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The paper aims to add to the discussion on sustainability governance in higher education institutions by examining the role of sustainability assessment and introducing an assessment tool inspired by systemic thinking and centered on a ‘governance equalizer’. It discusses recent research and argues that the complexity inherent in sustainability governance remains to be addressed adequately. While a number of models and frameworks have been proposed, most of them remain caught between narrow, management-oriented approaches on the one hand, and rather abstract approaches that provide little guidance for improving the field on the other. Sustainability assessment tools represent a potential way to bridge this gap. While there are existing tools which include issues of sustainability governance, these are often limited to aspects that are easily quantifiable and neglect more complex aspects. Against this background, the article proposes an alternative tool to assess sustainability governance in higher education institutions. The tool is based on a multi-case study in Germany and has been tested in a series of workshops. Drawing on the concept of a ‘governance equalizer’, it focuses on the functional requirements of sustainability governance in five dimensions—politics, profession, organization, knowledge, and the public—and how they are addressed by the HEI. The tool raises the level of abstraction in order to capture complexity, but at the same time keeps sight of governance structures, processes, instruments, and practices. It combines clearly defined criteria that are assessed using carefully developed maturity scales with a focus on stakeholder participation and knowledge.

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Trust is considered to be a crucial element of social cohesion. At the same time, as research has shown, education can be understood as an important precondition of trust. Furthermore, contextual conditions are important for the development of trust. In spite of this, the role of trust in the multi‐level education system has been scarcely investigated. This paper introduces a comprehensive model of trust in the education system, based on a systematic literature review of 183 recent peer‐reviewed articles following a thematic and interpretive review approach. The suggested model consists of four interconnected elements (generalised trust, educational governance, educational settings, educational attainment). By introducing a comprehensive model of trust in multi‐level education systems the paper aims at opening up perspectives for future theoretically driven, interdisciplinary comparative research that may shed further light on the role of trust in education systems. The paper proceeds as follows. First, trust is discussed as a complex subject in research, policy and practice in multi‐level education systems, and key research questions are derived from this. Second, the methodology of the systematic literature review is explained. Third, results from the literature review are presented, focusing on three domains of trust and their interrelations. Fourth, the comprehensive model of trust in multi‐level education systems is introduced. The fifth section discusses the findings and explores how future research could advance a comprehensive understanding of trust in education.

Sustainable development practices in higher education institutions are diverse, with regard not only to the types of challenges that have to be addressed, but also to the forms of sustainability governance adopted by individual higher education institutions. This paper aims to reflect on the aspects of organizational culture that are particularly crucial for the implementation of sustainable practices at higher education institutions. Specifically, it addresses the research question: how do different organizational cultures affect approaches to sustainability governance at higher education institutions (HEIs)? It reflects on data from multi-case studies at eleven German higher education institutions. Four of the cases are analyzed in this paper to draw out the insights they offer on how organizational culture shapes the institutions’ approach to sustainable development. A governance equalizer is used as a functional framework for evaluating and discussing the influence of different cultural orientations on sustainability governance. In addition to providing many insights and findings in relation to specific cases, comparison of the different institutions, their governance structures and their cultures of sustainable development helps to emphasize that there is no single cultural factor that can be identified as directly promoting particular governance structures. Rather, there is an active interplay between cultural orientations, which influence, and are also influenced by, the measures deployed. Such influence is not instantly apparent but needs time to develop, and it evolves in a variety of ways as illustrated by the case studies.

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Trust is a crucial factor in parent-teacher relationships. However, research on this subject to date has largely concentrated on a narrow range of theoretical perspectives and empirical methods. Most studies collect, analyze, and aggregate quantitative data on trust from a psychological or sociological perspective. The present paper starts by reflecting on previous research in brief and discussing its limitations with regard to a selected case: parents' relationships with educational institutions. On this basis, the paper aims to contribute to the scientific exploration of trust as a holistic phenomenon that encompasses explicit as well as implicit dimensions. In this context, we argue for a broader range of theoretical and empirical methods in research on the phenomenon of trust and its apparently tight entanglement with control in education settings. To this end, we focus on the one hand on the five distinctive facets of trust introduced by Tschannen- Moran and Hoy (2001): benevolence, reliability, competence, honesty, and openness. On the other hand, we refer to Möllering's understanding of trust and control as a duality (2005) where trust and control can go hand-in-hand instead of being understood as inherently conflicting phenomena. Because of this assumed duality, efforts to explain the relationship between trust and control need to be able to account for the complex interplay between the two on different levels of interactions between parents and schools. To demonstrate this point, this paper presents three studies using different methodological approaches: study 1 analyzes relationships between parents and educators in childcare centers, focusing on the collective relevance accorded to trust by educators. Applying the qualitative, reconstructive documentary method to the analysis of group discussions among educators and video-recorded parent-educator meetings, the study places particular emphasis on reconstructing the implicit knowledge underlying educators' implicit orientations toward parents. Its result show that, in contrast to the common rhetoric of partnership between childcare centers and parents, educators perceive and enact their relationships with parents in very different ways. Study 2 aims to shed light on how trust is shaped differently in various settings of interactions between parents and schools. To this end, a survey is being conducted using a vignette design which provides descriptions of eight forms of parent-school interactions followed by a number of questions corresponding to each of the five facets of trust. The study, which is still in its pilot phase, will thus provide insight about which facets of trust are triggered by the different forms of interaction and, consequently, how the relationship between trust and control is affected by these interactions. Similarly to study 1, study 3 uses a qualitative approach to the analysis of trust. In contrast to study 1, however, the focus of the episodic interviews lies in exploring different elements that shape parental perceptions of te...