18Instructional communication competence in higher education
Abstract: Instructional communication is concerned with the processes related to teaching and learning and the communication competence of educators in all academic disciplines. In the communication discipline, the formal study of instructional communication dates back many years. This chapter provides an overview of the discipline’s main priorities and approaches to understanding communication competence in instructional settings in higher education. Historical developments, theoretical perspectives, and methodological traditions for studying instructional communication competence are described, including a set of core components of instructional communication competence. A discussion follows of interdisciplinary and international efforts in the area, then instructional communication competence is connected to valued life outcomes for students. Finally, recommendations for theory development and future research questions in this vital area of inquiry for teachers and administrators in higher education are provided.
Keywords: classroom communication, communication education, communication pedagogy, instructional communication competence, instructional communication components, instructional communication history, instructional communication research, instructional communication theory, student communication competence, teacher communication competence
Instruction and teaching are inherently communicative acts. Without a doubt, a critical relationship exists between teaching and instructional communication competence, that is, what it means to teach effectively and appropriately. To understand the complexities of this relationship, this discussion begins by distinguishing among three different domains of scholarly inquiry that constitute communication education (Simonds and Cooper 2007).
In the domain of communication pedagogy, scholars are concerned with appropriate and effective ways of teaching communication subjects, like public speaking, interpersonal and group communication, and mass and organizational communication. Scholars in the domain of developmental communication consider how people gain or develop communication skills, for example, how language development occurs in children or how students develop public speaking competence. In contrast to these two domains, instructional communication scholars are more interested in how communication is used to teach, regardless of academic discipline, like how math or physics teachers use communication, as well as communication teachers.
If that is instructional communication, then competence in instructional communication can be understood by considering a conceptual definition and several descriptions of it. While precise definitions are scant in academic literature, one team of scholars offers the following, “Instructional communication competence is the teacher-instructor’s motivation, knowledge and skill to select, enact and evaluate effective and appropriate, verbal and nonverbal, interpersonal and instructional messages filtered by student-learner development and reciprocal feedback” (Worley et al. 2007: 208). This definition appears grounded in Spitzberg’s description of communication competence as the extent to which speakers achieve desired outcomes [effectiveness] through communication behavior acceptable to a situation [appropriateness] (Morreale, Spitzberg, and Barge 2013; Spitzberg 2000). In the writing by Worley et al. (2007), award-winning teachers more simply state that instructional communication competence involves content knowledge and the ability to communicate that knowledge engagingly to students. Accordingly, competence is not centered in teachers, but in their ability to facilitate learning. Award-winning teachers appear to enact this instructional communication competence in three ways. They understand the ebb and flow of the classroom context; they use a wide repertoire of communication behaviors; and they emphasize relationships, which are foundational to learning and a key outcome of instructional competence (Worley et al. 2007).
Other prominent scholars, McCroskey, Richmond, and McCroskey (2006), take a somewhat different approach and clarify instructional communication competence as the third leg of a three-legged stool. The three legs are competence in the subject matter of interest, competence in pedagogy and teaching skills in general, and the third leg – competence in instructional communication and classroom communication. We now explore that “third leg” by highlighting historical developments, theoretical perspectives, and methodological traditions used for studying instructional communication and competence, including a set of core components of that competence. We then describe interdisciplinary and international efforts in this area of inquiry and valued life outcomes for students of instructional communication competence. We conclude with recommendations for future research in this vital area of inquiry.
1Historical developments in instructional communication
The historical roots of instructional communication competence date back to the beginnings of communication as a field and then a discipline (McCroskey, Richmond, and McCroskey 2006). In the early 20th century, the founders of the first professional association in the field (the Public Speaking Conference of the Eastern States, now the Eastern Communication Association), and the first national association of scholars of communication (the National Association of Teachers of Speech, now the National Communication Association), held teaching of speech as their central concern and area of research. The first journal published by the National Communication Association (NCA), the Quarterly Journal of Speech (1915 to present), concentrated mainly on understanding and improving public speaking instruction. Thus, the work of early instructional researchers, throughout the first half of the 20th century, was concentrated in the domain of communication pedagogy, speech, and public speaking.
Not until the 1970s did communication scholars begin to turn their attention to instruction outside public speaking classrooms, to the role of communication in teaching in other subjects and other disciplines. In 1977, the first article on instructional communication used desired outcomes, what the researchers are trying to accomplish, to distinguish between communication pedagogy and instructional communication (Scott and Wheeless 1977). As already suggested, the former, communication pedagogy, contains scholarship directed toward the most appropriate and effective ways of teaching in communication curricula. In one such early study, McLaughlin and Erickson (1981) sought to identify the human relations skills of the ideal teacher in an interpersonal communication course. Among the findings, students in interpersonal courses perceived the use of integrative behaviors (participates, accepts differences, gives approval) as closer to their concept of the ideal teacher, rather than dominative behaviors (relocates, postpones, disapproves).
According to Scott and Wheeless (1977), the desired outcome of scholarship in instructional communication is to discover how various communication variables impact learning processes, across and within all disciplines. For example, Smith and Land (1980) examined the impact of mathematics teachers’ use of mazes (false starts or halts in speech, redundant words, and words that do not make sense), vague terms in their language, and additional, unexpected content. The researchers considered the effects of these verbal behaviors, and of teacher clarity, on students’ evaluations of instruction and achievement in the math course. Among the findings was a cause–effect relationship between teacher mazes and student achievement, and to a less significant degree, a cause–effect relationship between teacher vagueness terms and student achievement. The teachers’ use of additional unexpected content had no significant effect on student learning. At around the same time that these studies appeared, the publication of the first book entirely concerned with instructional communication was fittingly entitled, Communication in the Classroom (Hurt, Scott, and McCroskey 1978).
