If the title of this article didn't already give it away, I consider myself to be a communication educator. While I operate through the medium of language teaching (and management teaching), my end goal is for my students to be able to engage in skilled communication as well as to have a basic knowledge of what they believe communication to be. Unsurprisingly, this is much easier said than done. The field of communication education itself is almost unknown in Japan and mostly associated with the business communication competence skill training in other parts of the world. I'm going to take a bit of time to lay out my interpretation of communication education is and how I try to be a communication educator.
So What Is Communication Education Anyway?
Communication education seems to be a simple enough concept. It is education about communication. Or is it education though communication? Alternatively, is it communication that leads to education? The number of possibilities for interpretation go on and on. Personally, I consider communication education to be a form of education in which an understanding of communication is developed such that the individual can engage in, reflect upon, and improve their communication (you can understand what exactly I'm talking about when I say communication here). Let's get started with some of my principles for communication education.
Communication is Action
When we communicate, we are trying to make something happen. Pearce and Cronen1 describe this process in detail. People take communicative action towards others or into contexts that are shared with and influenced by others. Each person holds their own meaning, and communicating is an action that attempts to bring those disparate meanings together into something that all involved can use. With this in mind, a solid communication education has to provide students with the opportunities necessary to take actual action with others.
We Are Always Communicating With Others
Everything we do sends a message to others. This concept is the first axiom presented by Watzlawick and his colleagues2 in their work The Pragmatics of Human Communication. They describe it with the simple phrase "One cannot not communicate." Even the refusal to engage with others signals something, which is in turn interpreted by those involved. Ironically, avoiding social engagements just leads to an overall bad time for everyone involved. One goal of communication education, then is for students to understand what their words and actions are broadcasting to those around them and how they interact with others constructively.
Everything Has Causes and Consequences
The word consequence generally brings to mind a negative image, but it's really much more neutral. Pearce3 puts it very well when he says that all conversations have an afterlife, and that afterlife goes on to shape future conversations and actions. Likewise, each conversation in the present is also shaped by the afterlife of past communication. Our goals for the future serve to give us direction in present conversations. Understanding and communicating well is connected to one's disposition towards connecting the past and desired future in the present to work towards a positive result for all involved.
How I Educate About Communication
I would say that this part is the most tricky. I want to try and explain how I educate about, through, and in communication. I'll talk a bit about specific activities and goals that I try to keep in mind in the classroom as well the logistical and relational aspects of running a communication classroom.
Activities
In general, I believe that for students to develop critical skilled communication, most of the time should be allocated to them actively engaging with each other and the social world the are constructing. Rossiter and Pearce4 point out that most communication textbooks (and classes as well) focus more on learning about communication rather than learning to communicate. While this is extremely important, (I personally believe that a solid understanding of communication is necessary to communicate well), if students only know about communication they will still run into a gap between their expectations and the reality of taking action.
I try to start all my classes from the position that students have already created a wide range of ideas and concepts that guide their approach to encounters in others. If I consistently start without acknowledging that, I run the risk of over-writing or colliding with their understanding. That vastly increases the risk of failed lessons. In order to draw those ideas out into the open, I use discussion questions based around circular questions5 in order to get students to start thinking themselves in relation to whatever the topic of the day is. I set strict limitations on the amount they can write (2 sentences, one for the statement and one for the reason). From there, I have them share those (in English, Japanese, or both depending on the class) and listen to the answers of others. I also use guided story construction, where students answer a series of questions where the answers construct a framed narrative of their experience. The framing is often quite different than the are used to, and it can be a struggle for them to think about how to answer the questions. Of course, there are a lot more activities and strategies that I utilize, but this article is getting long so I'll talk about those more in-depth later.
While the activities are important, I find it equally necessary to attend to the social world of the classroom and students. Basically, I try to learn all the students names, faces, and backgrounds. This gives me an idea of the perspective they bring into the classroom and shows that I care about them. This trust is important in creating a space in which open, equal communication can take place. Without that kind of space, students will now engage seriously with either myself or their peers. Likewise, I limit the use of technology as a part of the content. I use paper cards for attendance, keep time with a mechanical kitchen timer, and all that with be hand-written. I do allow the use of tools like translation software in order to make are students are able to express their ideas regardless of language level. But I ban the use of large language models on the basis of probabilistic language generation being fundamentally incompatible with expressing a perspective informed by one's own experience. I use no online homework platforms, as I find them to be both a burden to use and a catalyst for class structure to move in a worse direction.
Finally, I just try to keep my key concepts in mind when deciding anything about the class. How an I acting into the communication environment of my class? What are my behavior, content choices, and other factors elements of the class communicating to the students? And what are the consequences of my class on students? What kind of social world are we making together in the classroom and what should we make? These are questions I regularly ask myself, and questionsI invite you to ask as you build your own understanding of communication education.