Trust and trusting practices during transition to higher education: Introducing a framework of habitual trust

ABSTRACT

Background: Transition to higher education (HE) confronts undergraduates with a variety of social and academic challenges. Research on how these challenges are dealt with often refers to a Bourdieusian perspective and links successful access to HE to the capital and habitus that students bring with them when adapting to unfamiliar institutional demands.

Purpose: Although some studies regard trust (and perceptions of trustworthiness) as highly relevant for establishing a ‘fit’ between individual and institutional features, the notion of trust as a part of cultural capital for managing the transition to higher education is seldom considered. Our exploratory study aims to introduce and test out a framework for habitual trust and, thus, offer fresh insight into research on transition to HE.

Sample: In order to investigate the role of trust for trusting practices, 28 undergraduates in two German Higher Education Institutions (HEI) were interviewed.

Design and Method: Data were collected through episodic interviews. The transcriptions of these interviews were subject to typological qualitative content analyses.

Results: The analysis of data identified three different types of students’ trust and trusting levels, which varied in respect of academic or non-academic family background and affected students’ trusting experiences at HEI. The three types of trust and trusting levels were: (i) proactive self-reliant trustors, (ii) adaptive and aspiring trustors, and (iii) resistant and alienated sceptics.

Conclusions: Habitual trust can be considered as an important link between individual backgrounds and performance during the transition to HE. The results are discussed with a view to further research on the practicability of habitual trust as a feature that HEI can or should deal with.

KEYWORDS:

• Trust
• habitus
• transition
• higher education
• equity in education
• widening access

Acknowledgments

We are very grateful to all students that participated in our study. We would also particularly like to thank the individuals who conducted and transcribed the interviews.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.