Trust and Faciitation in Educational Interactions

Niklas Luhmann (1988) draws a basic distinction between two notions which both emerge in the context of familiarity: confidence and trust. Both confidence and trust refer to expectations which may be disappointed, but while confidence does not involve disappointment as an expectation, trust presupposes an attribution of risk about the possibility of disappointment. According to Luhmann, in the modern functionally differentiated society, individuals must be confident in the most important social subsystems because there are expectations towards these systems (e.g. economics, politics, the laws, science, families, medicine, etc.) which cannot be avoided. Trust concerns only those specific subsystems’ activities which participants can retreat from, while the subsystems themselves cannot stop working. However, lack of trust in internal activities can affect confidence inside these social systems: it is possible to observe that, while individuals participating in their internal processes cannot retreat from them, they can lose confidence in their effectiveness, and this can reduce their effectiveness in society. Disappointment is produced in these systems at the expense of confidence. Consequently, in these systems it is particularly important to encourage the risk of trust in order to avoid risks for confidence. In the education system, an important subsystem in society, students must be confident in the education system and they cannot avoid participating in its internal processes. However, they may lack trust in specific educational activities, above all those involving educators and classmates. This lack of trust can create lack of confidence in the education system, in particular children’s marginalization and self-marginalization in educational communication, with a consequent reduction of effectiveness of education in society. The awareness of this risk has increased in the education system, during the last decades and although risks of students’ dropping out are attributed to specific activities and relationships, not to education itself, there is also an acknowledgement that disappointment can involve and undermine the education system. If students do not risk trust in activities and interlocutors, problems of marginalization and self-marginalization can spread in the system. The avoidance of taking trust risks (Luhmann 1988) activates a vicious circle: it implies loosing possibilities of students’ action in the system, reducing their preparation to risk trust, and activating anxiety and suspect for interlocutors’ actions. Consequently, in education trust must be assured through strategies which reduce the risk of not risking trust. According to Anthony Giddens (1990), trust can be enhanced in two ways in modern society: a. through expertise and technological systems, b. through interpersonal affective relationships. In the education system, expertise is generally considered the main source of trust as adults are hold to be the experts (teachers, educators), those who must be trusted for their knowledge and competence. However, since the end of the Forties, psychologists like Carl Rogers (1951) have suggested that expertise is not the sole means to activate trust and on the contrary, under particular conditions, expertise can provoke disappointment and become risky for the students’ trust in educational activities. In this perspective, teachers themselves should not simply be confident in their own expertise. Rather they should trust interpersonal affective relationships with students, listening to their personal expressions and supporting them empathically. Following this (person-centred education) approach and similar others, students should trust primarily teachers or educators who show sensitivity towards their personal expressions. Luhmann and Giddens agree that interpersonal relationships may be important for trust, while psychologists are confident that interpersonal affective relationships are enough to guarantee the risk of trust. In a completely different context, that concerning workshops involving Israeli and Palestinian representatives, Herbert Kelman’s (2005) position was that trust is created through facilitator’s roles working with problem solving activities. According to Kelman, interpersonal relationships are not necessary for creating trust, while joint solution of problems is much more important, at least in those conditions where risking trust is improbable or at least unpredictable. Our contribution addresses the educational system and particularly the following questions: To which extent are the different presuppositions theoretically consistent and empirically verifiable in the system? Does the degree of improbability of risking trust influence strategies for building trust? Which is the role of experts in creating trust among students? What does “facilitation” of trust mean in this system? Can the system create trust effectively? These questions are addressed through an analysis of interactions between students and educators in situations where (1) risking trust is not based on high confidence in the system, as (2) activities are not presented as mandatory and as part of a teaching programme. In these situations, contrary to what generally occurs in the education system, students participation in the activities is not primarily based on confidence in the system (e.g. enhanced by the importance of career selection), rather, it is enhanced through strategies promoting their trust in teachers’ and mates’ actions. Under these conditions, teachers’ facilitation of participation may be considered relevant in promoting students’ trust in adults and mates. Indeed, it may be considered the most effective way of promoting trust, as it interrupts the vicious circle which derives from not risking trust. By increasing the possibilities of students’ active participation and their confidence in the system, and by reducing their anxiety and suspect for interlocutors, facilitation can prepare students to risk trust. The analysis of the interactions, which is shown here, is particularly useful in highlighting those types of actions which can promote trust in a way which is visible in specific communication processes between educators and students and among students. These interactions are taken from research on (1) activities of peace education in non scholastic intercultural groups, and (2) activities of mediation in intercultural classrooms, both involving adolescents. What is highlighted are the cues for the social construction of trust that are made evident in the structure of participants’ alternation to turn-taking. References Giddens, Anthony. 1990. The consequences of modernity. Cambridge: Polity Press. Kelman, Herbert. 2005. “Building trust among enemies: The central challenge for international conflict resolution”. International Journal of Intercultural Relations 29: 639-650. Luhmann, Niklas. 1988. “Familiarity, Confidence, Trust: Problems and Alternatives”. In Diego Gambetta (ed.) Trust: Making and Breaking Cooperative Relations, Department of Sociology, University of Oxford: 94-107 Rogers, Carl. 1951. Client-centered therapy: Its current practice, implications and theory. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.