How do children understand the ways that classroom relationships shape their capacity to trust what they know? This article argues that students have remarkable abilities to read the relational tenor of their classrooms and shape their spoken knowledge accordingly. Based on an in-depth study with sixth-grade students, this research demonstrates that students’ construction of trustworthy knowledge in school depends heavily on the quality of their relationships with teachers and peers. In order to study the relational context of learning, the study employs student self-assessment work as its vantage point. Using the Listening Guide methodology of narrative analysis, the study examines children's understanding of this highly relational school practice as a window for viewing how teacher-student and peer relationships can both augment and constrain children's trust in their emerging knowledge. This research reveals children who vividly portray a process of sharing and suppressing knowledge that relies on their understandings of salient school relationships—relationships with themselves, peers, and teachers. The study locates the integral link between students’ understandings of these school relationships and their capacity to trust their knowledge and learn in school. The article challenges researchers and teachers to examine the complex relational life in our schools and the ways in which classroom environments can both support and constrain students’ ability to trust what they know.
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