The historical development of instructional communication and instructional communication competence also can be traced by considering how the scholarly communication associations categorized the area of inquiry (McCroskey and McCroskey 2006). Prior to the 1970s, several professional associations had informal interest groups on instructional communication. But in 1972, through the efforts of Barbara Lieb Brilhart who worked in the NCA National Office and Robert Kibler (then of Florida State University), the International Communication Association (ICA) established the first Instructional Communication Division. Creation of that division legitimized research in the area of inquiry by providing for programs and paper presentations at the association’s annual convention. Then in 1977, ICA provided a national outlet for publication of instructional communication research in their Communication Yearbook series. By then, the third oldest journal published by the National Communication Association, Communication Education, had begun to accept scholarship on instructional communication as well as on public speaking and communication pedagogy. Journals sponsored by regional communication associations, like the Eastern Communication Association, also opened their pages to the work of scholars interested in how communication influences teaching and learning.
Instructional communication research may not have gained an academic foothold until the 1970s, but it moved forward with alacrity. The scholarly associations themselves contributed to understanding instructional competence. In 1988, for example, the National Communication Association outlined a set of competencies teachers should use in order to enact competent classroom communication. Using a message-centered approach, NCA called for teachers to demonstrate communication competence, as outlined in Table 1, through their use of five types of communication messages (Cooper 1988). Today, the instructional communication divisions in most academic associations often are among the most active at regional, national, and international conventions.
Tab. 1: Communication competencies for teachers.
| Type of Messages | Teachers should demonstrate competence in how they send and receive messages that: |
| Informative Messages | Give or obtain information |
| Affective Messages | Express or respond to feelings |
| Imaginative Messages | Speculate, theorize, or fantasize |
| Ritualistic Messages | Maintain social relationships and facilitate interaction |
| Persuasive Messages | Seek to convince |
Source: Cooper 1988
As instructional communication research evolved, scholars who mainly focused on students’ public speaking skills and performance began to extend their scholarship to include communication apprehension, public speaking anxiety, and reticence. McCroskey (1976), one of the most prolific and influential researchers in this area, clarified apprehension and anxiety conceptually and authored many related studies. Other student factors that began to interest instructional communication scholars included characteristics like the gender, culture, and ethnicity of student populations (McCroskey, Richmond, and McCroskey 2006). Collier and Powell (1990), for example, examined the role of students’ ethnicity and instructional communication in classroom systems. Instructor factors of interest included behaviors like teachers’ use of power and affinity-seeking strategies, nonverbal immediacy, assertiveness, responsiveness cues, humor, and self-disclosure (McCroskey, Richmond, and McCroskey 2006). For example, McGlone and Anderson (1973) conducted an early investigation of teachers’ personalities and task-related behaviors, and dimensions of teacher credibility. Kher, Molstad, and Donahue (1999) investigated college teachers’ use of humor to enhance the effectiveness of their teaching in what they referred to as dreaded courses. Other characteristics of instructors such as their gender, sexual orientation, age, race, and accent more recently have been the subject of scrutiny (McLean 2007; Russ, Simonds, and Hunt 2002). In contrast with studies focused primarily on students or on teachers, Myers, Martin, and Mottet (2002) integrated a concern for student factors and a concern for instructor factors. These researchers explored how student motives to communicate with their instructors are influenced by perceptions of both instructor socio-communicative style and student socio-communicative orientation.
Inherent in the majority of the more contemporary research studies is a concern for communication competence. While the term instructional communication competence may not be stated explicitly in the studies, improving communication and achieving communication competence typically is an implicit goal. A concern for using the results of such studies in order to communicate more competently, effectively, and appropriately is omnipresent in the work of scholars and researchers in this area of inquiry.
Based on the historical evolution of this area of inquiry, we next discuss theoretical perspectives regarding instructional communication and competence. Instructional communication currently is considered a subfield in the communication discipline. Like other subfields, that status is confirmed by divisionality in leading scholarly associations, as well as by an evolving body of theories.
2Contemporary theoretical perspectives and theories in instructional communication
Over time, communication theorists have tried to explain competence in instructional communication in a variety of ways. Early in the 21st century, some scholars focused their work on developing descriptions of students’ communication competence – what college students need to learn in order to communicate well. Knowledge and skills about communication were explicated in lists of what college students should know and be able to do (Rubin and Morreale 2000), and descriptions of college students’ communication competence appeared in national and international encyclopedias (Morreale 2008, 2011). Assessing student learning of communication knowledge and skills also took on importance for some researchers and theorists (Morreale and Backlund 2000), whereas others focused more on what teachers need to do in order to achieve effectiveness and communication competence (Cortez, Gayle, and Preiss 2006). The pedagogical issues underlying and influencing teacher effectiveness include, for example, the instructor’s ability to create and maintain productive classroom cultures and climates, teacher efficacy, credibility, and the effective use of pedagogical activities.
Both sets of scholars, those interested in students’ competence and those interested in teachers’ competence, drew on theories from other disciplines such as education, psychology, educational psychology, and sociology. They also relied on two homegrown bodies of theory in the communication discipline – relational communication theories and rhetorical theories – to explore, explain, and predict what makes teaching and learning more productive (Beebe and Mottet 2009). In general, relational theories consider how people communicate interpersonally in relationships to manage their interactions with others. Rhetorical theories are more concerned with how people present messages to others, and how communication is used to influence others. Scholars interested in students’ processes of learning tend to use a relational perspective, which considers how students use verbal and non-verbal messages to interact with and relate to the teacher and one another. Scholars interested in what teachers should do tend to use a rhetorical perspective to examine how teachers use verbal and nonverbal messages to influence or persuade students to do and/or think what they want them to do and think.
Greater clarity about the role of theory in instructional communication may be gleaned from considering three relevant theoretical paradigms or perspectives (Cortez, Gayle, and Preiss 2006), followed by contrasting a fourth and newer paradigm to those three. Then descriptions of categories of research, and specific theories proven useful to instructional communication researchers, are outlined.
