iii. step up: Mutual trust

Fostering trust is critical for deep learning by building learners' confidence to take risks and engage challenging concepts with persistence.

Questions to consider

1. What aspects of the PD design intentionally build participants' trust in the session facilitator(s)?

2. What aspects of the PD design intentionally build participants' trust in other participants?

transfer tip

Be transparent and open with participants about the learning design— explain the strategies used to build community in the PD and why they were chosen.

what does trust have to do with learning?

Adapted from Hammond, Zaretta (2014) Culturally Responsive Teaching & The Brain

Building trust and rapport with participants is critical for deep and ambitious learning because it disengages the brain's constant scanning for risks— a mental activity that impedes learning as cognitive resources are expended to stay alert for physical, psychological, social, or other threats. Trust helps disengage this, freeing up the brain for creativity, learning, and higher-order thinking.

To create trust in PD, design an opportunity at the beginning of a unit where the facilitator(s) can start developing a learning partnership rather than "banking" deposits of information in participants. Learning partnerships are anchored on affirmation, mutual respect, and validation.

Trust Builders

A great way to launch into the learning partnership is by doing a trust-builder like an ice breaker. A great activity utilizes five components:

Movement with your brain or body
A sense of identity
Easy participation
Fun (Not everyone might like it but it starts with you first! Do you think it is fun?)
Chance to form new connections

The Learning Partnership Equation

Pro tip: listening with grace

Give your full attention to the speaker and to what is being said
Understand the feeling behind the words and be sensitive to the emotions being expressed
Suspend judgment and listen with compassion
Honor the speaker's cultural way of communicating

–Zaretta Hammond, Culturally Responsive Teaching & The Brain (2014)

5 Virtual ice breakers

in-person ice breaker

A research approach to building trust

Trust Generators are a set of research-based actions that help us make more intimate connections, opening the door to building trust with others. These actions support the foundation of the learning partnership.

In Culturally Responsive Teaching and The Brain (2014), Zaretta Hammond walks us through ways to generate trust: selective vulnerability, familiarity, similarity of interests, concern, and competence.

“Collective work in trusting environments provides a basis for inquiry and reflection into teachers’ own practices, allowing teachers to take risks, solve problems, and attend to dilemmas in their practice.”

– Linda Darling-Hammond, "Effective Teacher Professional Development" (2017)

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