between students and tutors is an
important means of retaining or regaining trust. It is concluded thattrust is critical in understanding the meaning of ‘good’ teaching andthat loss of trust has negative economic as well as social and ethicalimplications for the university.

1.

Introduction
There is now a substantial literature on teaching and learning in higher*Head of Academic Development & Professor of Higher Education, Department for Curriculum and Quality Enhancement, University ofPortsmouth, United Kingdom
Former Visiting Professor, Center for the Studies of Higher

Education,

Nagoya University

221education much of it focused on the importance of understanding student
learning styles, techniques for promoting active learning, reflective practice and other innovative practices, such as the use of new technologies (egRamsden, 1992; Biggs, 1999; Brockbank and McGill, 1998). The authors of
this literature tend to be committed to a social constructivist perspective
which implies that learning is an active process through which individuals
construct their own meanings about the world. The emphasis on learningtheory also means that the role of the higher education teacher is definedin relation to the psychology of education rather than drawing on literature and resources from the philosophy, sociology and history of education.
This bias has shaped both the current research agenda connected withhigher education pedagogy and formal programmes of staff and educational development (Macfarlane, 2004a). Within this context, less attention
has centered on the ethical aspects of teaching relationships with students
beyond a general focus on broad socio-political commitments, such as
equality of opportunity and widening participation (Macfarlane and Ottewill, 2005).
One of the areas of comparative neglect connected with the ethics ofhigher education teaching is the importance of trust in relationships withstudents. This article will reflect on the implications of concepts derived
from service management and marketing in relation to teaching in higher
education. It will also apply four meta-categories of trust – benevolence,
integrity, competence and predictability (McKnight and Chervany, 2001) –to identify 25 actions that erode trust in university teachers. It will beargued that trust is critical in understanding the meaning of ‘good’teaching and that loss of trust has negative economic as well as social andethical implications for the university.

2．A Leap of Faith
Trust is widely recognized as critical in forming successful personal andbusiness relationships (Berry, 1980, Lovelock, 1983). While crude analogies
between higher education as a public good and other ‘service industries’
should be eschewed there are useful concepts from the service man-222

A Leap of Faith: The Role of Trust in Higher Education Teachingagement literature that can be applied. Students are not exactly customers
inasmuch that they themselves are evaluated by their ‘service providers’but they are individuals in receipt of a service nonetheless. Education is anintangible service (Lovelock, 1983). It is not a simple product that you canevaluate before purchasing it, such as fruit from a market stall throughtouch or smell. Moreover, as a professional service, the outcome of ahigher education is not necessarily predictable. Deciding to start a university course is a decision made on trust. This is shaped by the reputationof the institution and demands a leap of faith on the part of the studentthat they will benefit. As Gibbs (2004) argues, ‘trust is demanded when
consumers feel vulnerable and ignorant’ (p 66) and students need this inabundance because university education is ‘at the frontier of what is
knowable’ (p 66). Hence, they must take it on trust that they will benefit
from going to university. The outcome is unpredictable.
When the nature of the professional service requires a judgement-based, customized solution, as in a professional service, it is
not always clear to either the customer or the professional what
the outcome will be (Lovelock, 1983, 16)
Part of this leap of faith is that despite the popularity of student evaluation questionnaires, it is difficult for anyone to evaluate a complex
professional service, such as a higher education, whilst they are experiencing it. It is often only after some time has elapsed that someone canjudge the success of a professional service. The motorist will learn how
well their car has been serviced by their mechanic in the months that
follow the completion of the service, depending on whether the vehicle
breaks down. The heart operation can only be judged a success well after
the completion of the surgery through the recovery and survival of thepatient in the short and longer term. In selecting a professional service,
word of mouth recommendations and any past service experiences areimportant in shaping customer decision-making given the absence of othermore ‘concrete’ evidence for evaluation. Customers must trust the mechanic, the heart surgeon or the higher education professor.

223

A higher education student may only be able to truly understand, andevaluate, the quality of their university degree years after graduation interms of its impact on their life and working career. As a result, alumni,
rather than current students, are perhaps best equipped to evaluate thequality of their higher education experience (Coates and Koerner, 1996).
Many of the ways in which people judge the quality of a service are relevant to the conduct of teaching. While ‘tangibles’, such as the appearance and facilities of a university, are important most of the other‘service quality’ factors, reliability, responsiveness, assurance and empathy (Berry, 1980), are closely linked to the personal relationship between
the student and the teacher.