The first theoretical perspective, often referred to as the process–product paradigm, is based on the notion that teacher behaviors precede and are most responsible for student learning and achievement. Theorists and researchers taking this approach see teaching and learning as a process that includes the verbal and non-verbal messages teachers use to influence students. They measure learning as a product of what the teacher does (Beebe and Mottet 2009). Learning products may include a comparison of what students know before and at the end of a course of study, their perceptions of what they learn, or their affective responses to the learning process.
The process–product paradigm is clearly grounded in a rhetorical perspective on teaching and learning, with the teacher as the agent of change and students as audience members who are influenced by the teacher. What the teacher does influences some aspect of affective, behavioral, or cognitive learning as the outcome. An example of this paradigm is an early study that examined the relationship between perceived teacher communication behavior and student perceptions of teaching effectiveness and student learning (Andersen and Norton 1981). Teachers who were perceived as having greater interpersonal solidarity and a more positive communicator style (more dramatic, open, relaxed, impression leaving, and friendly) were perceived as more effective. Positive perceptions of teacher communicator style resulted in greater student affect toward the instructor, the course content, and the overall course.
A second theoretical perspective, a student-mediated paradigm, addresses what some see as a missing element in the more common process–product paradigm – students’ responsibilities in their own learning processes. Theorists and researchers using this approach focus on shifting the responsibility for learning from the teacher to the student. Such scholars are concerned with what students bring to the learning process – their skills and willingness to learn and engage in new ideas and new ways of thinking. The research in this area also may explore how students’ personal traits or characteristics – for instance, age, gender, or ethnicity – might enhance learning outcomes despite any limitations in the learning environment.
The student-mediated paradigm is grounded in a relational/interpersonal perspective and sees students’ motivation to learn as a strong influence and intermediary of teacher effectiveness. An example of this paradigm is a study by Canary and MacGregor (2008) in which the two researchers responded to what they described as a dearth in studies of student classroom behavior over the last twenty years, by contrast to teacher behavior. These researchers examined communicative differences between ideal students and less than ideal students and identified five sets of student behaviors: intellectually stimulated, participative, absent, confrontational, and silent.
A third theoretical perspective, a culture-of-the-school paradigm, is concerned mainly with the impact of the educational situation and context on teaching and learning. Researchers and theorists committed to this approach believe the school environment and the culture in the classroom have a significant effect on students’ ability to engage in their own learning processes. Such scholars are interested in how academic institutions and faculty set rules and establish structures and norms that affect student learning.
The culture-of-the-school paradigm posits that the situation and teaching and learning processes are designed in ways to either help or hinder student learning. An example of this paradigm is in a book chapter by McLean (2007) on student learning and the classroom management techniques that Asian female teachers use to establish credibility in the community college setting. McLean focuses on cultural diversity in higher education and how community colleges are working with the challenge of varying student demographics. This challenge is compounded when Asian-born instructors are teaching communication-related courses to a predominantly native English-speaking student body.
A well-known theorist in the scholarship of teaching and learning arena saw some shortcomings in how these three theoretical perspectives interrelate. In pointing to the inadequacies, Gayle (2004) proposed a different way to capture the richness of student–faculty interactions. Gayle’s recommended fourth approach, the interaction paradigm, states that both partners in the educational equation – teachers and students – have obligations and responsibilities to the instructional process. She describes three relational factors that affect the teaching and learning relationship: dialogue, community-building, and growth through collegiality.
The strength of the interaction paradigm is that it simultaneously focuses on the relationship between teachers and students, the responsibilities of both partners in the teaching and learning process, and aspects of the environment and context in which teaching and learning occurs. A study in an online technology journal effectively illustrates this most recent theoretical paradigm (Edwards et al. 2011). The purpose the study by Edwards et al. was to examine sense of classroom community (the environment) as a mediating variable between teacher communicative behaviors (teacher confirmation) and positive student outcomes related to student motivation and affective learning. Results of the study show how instructors can use communicative behaviors to improve students’ sense of classroom community.
In addition to reviewing these dominant theoretical perspectives, a look at published reviews of the most useful theories over time in instructional communication is informative. In 1977, during the decade of a surge in interest in instructional communication, the first published article in the area provided an overview of theory and research (Scott and Wheeless 1977). The authors called attention to the challenge of identifying specific instructional communication theories. Given the lack of identifiable theories, they also reviewed and classified programs of research on instructional communication into the six domains listed in column one of Table 2.
Tab. 2: Categories of research on instructional communication in 1977 and 1984.
| 1977 categories of research | 1984 categories of research |
| Teachers as sources and receivers | Teacher characteristics |
| Students as sources and receivers | Students characteristics |
| Message variables | Teacher strategies |
| Learning strategies | Speech criticism and student evaluation |
| Media | Speech content |
| Feedback and reinforcement | Speech communication programs |
Sources: Scott and Wheeless 1977; Staton-Spicer and Wulff 1984
In 1984, two other instructional communication scholars revisited the challenge of categorizing and synthesizing theory and research, published from 1974 to 1982 (Staton-Spicer and Wulff). Like their predecessors (Scott and Wheeless 1977), these two scholars did not find identifiable instructional communication theories, and instead produced a somewhat different set of six categories of existing research (see second column in Table 2). Also like their predecessors, the scholars pointed to a lack of a coherent theory for instructional communication and the need for more integration of research studies as a base for developing theory (Staton-Spicer and Wulff 1984). They called for the development of instructional communication theory that would help researchers more effectively explore, explain, and predict teacher and student communication.
Moving forward, in 2001, a third systematic review of the instructional communication research literature, from the 1990s, did produce eleven categories of theories that have been tested in the instructional context or used to explain the effects and relationships of variables in research studies (Waldeck, Kearney, and Plax 2001). Table 3 identifies and describes each of the eleven categories of theories. The theories would not be considered instructional communication theories. Rather, they are multi-disciplinary theories that are highly relevant and useful to instructional communication research as the description of each theory indicates.
