Operational trust: Reflection from navigating control and trust in a cross-cultural professional development project

This paper explores the interplay of control and trust in a cross-national and cross-cultural professional development course. It examines the differing expectations of the overseas high-ranked education officials who were the students and of the course teachers, particularly in terms of: approaches to control of content and of interpersonal interactions; the cultural contexts in which the attitudes were shaped; the effect of the participants’ professional roles, particularly of their perceptions of accountability and power; the complex, continuing and yet shifting, interplays of control and trust and the ways these interplays impacted learning within the course. It proposes the concept of operational trust as a way to consider the relationship that developed. While the situation examined is situated within a particular context and reflective of the participants involved and therefore non-iterative, the discussion highlights patterns of interaction and gives rise to tentative theorisations with implications for other cross-cultural or cross-national teacher development projects.