3．Expectation ‘gaps’
Institutions of higher education are marketing their services in an increasingly competitive national and international environment. At thesame time, they are faced with meeting financial obligations and these
constraints have led to a worsening staff-student ratio, a falling proportionof full-time teaching faculty and delays in improving facilities and infrastructure (Ghosh et al, 2001). This means that students can discover a
mismatch or a ‘gap’ between their expectations of a university educationand their perception of the reality. This is the one of five service quality‘gaps’ derived from the marketing literature (Parasuraman et al, 1985)
and refers to the difference between the service delivered and external
communication about the service with customers. This is usually associated with a service provider making promises about the level of service
that exceed what they can deliver in practice. This analysis, while derived
from the marketing management field, may clearly be applied to a higher
education context (Tan and Kek 2004).
Another gap identified in the ‘servqual’ (service quality) model (Parasuraman et al, 1985) is the difference between customers’ expected
service and ‘management’s’ perceptions of customers’ expectations.
This gap means that management may not correctly understand customer
expectations. In a higher education context this may be ‘translated’ as224

A Leap of Faith: The Role of Trust in Higher Education Teaching
meaning that what students expect from the university is not what
academic managers or, indeed, faculty believe they want. In higher education, the faculty member is the principal actor who forms teaching andlearning relationships with students although other administrative andsupport staff may play a key role. At the same time that student trust ina university is tested by whether they receive the ‘service’ they expect,teaching faculty bring their expectations into relationships with students.
The transition from school to university is often described in terms of ashift from dependence to independence as a learner (Mutch, 2005).
However, while university teachers expect students to adopt an independent approach to their learning research has shown that students
coming into higher education, especially from colleges of further education1), are accustomed to a more supportive environment with greater
access to tutorial advice (Christie et al, 2006). The massification of higher
education means that high expectations of tutorial support from academic
staff are largely unrealistic. Furthermore, the university teacher is also
likely to be a researcher and may not regard teaching as their principal orpreferred occupation (Becher and Trowler, 2001). Bruhn (2008) argues that
there is a close connection between value dissonance and ethics failure inacademia. Here, role conflict, and probably role overload, may be related tothis problem.
For the student, the so-called ‘moment of truth’ can occur when she
first meets her teacher as this individual is, in effect, the personification of
the university and its brand imaging. This may be a positive or a negative
experience for the student as one of the intractable problems with any
service is variability (or heterogeneity) meaning a lack of consistency inthe way that it is delivered (Berry, 1980). This implies that the standard or
quality of a service can vary according to the personnel involved in delivering it from one occasion to the next. Generally, service quality is not aseasy to control as a manufactured product since there is a dependence on
individuals with varying behavioural standards. This is a problem dealt
with in most organizations through training and sometimes ‘scripting’ ofservice personnel, such as in fast food restaurants. By contrast, in a higher
education context variability in teaching styles is sometimes claimed to be225

a positive rather than a negative feature. In a UK context most novice
lecturers are now expected to undertake a postgraduate level qualificationin teaching although this is not a statutory requirement. Possession of a
research degree, notably a PhD, is still seen in many national contexts as
the only qualification needed for university teaching. Hence, variability is
considerable.
Arguably there are particular conditions that pertain to higher education that demand greater trust from students, and other stakeholders, thanin compulsory education. The dual teaching and assessment role performed by university teachers differs from the role of counterparts incompulsory education systems who, despite the growth of continuous
assessment, do not normally set and grade their own examinations.
Moreover, while parents may be making a considerable financial contribution to their child’s higher education through the payment of tuition
fees or other subsistence costs, they are generally excluded from consultation about student progress as university students tend to be classified as adults. These conditions, it will be argued, have implications for
issues of trust.

4．Characteristics of Trust
The meaning of ‘trust’ has spawned many articles and books acrossacademic disciplines including psychology, management and communication, sociology, political science and economics. From the management
field, a typical example is the work of Reina and Reina (Reina and Reina,1999) who suggest three key categories: contractual trust (connected withthe keeping of promises and the meeting of obligations and other contractual requirements); competence trust (in someone’s capacity andknowledge to perform a given role); and communication trust (in being
clear, open and truthful including admitting mistakes). Curiously, perhaps,
the importance of trust has received comparatively less attention in
education than in some disciplines, notably management and psychology,
although there have been studies involving trust between teachers(Hargreaves, 2002), trust in higher education institutions (Ghosh et al, 2001)