Tab. 3: Categories of theories in instructional communication research in the 1990s.
Source: Waldeck, Kearney, and Plax 2001
The three scholars who produced this list of theories also categorized instructional communication programs of research resulting in the six presented in Table 4 (Waldeck, Kearney, and Plax 2001). This most recent set of research programs is both similar to and, in some ways, different from the lists presented in 1977 (Scott and Wheeless) and 1984 (Staton-Spicer and Wulff). For example, and not surprisingly, pedagogical methods and technology is a new category in the 2001 list.
Tab. 4: Programs of research on instructional communication in the 1990s.
| Programs of research |
–Student communication |
–Teacher communication |
–Mass media effects on children |
–Pedagogical methods and technology |
–Classroom management |
–Teacher–student interaction |
Source: Waldeck, Kearney, and Plax. 2001
Several observations emerge from this overview of theoretical perspectives and the theories used in instructional communication research. These are not novel comments in that the scholars who produced the descriptions of research categories in 1977 (Scott and Wheeless), 1984 (Staton-Spicer and Wulff), and 2001 (Waldeck, Kearney, and Plax) made some of the same observations.
Research studies focused on instructional communication either test theories from other communication contexts, like interpersonal communication, or they draw on theories from other disciplines, like psychology and education. Indeed, most studies are theoretically grounded in borrowed theories. The borrowed theories have proven useful to instructional communication researchers, but this area of inquiry is entering its fifth decade of active and prolific research. It may be time to produce context-specific theories about instructional communication and begin to test those theories.
Our discussion continues by considering research methods and models typically used in instructional communication.
3Methodological traditions and research models in instructional communication
As in most other areas of study in the discipline, three traditions have guided instructional communication research (Simonds and Cooper 2007). Instructional communication researchers have leaned, and perhaps still lean, most heavily on a positivistic tradition. Quantitative methods are used most often to investigate teacher and student communication and to test instructional communication theory (Beebe and Mottet 2009), though some researchers also have made use of interpretive and critical methods.
Researchers in the positivistic tradition use quantitative methods to test hypotheses and answer research questions about classroom communication, students’ behaviors, and an array of variables related to teacher effectiveness. The goal of this tradition is to explain and make predictions about students’ and teachers’ communication behaviors that can be observed through systematic investigation using statistics and various computational techniques. Instructional researchers in this tradition investigate why some communication behaviors and interactions succeed and can be deemed competent, while others fail to achieve the communicators’ goals.
One of the most popular designs for instructional communication research in the positivistic tradition is the experimental model, which is used when random assignment is possible. The experimenter controls and manipulates one or more variables in the learning environment in a way that is expected to have an effect on one or more learning outcomes. With regard to theory, the experimental research design is most in line with the process–product theoretical paradigm, in that the teacher behaviors precede and are expected to be most responsible for student learning and achievement. For example, an experimental study by Com-stock, Rowell, and Bowers (1995) found a curvilinear relationship between teacher nonverbal immediacy behaviors and actual cognitive, affective, and behavioral learning. Teacher nonverbal immediacy was operationalized at three levels and acted out by a guest instructor in three, separate, ten-minute workshops. The content of each workshop was the same, but the teacher’s behavior exhibited varying levels of nonverbal immediacy. As predicted by the researchers, both low and high levels of teacher immediacy had negative effects on students’ motivation and actual cognitive, affective, and behavioral learning.
More complex, and considered by some to be the gold standard for instructional research in the positivistic tradition (McCroskey, Richmond, and McCroskey 2006) is the split-class design. This design is intended to rectify confounding halo effects in traditional classroom research. If the same students complete both the measures about teachers’ communication behaviors and the outcome measures, a halo effect of an artificially-high relationship between behaviors and outcomes may confound the results. Using the split-class design, students are randomly administered different measures or instruments, rather than all students responding to the same measures. The class is split and half of the students respond to the measures of teachers’ communication behaviors and the other half respond to the study’s outcomes measures.
Christophel (1990) introduced this design to instructional communication research in a landmark examination of immediacy and learning. Two studies investigated the relationship between teacher immediacy and student motivation and the combined impact of these factors on learning. Study 1 employed a more common design in which all students completed all instruments based on recalling learning experiences in a preceding class. Study 2 used a spit-class design in which the measurement instruments were randomly split between two groups of students in one intact class. The second study allowed Christophel to compare and test for possible halo effects between the split-class and the more traditional design. Correlations revealed significant relationships between learning and both immediacy and motivation in both studies. However, a noticeable difference was found in the correlations between verbal and nonverbal immediacy with motivation. Study 1 reported the highest simple correlation with verbal immediacy, while in Study 2 (split-class design) nonverbal immediacy was the highest simple correlation. Interestingly, the only distinguishable difference between the two studies was implementation of different measures to collect data.
Researchers in the interpretive tradition use methods similar to qualitative inquiry with the goal of developing understanding of the deep meaning of classroom processes. This tradition assumes that reality is socially constructed, and the interpretive researcher is merely the vehicle through which reality is revealed. Meaning, or perceptions of reality, are negotiated or co-created by teachers and students in and through their interactions in and outside the classroom. The researcher’s interpretations, based on observing interactions, play a key role in this kind of research. The researcher warrants her or his conclusions by using rich descriptions of observations rather than statistical evidence, as in the positivistic tradition. Although statistics are not prohibited for interpretive research, their use is less frequent than in positivistic research.
