Monday 22 June 2026, 15:30-16:30 CET
Join us for a deep dive into Learning to trust: the implications of sorting and segregating students in schools and school systems, a chapter by Melanie Ehren in the Handbook on Trust in Public Governance (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2025).
In this webinar, Melanie Ehren will present key insights from her chapter "Learning to trust: the implications of sorting and segregating students in schools and school systems" in the Handbook on Trust in Public Governance. She explores how schools and education systems are important in shaping the development of in-group, out-group, and generalised trust. She argues that many contemporary education systems provide too few opportunities for trust development. Examples are provided of the ways in which the sorting and categorising of students into different school buildings, educational tracks, or learning groups lead to unequal opportunities, create markers for those who are considered normal or abnormal, and positions students on a social hierarchy.
Webinar programme
- 15:30 | Welcome and introduction by Frédérique Six (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam & University of Antwerp, GOVTRUST Centre of Excellence)
- 15:40 | Takeaways from the chapter "Learning to trust: the implications of sorting and segregating students in schools and school systems" by Melanie Ehren (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam)
- 16:10 | Q&A
Speaker bio
- Melanie Ehren is a Professor in Educational Governance at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. She combines a strong disciplinary background in educational and school effectiveness with a comparative approach to understanding outcomes of education systems. Her international work on accountability, inspection, evaluation, and improvement has included various countries in the EU, Africa, and Asia, and the US, including visiting scholarships at Harvard University and Columbia University and consultancies for the OECD, UNICEF, and the EU.
Practical information
- 📅 Date & time – Monday, 22 June 2026, 15:30-16:30 CET
- 💻 Join online, via Microsoft Teams – 👉 Join link
or copy paste the following URL in your browser: https://teams.microsoft.com/meet/38937917917921?p=A8XPI0JTkAWrxm15Z4 - 🎥 Recording – The webinar will be recorded and made available on this webpage after the webinar.
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