226

A Leap of Faith: The Role of Trust in Higher Education Teaching
and, from a philosophical perspective, in the university (Gibbs, 2004). Yet,these analyses do not tend to focus at a practical or operational level inconsidering relationships between students and teaching faculty.
In a meta-analysis of 65 articles, McKnight and Chervany (2001) identified four high level categories of trust that occur in over 90 per cent ofdefinitions. These four categories are benevolence, integrity, competence
and predictability. Benevolence refers to caring and acting in the interestsof others. Integrity, in this context, is about honesty and truthfulness andthe keeping of promises. Competence means possessing the power or theability to perform a role. Finally, predictability is where the actions of thetrusted party are consistent enough to be predictable (McKnight andChervany, 2001). The meta categories identified by McKnight and Chervany are relevantly similar to the three most influential ‘antecedents’ oftrust – sincerity, expertise and congeniality - suggested by Ghosh and hiscolleagues (Ghosh et al, 2001) in a study focused on college teaching.
Sincerity is closely related to integrity while expertise and congeniality
are virtual proxies for competence and benevolence respectively. Thus, itappears appropriate to deploy McKnight and Chervany’s meta categories
in the next section of this paper to reflect on the role of trust in teaching
relationships within a higher education context. This will draw on a list of
25 examples of trust eroding actions (see figure 1). The discussion which
follows seeks to integrate these examples in relation to each of McKnight
and Chervany’s four trust categories.
Table1
Actions by university teachers that might potentially erode student trust (by category)B
1. Cancelling or re-scheduling classes or lectures
without good reason

I

P

✓

2. Failing to demonstrate a command of subject
knowledge
3. Granting assignment extensions to students on aninconsistent basis
4. Changing a course assignment or assessment
criteria mid-course

C

✓
✓

✓
✓

227

5. Criticizing a student in the presence of other✓students or teachers
6. Being an overly harsh or overly lenient assessor
7. Losing or mislaying student assignments✓

8. Allowing a few students to dominate class dis-✓cussion or other activities
9. Providing additional tutorial support to somegive tutorial support✓

11. Loss of temper or making disrespectful remarks
12. Refusing to mediate in disputes between students
arising from group projects✓✓

students without explanation
10. Being generally unavailable or unprepared to

✓

✓

✓

✓

✓

✓

13. Not teaching or ‘covering’ the curriculum aspromised
14. Teaching uninformed by personal scholarly ac-✓tivities✓

15. Inconsistency in the start or end time of classes
16. Failing to grade and return assignments within areasonable time✓

17. Imposing penalties/criticizing lack of referencing✓

in student work while failing to model this behaviour
in presenting lecturing and other teaching materials✓

18. Changing established seating patterns
19. Sharing information or opinions about student✓

progress with third parties, such as employers or
parents, without student consent✓

20. Insufficient planning of teaching
21. Not up-dating teaching materials
22. Providing unclear or insufficient feedback on
assignments
23. Telling students that research is more important
than teaching them

228

✓

✓

✓

✓

✓

A Leap of Faith: The Role of Trust in Higher Education Teaching
24. Providing insufficient guidance on use of independent learning time
25. Demonstrating indifference to student evaluationof teaching

✓

✓

✓

Key: B=1benevolence; I=integrity; C=competence; P=predictability

5．The Erosion of Trust
Trust may occasionally be lost as a result of a dramatic incident, such asa teacher criticizing or possibly even humiliating a student in class (5) orotherwise losing their temper (11). However, while such serious incidents
can occur in a teaching context leading to an instant disintegration of trust,these types of events are probably far less common than more‘fine-grained’ occurrences. This phrase refers to less dramatically powerful but more commonly occurring actions that accumulatively canundermine trust in a teacher.
5.1

Benevolence

A number of writers and researchers have emphasized the importanceof lecturers caring or showing ‘love’ for their students (eg Ballantyne et al,
1991; Rowland, 2000). However, many lecturers, at least in a Westerncontext where the age of majority is usually 18, commonly assert thatstudents should be ‘independent learners’ and that, as adults, they do notregard themselves as responsible for their welfare. Such an attitude can bemisunderstood or interpreted as a lack of caring or benevolence. Trust
may be damaged by actions such as cancelling or re-scheduling classes
without good reason (1), being unavailable to give any tutorial support
outside of formal class contact time (10) or refusing to mediate in disputes
between students arising from group projects (12). Moreover, if little or no
guidance is given to students on how they can use time allocated for‘independent learning’ (24) this can also be taken as a signal of a lack ofcaring.
Lecturers will frequently argue that group projects are intended toreflect the ‘real world’ of work where individuals with different abilities229