A research design well-suited to instructional research in the interpretive tradition is a naturalistic study. The researchers examine and study teacher and student communication interactions in their natural environment – typically the classroom. This type of research is often utilized in situations where conducting an experimental study is impractical, cost prohibitive, or would unduly affect the teachers’ or students’ communication behaviors. Naturalistic observations differ from experimental designs in the positivistic tradition in that they involve looking at and observing communication behaviors with no attempts at intervention on the part of the researcher. That is, the communication events would occur whether or not a researcher were there to observe them, so the observer comes to a naturally occurring encounter. The researcher’s interpretations of their observations then are used to draw conclusions about the communication behaviors of interest. With regard to theory, a naturalistic study may be most compatible with the interaction paradigm that focuses on relational factors among teachers and students, in particular settings that affect teaching and learning.
An interpretive study conducted in a classroom at an Historically Black College and University exemplifies this tradition (Boone 2003). Boone examined the communicative impact of the Black English speech pattern, known as call-response, on African American students in their natural educational environment. The study clarified how this mode of discourse distinctly impacts the educational environment as experienced by an African American college professor and her students. Call-response is an African-derived communication process of verbal and nonverbal interactions in which the speaker’s statements (“calls”) are interspersed with expressions (“responses”) from the listeners. This type of reciprocal speech event serves to unite the speaker and the audience in a collective experience emphasizing community, with no sharp distinction between the speaker and the audience. Boone used detailed field notes, videotapes of classroom interactions, participant observation, and in-depth interviews to collect data for this study. Results of the study indicate that, by engaging in call-response, the students and instructor together benefited by sharing deeply embedded and unique African American cultural values.
Finally, researchers in the critical tradition, unlike positivistic and interpretive researchers, are interested in challenging the values they deem inherent in the status quo of higher education. They see social influence and power in the classroom as mainly rested in the hands of teachers, administrators, and the academic institution. In general, critical researchers’ goals are to examine how any misuse of influence and power might affect the less empowered students based on factors like gender, sexual orientation, or ethnic status. Critical researchers in instructional communication examine the role of classroom communication in such misuse of influence and power. Those who embrace the critical approach to instructional communication are concerned about communication in the classroom that privileges existing social and political agendas.
Methodologically, studies in the critical tradition typically are based on the direct participation of those whose reality is being studied – students, teachers, administrators – throughout the research process. However, the critical researcher surrenders his or her position of power and concentrates on challenging existing values and processes that may marginalize some student populations. One critical instructional study challenged communication research on “at-risk” students, as relying on misunderstandings of identity as stable traits and characteristics (Fassett and Warren 2005). The researchers explored educational identity using an in-depth interview with an “at-risk” student. They challenged assumptions about educational success and failure of at-risk students, based on how a researcher’s ideology may affect perceptions of educational risk and at-risk students.
Sprague (1992: 20), a notable critical scholar, poses six research questions, paraphrased below, that have been insufficiently explored by instructional communication researchers. The effect of not investigating questions such as these, according to Sprague, is the privileging of existing social and political arrangements. As these questions seem to suggest, the need is to first describe who is responsible for the current status of educational systems, rather than probe why the situation exists as it does.
1.If schools exist to serve limited interests and perpetuate existing social arrangements and norms, who decides what interests are served and what arrangements are preserved?
2.If teachers are not entertainers, information transmitters, or even systems managers, but are transformative intellectuals who can radically transform culture, what kind of culture do they want to create?
3.If development is not psychologically pre-programmed, but culturally and interpersonally shaped, then whose definition of competence and maturity should prevail?
4.If knowledge is not a given set of facts, but rather a socially constructed text, who decides what counts as knowledge in schools?
5.If language does not transmit meaning, but rather constitutes meaning, whose language and therefore whose meanings should guide educational dialogue?
6.If power is not a harmless tool used to manipulate others, but a subtle and pervasive social force, who deserves that power over students?
Instructional communication researchers, whether using positivistic, interpretive, or critical methods, have tended to focus on several different variables that we might refer to as essential components of instructional communication competence. While this list is by no means exhaustive, the six core components described in Table 5 often are present, in varying degrees, in learning environments in which communication competence is practiced or observed (Beebe and Mottet 2009). Note, of course, that these core components primarily are about what instructors say and do, the rhetorical dimension of competence, rather than students’ communication competence in the classroom. Also note that these components could be positively or negatively affected by how competently instructors use communication technology in instructional settings.
Tab. 5: Core components of instructional communication competence.
| Components of instructional communication competence | Description of the component |
| Immediacy (one of the most researched instructional communication variables) | The perception of physical and psychological closeness achieved by communication behaviors that enhance the quality of verbal and nonverbal interactions with another. |
| Affinity-seeking | Feelings of liking or attraction to the other person that result from verbal and nonverbal behaviors, which are used to develop high levels of attraction in a relationship. |
| Relational Power (including behavioral alteration techniques) | The ability to influence another person, either based on role or position or being trusted and liked. |
| Credibility | The perception of character, intelligence, and goodwill that a person is deemed to possess. |
| Clarity | Speaking articulately and audibly, staying on task, and using commonly understood vocabulary. |
| Humor | Humorous statements related to course material, nonverbal behaviors, self-deprecating humor, humorous props, sarcasm, and unintentional humor. |
Source: Beebe and Mottet 2009
Using an understanding of methodological traditions and research models, the next question to consider is the extent to which work on instructional communication and competence is enhanced through collaboration across disciplines and nationalities.
4Interdisciplinary and international efforts in instructional communication
Most, if not all, academic disciplines care deeply about teaching their own subject matter. As evidence, scholarly examination of teaching often occurs within disciplines and disciplinary societies sponsor journals or other publications that address issues related to teaching and learning in their particular area of study (e.g., Academy of Management 2014; American Psychological Association 2014; National Association of Biology Teachers 2014; National Communication Association 2014). In addition, some national and international efforts have encouraged and supported multi-disciplinary inquiry over the years. The Carnegie Academy for the Scholarship of Teaching Learning, for example, has in the past and still supports conversations about instruction across disciplines (see http://www.carnegiefoundation.org/scholarship-teaching-learning).
