TEACHING AS A COMMUNICATION PROCESS: SERIES 1:

THE IMPORTANCE OF COMMUNICATION IN TEACHING

TEACHING-AS-A-COMMUNICATION-PROCESS: SERIES 1:

Dave Ikiedei Asei

31/05/2019

Teaching is about establishing effective and affective communication relationships with your students. Effective teachers are effective communicators. They are those who understand that communication and learning are interdependent and the knowledge and attitudes students take with them from the classroom are selectively drawn from a complex assortment of verbal and nonverbal messages about the subject, the teacher, and themselves. They are those who are more concerned with what the students have learned than with what they have taught, recognizing those two things are not necessarily synonymous. They are those who consciously and strategically make decisions about both what is communicated and how it is communicated.

 Instructional communication is defined as the process of the teacher establishing an effective and affective communication relationship with the learner so that the learner has the opportunity to achieve the optimum of success in the instructional environment. Teaching is about relationships with students and about achievements of students. If you ask most teachers why they chose teaching as a career, or why they continue to work in the schools, they will tell you it is because of the children. If you ask them what can most effectively turn a bad day into a good one, they will tell you it is the moment when the "light bulb" goes on, when everything comes together and a student's face lights up with the realization that he or she understands.

Establishing an effective communication relationship means focusing on what is communicated, how it is "packaged.

To be continued.