and personalities must co-operate and perform together. This rationale isoften used as a justification for telling students to sort out their own
problems. Students at university though are peers and project teams in
the workplace are normally hierarchically structured providing a basis forcontrolling and motivating group members. Where assessment is purelygroup-based this can leave students worried that their grades will suffer.
There is plenty of evidence from student ‘blogs’ that attest to theirconcerns in this respect. Lecturers who refuse to recognize concerns thatgroup grades are unfair can risk losing student trust (see Kagan, 1995;
Kagan, 1996).
There are other ways that lecturers can demonstrate a lack of benevolence. Many lecturers have reservations about the veracity and accuracy of student feedback. However, expressing a disregard for perceptions
about the quality of one’s own teaching (25) demonstrates a disrespectful
attitude. While it might be rare for an academic to explicitly express theview that their research was more important to them than teaching theirstudents (23), this attitude might be inferred from an apparently ‘uncaring’ attitude.
5.2

Integrity

Integrity is interpreted by McKnight and Chervany (2001) as about
honesty and truthfulness and the keeping of promises. Teachers in higher
education provide such promises both explicitly and implicitly in theireveryday practice. Explicitly, they might promise to return assignments tostudents by a particular date but then fail to do so (16). Implicitly, students
would expect faculty to behave in a manner that was both truthful and fairin classroom situations by promoting a ‘neutral and open forum for debate’ (Barnett, 1990:8) and ‘interactional fairness’ (Rodabaugh, 1996).
Retaining the trust of students is related to fairness as a virtue, particularly in relation to the power of assessment (Macfarlane, 2004a). Sevenof the trust eroding behaviours suggested in figure 1 are related to theassessment role (3,4,5,6,16,17 and 22). The dual role of higher educationlecturers as both teachers and assessors places them in an especially
responsible position (Macfarlane and Ottewill, 2005). While poor teaching is230

A Leap of Faith: The Role of Trust in Higher Education Teachingsomething a student can overcome through their own efforts, they cannot‘escape the effects of poor assessment’ (Boud, 1985:35). Here, being
perceived as a harsh or lenient marker (6) or failing to handle requests for
assignment extensions in a fair manner (3) are actions that will erode trust.
In a study of 4,200 undergraduates at 14 US colleges and universities,
Braxton and Mann (2004) found that 5 per cent of students believed thatteachers had showed favoritism in their grading practice and a further 5
per cent felt that teachers had shown a condescending attitude towardthem.
In most higher education systems, students are considered adults although legally they may not all have reached the age of majority in somenational contexts. The age of majority is 19 in several Canadian provinces,
20 in Japan, and 21 in Singapore and the US states of Mississippi and New
York. The norm elsewhere is 18 and this means that university teachers
do not usually share information or opinions about their progress withthird parties, such as parents (19) even though they may be continuing tosupport their children financially whilst in higher education. However,many university students are also part-time employees who may besponsored by their business organization to pursue a further qualification,such as a Masters in Business Administration. The continued support forsuch students, and even their promotion prospects, can depend on theirsuccessful progress. This can result in a further pressure on university
teachers to share information (Macfarlane, 2000). Sometimes, where there
is concern for a student’s mental or physical welfare rather than theiracademic progress a conflict can occur between a well-meaning attempton the part of a teacher to be benevolent and maintaining the confidentiality and integrity of the teaching relationship in higher education. This
mirrors the centrality of confidentiality in the doctor-patient relationship.
Some potentially integrity eroding actions may be too complex torepresent in figure 1. One controversial area concerns the extent to which
professors should reveal their political or ideological commitments tostudents. While some would contend that this is essential to academic
freedom and being authentic, others have argued that an over-strident
assertion of personal stances can have a negative effect on student aca-

231

demic freedom (Weber, 1919). The key point is that by teachers revealing
their personal opinions this should not result in students self-censoring
expression of their own viewpoint (Macfarlane et al, 2004b). It is essentialthat the student feels that they can trust their teacher not to discriminate
against them if they express a view which opposes that of their professor.
5.3