Even so, rich opportunities for more cross-fertilization of instructional communication with other disciplines abound. We have already suggested the extent to which education, as a field of study, and instructional communication are closely related. But a perfunctory review of primary journals and secondary summaries about teaching competence in the education field reveals scarcely a mention of scholarly inquiry about instructional communication competence, much less collaborative inquiry by the two disciplines. The following six categories and programs of research, pursued by communication scholars in the 1990s (from Table 4), certainly could enrich and be enriched by insights from scholars in education, sociology, psychology, and educational psychology.
1.Student communication
2.Teacher communication
3.Mass media effects on children
4.Pedagogical methods and technology
5.Classroom management
6.Teacher–student interaction
Sociologists could collaborate with communication researchers on studies about the classroom as a social system, and the impact of socio-cultural communication behaviors on teaching and learning. The extensive body of communication research on the affective aspects of competence – willingness to communicate, communication apprehension and anxiety, approach and avoidance communication behaviors – could be deepened by more collaboration with scholars in psychology and educational psychology. Such collaborations would provide useful insights into the psychological underpinnings of motivation to communicate. Indeed, instructional communication studies often are informed by theory and research designs borrowed from other disciplines, but they are not sufficiently informed by multi-disciplinary collaboration and points of view.
But, where and how has scholarship on instructional communication made a contribution outside communication studies? During the late 1980s, 1990s, and the first decade of the 2000s, instructional scholars advocated for communication in other disciplines on their campuses through the “Communication-Across-the-Curriculum” initiative. As part of that initiative, instructional communication experts, Darling and Dannels (2003), responded to requests from engineering education and industry to assist in developing better communication skills for engineers. Teams of engineering educators worked collaboratively with these communication scholars to incorporate speaking and writing in engineering education. Other similar cross-disciplinary work, based on communication-across-the curriculum, has flourished on college campuses, as described in a review of the initiative conducted by Dannels and Housley Gaffney (2009).
In 2001–2002, another national initiative, the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, added communication as one of the new disciplines from which Carnegie Scholars could be selected. The goal of the Carnegie Scholars Program was and still is to support scholarship that improves student learning and advances teaching in all disciplines and fields in higher education. Through the participation and contributions of the communication discipline’s first Carnegie Scholars, Carolyn Calloway-Thomas, Barbara Gayle, and Tracy Russo, communication research on instructional competence gained a wider national audience (Morreale 2001).
Finally, we consider the visibility and positioning of instructional communication internationally. Just as there is some interest in instructional communication across disciplines, so too, there is an interest across nationalities and geographical boundaries. Since 2007, when the International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning published its first issue, instructional communication researchers have served on the review board and published their work in this international electronic journal. In one of the first issues of the journal, U.S.-based scholar, Carrell (2007), described a naturalistic study and reflected on her undergraduate students’ shifts in perception, motivation, and learning, as a result of a university trip to the Amazon rainforest.
Disciplinary associations and their educational journals also are internationalizing. For over a decade, the National Communication Association’s journal, Communication Education, has encouraged submissions of manuscripts authored or coauthored by researchers based in countries other than the U.S. and/or focused on topics of cross-cultural interest. In a study reported in Communication Education in 2001, Roach and Byrne compared student perceptions of three variables – instructors’ power, affinity-seeking behaviors, and nonverbal immediacy cues – in American and German classrooms. American instructors were perceived as significantly higher on the three variables, and American students reported significantly higher perceptions of cognitive learning than German students did. In 2002, also in Communication Education, Johnson and Miller expressed concern about the ethnocentricity of previous U.S.-based research on teacher immediacy behaviors and students’ perceptions of learning and teacher credibility. In a cross-cultural study of students from a university in the U.S. and a university in Kenya, the researchers identified a positive relationship between teachers’ verbal and nonverbal immediacy behaviors and students’ perceptions of the teachers as more effective and credible in both countries.
International research on communication and instruction is not limited to journals published in the U.S. by American academic associations. For example, in 2011, a study in the Chinese Journal of Communication examined the willingness to communicate of Chinese students studying English as a foreign language in a Chinese college classroom (Yu). Yu’s study found a direct influence of students’ self-perceived communication competence on their willingness to communicate in English. In 2012, a study in the International Journal of Educational Management investigated the challenges and obstacles faced by beginning teachers in higher education in Pakistan (Sarwar, Aslam, and Rasheed).
These studies serve to illustrate that instructional communication scholarship is reaching a wider, more interdisciplinary, and international audience of readers. Given the expanded readership, we next consider the usefulness and value of communication instruction and communication competence to all students in higher education.
5Instructional communication competence and valued life outcomes for students
Instructional communication and students’ communication competence clearly are connected to valued life outcomes for students, both personally and professionally. One national study provides rationale for the claim that learning how to communicate competently, through communication pedagogy and instructional communication, is critical to students’ personal and professional success. Thematic analysis of 93 journal and newspaper articles, reports, and surveys points to the centrality of communication in developing the whole person, improving the educational enterprise, being a responsible social and cultural participant in the world, succeeding in one’s career and in business, enhancing organizational processes and organizational life, and being able to address several newer concerns in the 21st century including health communication, crisis communication, crime, and policing (Morreale and Pearson 2008).
This particular study, though insightful, does not directly address the impact of a teacher’s use of the core components of instructional communication competence (see list in Table 5) on students’ life outcomes. However, the earlier referenced studies in this writing, as well as several other recent research efforts, do suggest the six core components of instructional communication competence substantially impact student learning and thereby also may have a moderating effect on students’ future life outcomes. Table 6 summarizes the results of those studies, linking their findings to the six core components of instructional communication.
