1. TRUST IN EDUCATIONAL
GOVERNANCE AND PEDAGOGY
Prof. Dr. Dirk Van Damme
Head of the Innovation and Measuring
Progress Division and the Centre for
Educational Research and Innovation
– OECD/EDU

2. Intro
• TRUST is becoming a critically important
human need, a social value, an economic
measure and a political imperative
– Social movements reacting against the dire
consequences of hyper-competition and greed
– Huge problems of democratic deficit, mistrust in
modern social and political institutions and lack
of social cohesion in modern societies
– Turn to post-materialistic social values and
search for authentic human interaction
2

3. Outline
Community
Trust in educational
governance
Interpersonal Trust Stakeholders
Social Capital
Trust in schools and
teachers
Families
EDUCATION
Trust in the
Trust as an learnable
pedagogical
skill and attitude Learners
relationship
3

4. Background
• From state-centred regulation...
– Input-steering
• ...to decentralised institutional autonomy...
– De-concentration of decision-making
• Allocation of resources
• Curriculum and assessment
– Market mechanisms, parental choice, competition
– Participatory governance
• ...accompanied by accountability
4

5. Background
• Governance challenges in increasingly complex
education systems:
– Multilevel governance
– Multiplication of actors and stakeholders
– Increasing emphasis on performance and
efficiency, while these increasingly depend on
more and more factors
• Policy challenges
– Ministers feel increasingly powerless to foster
social and political objectives
– Performance and efficiency need new answers
5

6. Background
• Not only governments jeopardise trust:
– Increase of legal disputes on education matters
• Students
• Parents
– Employers
• Turning to direct skills assessment instead of
having confidence in qualifications
• Retraining graduates perceived not to possess the
right skills sets
6

7. 1.
IS EDUCATION
TRUSTWORTHY ?
7

8. Public confidence in schools
US
8

9. “Anything of value is weak”
• Qualifications and skills produced by education
systems still have a high added value
– In terms of income
– In terms of employment (and unemployment risk)
– In terms of social outcomes (health, civic
participation, social capital, …)
• But then society needs to trust qualifications as
valid representations of competences
• How much quality variation is the system able to
tolerate before it looses trust?
9

10. School performance and socio-economic background
Belgium
School performance and students’ socio-economic background within schools
Student performance and schools’ socio-economic background Private school
Public school in rural area
Score Public school in urban area
Student performance
-2 -1 0 1 2
PISA Index of socio-economic background

11. 150
200
250
300
350
Skill score
Not completed school
Upper secondary
University
Not completed school
Upper secondary
University
Not completed school
Upper secondary
University
The skills value of qualifications
Interquartile range in skill distribution by educational qualification
11

12. 2.
CAN ACCOUNTABILITY HELP
TO GENERATE TRUST ?
12

13. Accountability
Vertical Horizontal
Regulatory Professional
accountability accountability
School Multiple
performance stakeholder
accountability accountability
13

14. Accountability
• Move to school performance accountability
– Output-oriented (standardised student testing, national
examinations, international benchmarking, ...)
– Meeting quality standards (quality
assurance, inspection)
– Public reporting, rewards and sanctions
• Autonomy AND accountability work together
– Autonomy alone does not work
– Accountability alone does not work
14

15. Accountability
• Move to school performance accountability
– Output-oriented (standardised student testing, national
examinations, international benchmarking, ...)
– Meeting quality standards (quality
assurance, inspection)
– Public reporting, rewards and sanctions
• Risks of high-stakes assessments:
– ‘Teaching to the test’
– Narrowing the curriculum
– Negative impact on low-performing schools
15

16. But social trust and school autonomy are unrelated
2
PISA school responsibility for curriculum
1 Netherlands
and assessment index 2009
Czech Rep
Great Britain
1
Italy
Sweden
Hungary Denmark
0 Ireland
Slovak Rep
Belgium Finland
Germany
-1 Spain Austria
Switzerland Norway
Luxembourg
-1 Portugal
-2
-0.6 -0.4 -0.2 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1
Interpersonal trust
16

17. Trust and educational governance
• 2 ways to promote governance arrangements in
education which generate trust
– Move to professional accountability: trusting
teachers
– Move to multiple stakeholder accountability:
generating trust in the community
17

18. Accountability and beyond?
• Move to professional accountability
– Fostering teacher professionalism
– Developing professional standards
– Promoting collaboration and professional
learning communities
– Updating pedagogical knowledge of teachers
• Defining teachers as high-quality ‘knowledge
workers’ with high degree of professional
standards, professional accountability
18

