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Trust in Schools: A Core Resource for Improvement, by Anthony S. Bryk and Barbara Schneider. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2002. 217 pp. $29.95 cloth. ISBN: 0-87154-192-0.
As policymakers, states, and school districts grapple with structural change in order to improve and reform our nation's education system, it is imperative to consider the role and impact of social relationships among school leaders, teachers, parents, and the community on school improvement. In their timely work, Trust in Schools, Bryk and Schneider provide an analysis of the distinct role relationships play in social exchanges of schooling.
Examining multiple school relationships, Bryk and Schneider reveal that relationships are maintained by an understanding of one's role responsibility and expectations in relation to the obligations of others. Central to the authors' thesis is the notion that for a school community to work well, it must achieve agreement in each role relationship with regard to the understandings of personal obligations and expectations of others.
Trust in Schools seeks to provide evidence of relational trust by drawing attention to the nature of social relations within a school community, the local culture, and other contextual factors that...