The description of studies in Table 6 is illustrative and, by no means, a comprehensive meta-analysis of the expansive body of literature and studies on instructional communication. Such an analysis remains to be done, though this summary does suggest gaps and opportunities for future investigation. Immediacy, for example, appears to have gotten more attention as a core component of instructional communication, by contrast to the other components. These studies, as well as others over the years, do provide evidence that a teacher’s use of the six core components of instructional communication competence can have a positive impact on student learning. If a student in any discipline learns more pertinent information about their particular area of study, as a result of the teacher’s communication competence, other positive effects, professionally and personally, are bound to accrue.
Longitudinal studies in higher education and across academic disciplines to support this broad claim do not exist. However, it is intuitively obvious that if a teacher has robust curricula but cannot communicate competently, some of the knowledge and associated positive life outcomes may be lost to some of the students. Conversely, a teacher with competent instructional skills, but without meaningful content, may teach enthusiastically but be of less real instructional benefit to the students. In combination, substantive content and instructional communication competence on the part of instructors should have moderating and positive effects on students’ ability to learn and then achieve valued outcomes in their personal and professional lives (Baron and Kenny 1986).
We now have a general sense of instructional communication competence – descriptively, theoretically, methodologically, and across disciplines and geography. We also have summarized the core components of instructional competence and their value to teaching and learning in all disciplines. How then should researchers and scholars interested in instructional communication extend their work in order to contribute most usefully to this critical area of inquiry?
Tab. 6: Six core components of instructional communication competence and student learning
| Components (predictors of student learning) | Findings of studies (dependent variables) |
| Immediacy | Christophel (1990) found significant correlations between teacher immediacy behaviors and student learning and motivation. Comadena, Hunt, and Simonds (2007) examined the effects of nonverbal immediacy, but clarity and caring as well, on student motivation, and affective and cognitive learning. The study found that the three predicting variables, most particularly teacher immediacy and clarity, played key roles in enhancing student learning. Comstock, Rowell, and Bowers (1995) identified a curvilinear relationship between teacher nonverbal immediacy behaviors and actual cognitive, affective, and behavioral learning. Johnson and Miller (2002) identified a positive relationship between verbal and nonverbal immediacy behaviors and students’ perceptions of their teachers as more effective and credible, in universities in Kenya and the U.S. Mottet et al. (2007) investigated the effects of instructors’ nonverbal immediacy behaviors on students’ perceptions of instructor credibility in a course with a heavy workload. The study showed that the immediacy behaviors preserved students’ perceptions of instructors’ credibility and neutralized their concerns about the course workload. Roach and Byrne (2001) found a significantly higher impact on student learning, of instructors’ nonverbal immediacy cues, use of power, and affinity-seeking behaviors, in American classrooms by comparison to German classrooms. |
| Affinity-seeking | Mazer, Murphy, and Simonds (2007) studied the effects of teachers’ use of self disclosure (an affinity-seeking behavior), via Facebook, on college students’ expectations about motivation, affective learning, and classroom climate Students who visited the Facebook page of a teacher high in self-disclosure, by contrast to those who did not, anticipated higher levels of motivation to learn, affective learning, and expectations of a more positive classroom climate. See also Comadena, Hunt, and Simonds (2007) and Roach and Byrne (2001) under Immediacy. |
| Relational Power | Fassett and Warren (2005) examined assumptions about educational success and failure of at-risk students, based on how a researcher’s ideology may affect perceptions of educational risk and at-risk students. Sprinkle et al. (2006) probed the impact of a teacher’s combined use of fear appeals (anti-social statements) and efficacy (pro-social statements) on students’ affective learning, motivation, and likelihood of taking another course from or visiting the instructor for help. The combined use of fear and efficacy interacted to positively influence students’ perceptions of the four outcome variables. See also Roach and Byrne (2001) under Immediacy. |
| Credibility | McGlone and Anderson (1973) were among the first researchers to separate the concept of teacher credibility from general source credibility. They investigated and discovered some moderating effects of college teachers’ personalities and taskrelated behaviors on students’ perceptions of teachers’ credibility over time. McLean (2007) examined classroom management techniques that Asian female teachers use to establish credibility. The study found that Asian-born instructors are particularly challenged when teaching communication courses to a predominantly native English-speaking student body. Russ, Simonds, and Hunt (2002) explored the influence of instructor sexual orientation on students’ perceptions of teacher credibility. The study found that students perceive a gay teacher as significantly less credible than straight teachers. See also Johnson and Miller (2002) and Mottet et al. (2007) under Immediacy. |
| Clarity | Smith and Land (1980) examined the impact of mathematics teachers’ use of language, verbal communication, and clarity on students’ evaluations of instruction and achievement in a math course. The researchers observed a cause–effect relationship between the predictor and outcome variables. See also Comadena, Hunt, and Simonds (2007) under Immediacy. |
| Humor | Kher, Molstad, and Donahue (1999) observed that teachers’ appropriate and timely use of humor, in what they referred to as dreaded college courses, can foster mutual openness and respect and contribute to overall teaching effectiveness. Torok, McMorris, and Lin (2004) examined how students perceive college professors’ uses of various types of humor during class. Appropriately used, humor has the potential to humanize, illustrate, defuse, encourage, reduce anxiety, and keep people thinking. |
6Priorities for future scholarship on instructional communication and competence
The advantage of a review and synthesis of any scholarly field or subfield is that it gives the reviewer a new perspective on what is known and perhaps what needs to be known. The two early reviews of theories in instructional communication (Scott and Wheeless 1977; Staton-Spicer and Wulff 1984), expressed concern about a lack of a coherent theory for instructional communication and the need to integrate research studies as a base for theory development. Later, Waldeck, Kearney, and Plax (2001) made similar observations stating that instructional communication researchers either test theories from other communication contexts, or they draw on theories from other disciplines. Given that the first of these observations was proffered over thirty years ago, three priorities for instructional communication competence and for future scholarship are apparent. A need exists to:
–Develop a coherent theory of instructional communication competence – not just instructional communication.