19. Accountability and beyond?
• Trusting teachers also implies developing trust
in the unique nature of the pedagogical
relationship in which teachers and learners
engage
– School performance accountability tends to
define the pedagogical relationship as a
‘contractual relationship’
– Pedagogy is the distinctive professional quality
teachers add, hence pedagogical knowledge and
skills need to be very high for ‘professional
capital’ of teachers to be trustworthy
19

20. Accountability and beyond?
• Move to multiple stakeholder accountability
– Schools accountable to learners, parents, stakeholders
and the community at large
• Establishing a relationship
• Obtaining support
• Capacity building
– Processes of collective learning and feedback generate
trust in the community
• Recognition of different interests and needs among
stakeholders
• Allowing enough time to develop a trusting relationship
• Clarity of roles and purposes such that all actors feel
responsible 20

21. 3.
IS EDUCATION PRODUCING
TRUST ?
21

22. Levels of interpersonal trust (Europe)
1
0.8
0.6
0.4
0.2
0
-0.2
-0.4
-0.6
-0.8
-1
22

23. Proportion of adults expressing interpersonal trust, by level of
educational attainment (2008)
Percentage Below upper secondary education Upper secondary education Tertiary education
100
90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
Hungary
Denmark
Israel
Turkey
Estonia
Netherlands
Greece
Finland
Ireland1
Spain
Poland
Portugal
Norway
Austria1
Slovak Republic
Italy2
France
Slovenia
Sweden
Belgium
OECD average
Czech Republic
United Kingdom
Switzerland
1. Year of reference 2006.
2. Year of reference 2004.
Countries are ranked in descending order of the proportion of adults expressing interpersonal trust among those who have attained upper secondary
education.
Source: www.oecd.org/edu/eag2010
23

24. 24

25. Incremental differences in interpersonal trust associated with an increase in the
level of educational attainment (2008)
From below upper secondary to upper From upper secondary to
secondary tertiary
Group 1
Slovenia
Sweden
Estonia
Poland
France
Spain
Norway
Belgium
Ireland1
1. Year of reference 2006. Switzerland
2. Year of reference 2004.
Countries are grouped by those in Netherlands
which the incremental differences Hungary
in interpersonal trust are higher at
a higher level of education (Group Portugal
1) and others (Group 2). Countries Turkey
are ranked in descending order of
the incremental differences in
interpersonal trust associated with
a shift from upper secondary to
tertiary education attainment.
Group 2
Denmark
United Kingdom
Israel
Finland
Italy2
Austria1
Czech Republic
Greece
Slovak Republic
%
30 25 20 15 10 5 0 -5 -5 0 5 10 15 20 25 30
% 25

26. Education and interpersonal trust
• Level of interpersonal trust is strongly linked to
educational attainment
• Extra year of schooling accounts for an increase in
the level of interpersonal trust of 3 to 4%.
• Individual’s education explains 8% of cross-
country differences in levels of interpersonal trust
• What are the (cognitive and non-cognitive) skills
that specifically contribute to interpersonal trust
and how can education develop them more
effectively?
26

27. 4.
SOME CONCLUSIONS
27

28. Teacher
accountability
Educational
Social trust
outcomes
Stakeholder
accountability
28

29. Mixed systems
• High level of public trust in education is not a
given, will be challenged
– Is education delivering on its promises?
• Performance and efficiency will put more stress
on the system
• Regulation and school performance
accountability are here to stay and risks are real
that they get even more emphasis
• Challenge is to intensify and strengthen
autonomy and new forms of accountability
29

30. Mixed systems
• Two strategies to diversify and strengthen
accountability systems
– Teacher accountability: generating trust in highly
professional teachers and in the specific nature of
the pedagogical relationship
– Multiple stakeholder accountability: generating
trust in the community
30

31. 5.
TO FINISH: TWO OPTIMISTIC
GRAPHS
31

32. Social trust and teacher self-efficacy
0.6
Norway
TALIS 2008 Teacher efficacy index
Italy Ireland
Denmark
Austria
Belgium Fl
0.0
Portugal
Slovak Rep
Hungary
Spain
-0.6
-0.6 -0.4 -0.2 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1
Interpersonal trust
32

33. Social trust and learning outcomes
540
Finland
530
Trusting teachers
520
PISA reading score 2009
Trusting communities
510
Netherlands
Belgium
Norway
500 Switzerland
Germany Ireland Sweden
Hungary Great Britain Denmark
490 Portugal
Italy
Greece
480 Spain
Slovak Rep Czech Rep
Luxembourg
470 Austria
460
-1 -0.8 -0.6 -0.4 -0.2 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1
Interpersonal trust
33

34. Thank you !
dirk.vandamme@oecd.org
www.oecd.org/edu/ceri
twitter @VanDammeEDU