Competence

Perhaps the biggest fear of the novice teacher is that their lack ofknowledge will be exposed by their students (2) such as through being
asked a question to which they do not know the answer. However, while asolid knowledge base is critical to credibility loss of trust is just as likely, if
not more so, to result from a failure related to one of the other trust
categories. There are also other aspects to competence than academic
knowledge.
Allowing some students to dominate discussion (8) is, in part, a failure oftrust in relation to integrity as part of the implicit contract of a higher
education is that all will be encouraged to contribute in a free and open
debate (Barnett, 1990). Yet, allowing such a situation to develop may also
be an indicator of a lack of competence as a teacher. This is an example of
the way that trust eroding actions may relate to more than one of the four
categories identified by McKnight and Chervany (see figure 1). A lack ofcompetence might further manifest itself as failing to up-date teachingmaterials (21), providing unclear or insufficient feedback on assignments(22) or guidance on the use of independent learning time (24) although such(in)actions may be perceived as a lack of caring or benevolence too. These
examples are, to some extent, planning failures the significance of which
are revealed in Braxton and Mann’s (2004) study of US undergraduates.
This revealed that almost 20 per cent of undergraduate students felt theirteachers had not planned their teaching properly.
5.4

Predictability

Predictability is a key component of trust and can be eroded by inconsistent behaviour on the part of a teacher. Examples include changing
an assignment or the way student work will be assessed mid-course (4) or232

A Leap of Faith: The Role of Trust in Higher Education Teaching
not completing coverage of the curriculum (13) raising levels of student
anxiety as a result. Even what may appear to be relatively trivial considerations such as not starting and ending classes on time (15) or interfering with established seating patterns (18) that often reflect friendships
makes the learning environment less ‘safe’ and predictable and mayundermine this category of trust.
The importance of predictability can be overlooked in well-intentioned
efforts to introduce innovative teaching and learning methods in higher
education which can inadvertently damage the ‘safety’ or ‘security’
students find in conventional classroom environments where their role isrelatively passive. A possible indicator of the importance of predictability
is that despite attempts to introduce more interactive approaches toteaching and learning students still often express a preference for lectureformats (Ballantyne et al, 1999). Role-play is one of the least popular or
preferred teaching methods among students in higher education. Studies
report that students find it embarrassing and often feel it is ineffective as
well (Stevenson and Sander, 2002). Despite this many educators in management and health-related fields believe that role play provides important
benefits for student learning (Nestel and Tierney, 2007).
Student preferences for conventional methods of teaching can be asource of frustration to some educators and researchers committed tomore innovative and active styles of learning. When asked, students tend
to express preference for university teachers who are organized andcommunicate well using the lecture method (Hatvia and Birenbaum, 2000).
This preference is probably related, at least in part, to the importanceplaced by students, and indeed any ‘customer’, on predictability. Students
least like lecturers who expect them to adopt an independent andself-regulating approach to learning despite the fact that this is supported
by constructivist learning theory (Hatvia and Birenbaum, 2000).

6．Conclusion
It is a truism that trust is hard to win but a lot easier to lose. Such aconsideration applies as much in a teaching relationship as in any other233

type of relationship. Moreover, trust is now seen as a key component in themodern strategic management of organizations working in a more competitive environment (Kramer and Tyler, 1996). The expansion of participation in higher education in many national contexts has also beenaccompanied by rising rates of non-completion. Much has been written
about the importance of student integration and their acquiring the necessary social and cultural capital to adapt to university life as factors indetermining whether students persist (eg Tinto, 1993). What is strangely
absent from this debate is the impact of trust (and loss of trust) on suchstatistics even though it has been established that students are less likely
to transfer away from the institution or drop out if conditions of trust are
established (Ghosh et al, 2004). Forming teaching relationships based ontrust though is more than a purely economic consideration. It is, above all,a moral one.
Notes

1) A community or junior college in a North American or Japanese context
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「高等教育の信頼性」が意味するもの
ブルース・マクファーレン＜要旨＞

高等教育機関が良質なティーチングを提供することの信頼性は、アクティブ・ラーニングや振り返りのプロセスを精緻化させる技法の開発ほどには注目されてこなかった。本稿では、大学新入生の教員に対する信頼度が学習活動にどのような影響を及ぼしているかを文献調
査によって明らかにする。その際に、McKnight and Chervany (2001)
によるメタ分類（思いやり、知的誠実さ、専門能力、予見能力）に基づいて、大学教員が学生の信頼を失うに至った 25 の事例を観察する。
考察の結果、学生と指導教員の間に存在する「期待値のずれ」を少なくすることが、学生との信頼関係を維持あるいは学生からの信頼を取り戻す上で重要であることがわかった。良質のティーチングとは何かを理解する上で、学生との信頼関係は決定的に重要である。学生からの信頼を失うことは大学にとって社会的および倫理的な影響が大き
いだけでなく、経済的にも損失となる。

英国ポーツマス大学・教授
名古屋大学高等教育研究センター・元客員教授

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