–Test systematically the six core components of instructional communication competence, and their interactions, regarding their effectiveness and appropriateness to instruction across disciplines.
–Apply the six core components of instructional communication competence to communication challenges teachers face in the 21st century.
6.1Toward a theory of instructional communication competence
Over the last several decades, researchers and scholars have issued calls for the development of a coherent theory of instructional communication. Most recently, Beebe and Mottet (2009: 356) claimed that, “… a unified theory of instructional communication has yet to emerge from the research”. We suggest here that the need is, more precisely, for a theory about instructional communication competence, which would explain what it means for instructors, and students, to communicate most competently in instructional settings. Such a theory could be developed and then tested based on the established body of scholarship on competent communication (Spitzberg 2000), and from the findings of researchers who have identified the six core components of instructional communication (Beebe and Mottet 2009). Spitzberg’s (2000) theoretical description of communication competence, as effectiveness and appropriateness, and Beebe and Mottet’s (2009) description of six core components of instructional communication (see Table 5) could be incorporated into theoretical propositions about instructional communication competence, such as the following:
1.Teachers who display communication competence effectively achieve their desired goals for students using verbal and nonverbal communication behaviours considered appropriate to the particular learning situation and context. These teachers incorporate into their teaching praxis the six core components of instructional communication: immediacy, affinity-seeking, relational power, credibility, clarity, and humor.
2.The use of the six core components of instructional communication, verbally and nonverbally in instructional contexts, increases the likelihood of teachers being perceived as competent (i.e., appropriate and effective), thereby increasing the likelihood of improved student learning and relational outcomes.
6.2Testing core components of instructional communication competence across disciplines
The effects of teachers’ use of the six core components of instructional communication, individually and interactively, have been investigated in a variety of studies over the years. However, most of the studies that resulted in the development of the list of core components occurred in communication classes and only in a limited manner in other disciplines. Since instructional communication scholars are interested in how communication is used to teach, regardless of academic discipline, the components need to be applied and tested systematically in a variety of other disciplines. Although disciplinary effects in the use of the core components is not a surety, in order for instructional communication scholarship to be most valuable across higher education, research questions, such as the following, could be investigated:
1.To what extent, if at all, do the six components of instructional communication – immediacy, affinity-seeking, relational power, credibility, clarity, and humor – vary in effectiveness and appropriateness, depending on the academic discipline?
2.Based on academic discipline, which of the six core components most effectively encourages and promotes student learning?
3.Based on academic discipline, which of the six core components least effectively encourages and promotes student learning?
4.Based on academic discipline, are there any “missing components” of instructional communication competence?
6.3Application of core components of instructional communication competence to instruction in the 21st century
The effectiveness and appropriateness of the six core components of instructional competence, individually or collectively, also could be investigated with regard to the instructional challenges teachers in higher education nowadays face. Those challenges include but are not limited to new and emerging instructional technologies, globalization of educational institutions, and diversity in college classrooms. Moreover, assessment opportunities and challenges abound in higher education and answers to research questions, such as the following, could help respond to those mandates:
1.To what extent, if at all, do the six components of instructional communication – immediacy, affinity-seeking, relational power, credibility, clarity, and humor – vary in effectiveness and appropriateness, if the instructional context is technology-mediated?
2.To what extent, if at all, do the six components of instructional communication – immediacy, affinity-seeking, relational power, credibility, clarity, and humor – vary in effectiveness and appropriateness, if the instructional context is a global educational institution?
3.To what extent, if at all, do the six components of instructional communication – immediacy, affinity-seeking, relational power, credibility, clarity, and humor — vary in effectiveness and appropriateness as a function of diversity, such as gender of students, gender of teacher, race or ethnicity of students or teacher, or sexual orientation of students or teacher?
7Summary and future directions
We began our discussion of instructional communication by referring to teaching as a communicative act. It therefore falls to communication researchers to continue studying the critical relationship between communication and instructional competence.
In discussing the historical development of instructional communication, we noted that communication scholars first concentrated their work in the domain of communication pedagogy, focusing on speech and public speaking. Then, by the 1970s, they turned their attention to the role of communication in teaching in other disciplines. Regional, national, and international academic associations, and their scholarly journals, supported the work of the instructional communication researchers. The theoretical perspectives that have characterized their efforts include the process–product paradigm, student-mediated paradigm, culture-of-the-school paradigm, and, more recently, the interaction paradigm that focuses on both partners in the educational equation, teachers and students, and on the teaching and learning process. By the 1990s, eleven categories of theories were identified as useful in instructional research, as well as six types of research programs: student communication, teacher communication, mass media effects on children, pedagogical methods and technology, classroom management, and teacher–student interaction. Methodological traditions and research models that have guided instructional communication research over time include the positivistic, interpretive, and critical traditions. That research has been only somewhat interdisciplinary and international with the exception of initiatives like those of the Carnegie Academy for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning and communication-across-the-curriculum. Most recently, in 2009, six variables, referred to here as essential or core components of instructional communication competence, were outlined: immediacy, affinity-seeking, relational power, credibility, clarity, and humor. Communication researchers have studied the direct impact of teachers’ use of these core components on student learning, but not their impact on students’ future life outcomes. A coherent theory of instructional communication competence is yet to be advanced, and some of the research questions recommended here are in need of further investigation. Nonetheless, communication scholars have contributed immensely to understanding the role of communication in teaching and learning.
This review intends to support and inform those scholars, as they actively engage in instructional communication research intended to improve teacher–student communication in higher education in all academic disciplines. We close this discussion, as we began it, metaphorically. Recall that McCroskey, Richmond, and McCroskey (2006), referred to instructional communication as the third leg of a three-legged stool, the third leg being competence in instructional communication and classroom communication. We choose chair as our metaphor, using the six core components of instructional competence!
C = clarity and credibility
H = humor
A = affinity-seeking
I = immediacy
R = relational power
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