Student engagement as a study area has emerged recently in education research (Appleton, Christenson & Furlong, 2008), since it has significant relationships with many developmental and educational outcomes including academic achievement, discipline problems, boredom, motivation, alienation, self-esteem and dropout rates (Fredricks, Blumenfeld & Paris, 2004; Lam et.al, 2014). “Involvement”, “participation”, “deep connection to learning” and “interest in the subject matter” are used interchangeably for the term student engagement (Yazzie-Mintz & McCormick, 2012, p.745). Student engagement, in general, can be defined as ‘the amount of physical and psychological energy that the student devotes to the academic experience’ (Astin, 1984, p.297). Besides, common definitions on student engagement consist of three main components: i) behavioral component, ii) emotional/affective component, and iii) cognitive component (Appleton et al., 2008; Fredricks et al., 2004; Yazzie-Mintz  & McCormick, 2012) .

While some students engage actively in class, others are not motivated to participate and prefer to sit silently in class (Weaver & Qi, 2005), particularly in higher education (Şad & Özer, 2014). A wide spectrum of factors affect students’ engagement including individual reasons (i.e. gender, personality), classroom environment, and course or teacher characteristics. Social relationships between teacher-student, e.g. learners’ trust in the faculty, is one of these factors.

Trust is a complex concept with a variety of dimensions, and difficult to define (Tschannen-Moran & Hoy, 2000). Although there have been a wide variety of definitions of trust, the five facets of trust model introduced by Hoy and Tschannen-Moran (1999) took into account key elements of trust gleaned from the literature on trust, particularly in relation to schools. They defined trust as an individual's or group's willingness to be vulnerable to another party based on the confidence that the latter party is benevolent, reliable, competent, honest, and open (p.189).

Research led by some scholars (Bryk & Schneider, 2002; Hoy, 1999, 2006) recognize the fundamental role that social relationships, and trust in particular, play an important role in any effort to school reform, improving student learning, and achievement (Tschannen-Moran, 2004, 2009; Tschannen-Moran & Hoy, 2000). Some research results also confirm that quality of student-teacher relationships is very important in terms of student engagement. For instance a study conducted by Murray (2009) showed that students’ scores on teacher closeness-trust accounted for almost half of the variance in their own ratings of engagement in school. Similarly, Şad and Özer (2014) in their qualitative study, concluded that a large spectrum of reasons account for the low student engagement in classes, which may be classified as personal reasons, instructor related reasons, course related reasons, and classroom environment related reasons. They detected that personal reasons and classroom environment-related reasons were affected mainly by two of the teacher related reasons: instructor’s failure to build a good rapport with students and instructor’s poor teaching skills. In this regard, it was assumed that there would be a significant relationship between students’ trust in professors and their level of engagement. Therefore, the current study has three distinct purposes: a) to determine students’ level of trust in professors and their engagement, b) to investigate the significant differences in students’ views according to research variables (i.e. gender, grade level),  and c) to determine the relationship between trust in professors and student engagement.

Appleton, J. A., Christenson, S. L., & Furlong, M. J. (2008). Student engagement with school:Critical conceptual and methodological issues of the construct. Psychology in the Schools, 45 (5), 369–386. Astin A. (1984) Student involvement:A developmental theory for higher education. Journal of College Student Personnel, 25, 297–308. Bryk, A.S., & Schneider, B. L. (2002). Trust in schools:A core resource for improvement, Russell Sage Foundation, New York, NY. Fredricks, J. A., Blumenfeld, P. C., & Paris, A. H. (2004). School engagement:Potential of the concept, state of the evidence. Review of Educational Research, 74 (1), 59–109. Hoy, W. K. & Tschannen-Moran, M. (1999). Five faces of trust:An empirical confirmation in urban elementary schools. Journal of School Leadership, 9, 184-208. Lam, S. F., Jimerson, S., Wong, B. P., Kikas, E., Shin, H., Veiga, F. H., ... (2014). Understanding and measuring student engagement in school: The results of an international study from 12 countries. School Psychology Quarterly, 29(2), 213-232. Murray, C. (2009). Parent and teacher relationships as predictors of school engagement and functioning among low-income urban youth. The Journal of Early Adolescence. 1-29. Şad, S. N., & Özer, N. (2014). Silent Scream:I Do Not Want to Participate Professor!. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 116, 2532-2536. Tschannen-Moran, M. & Hoy, W. K. (1998). Trust in schools: A conceptual and empirical analysis. Journal of Educational Administration, 36(4), 334 – 352. Tschannen-Moran, M. & Hoy, W. K. (2000). A multidisciplinary analysis of the nature, meaning, and measurement of trust. Review of Educational Research, 70(4), 547-593. Weaver, R.R. & Qi, J. (2005). Classroom organization and participation: College students’ perceptions. The Journal of Higher Education, 76(5), 570-601. Yazzie-Mintz, E., & McCormick, K. (2012). Finding the humanity in the data: Understanding, measuring, and strengthening student engagement. In Handbook of research on student engagement (pp. 743-761). Springer:US.