The Content of Professional

Pedagogical Communication
By Alyona Skomorokh, 1 A
• Classroom is a complex communication space. Communication
process involves verbal, non-verbal and para-verbal components and
is designed to mediate student and teacher behaviour. The impact
that partners exercise over each other depends on the quality and
depth of interaction.
• Teacher communication skills are viewed as the necessary skills for
improving student learning (O'Hair & Wright, 1990). The teachers
with developed communication competencies are more effective in
all segments of the teaching process. They have skills to model and
manage teaching communication (to regulate the interaction and
control social situations, define and change the aims of
communication and teaching conversation, etc.).
• The concept of communicative competence has evolved a lot,
encompassing areas of knowledge today increasingly wider. Council of
Europe considers that there are six components in communication
skills: language skills, socio-linguistic competence, discourse
competence, socio-cultural competence, strategic competence and
social competence.
• Physical: How a speaker uses their body language, facial expressions,
and voice.
• Linguistic: The speaker’s use of language, including their
understanding of formality and rhetorical devices.
• Cognitive: The content of what a speaker says and their ability to build
on, challenge, question, and summarize others’ ideas.
• Social and emotional: How well a speaker listens, includes others,
and responds to their audience.
• Competence is always associated with a situation or with a set of
situations and also with experience of a person or group of persons;
• Skills development is based on the mobilization and coordination by a
person or group of people of a wealth of resources: personal
resources and resources for specific circumstances of the situation
and its context.
• Competence resulting from the processing of dynamic and
constructive situation; a person or group of persons are declared
competent after processing situation;
• Competence is not predictable and therefore can not be defined a
priority; it depends on a person or a group of persons, on their own
knowledge and understanding of the situation.
• Development of communication competence occurs as a part of
socialization, whether it is spontaneous socialization influenced by the
life itself in a specific social context or by educational procedures as
the segments of goal-directed socialization. Teaching process does not
enhance spontaneous socialization of communication competence at
the communication level formative to more effective teaching
interaction.
• In the research of Fenton and O’Leary (1991) the impact of the
teachers’ communication skills training program on the instructional
improvement and academic achievement improvement is analysed.
Their findings indicate that the programme of teacher communication
skills improvement failed to show significant increase in academic
achievement of minority of students and low achievers; however,
most of the teachers and approximately half of the principals
reported the changed instructional behaviours and improved student
attitudes and achievement.
• On the one hand, the teaching-learning process is an act of
communication, and a teacher is one of the two central factors of
educational communication. On the other hand, teachers designs,
organize and implement content of communication, they influence
their students.
• Contemporary society has produced significant changes in the spoken
language. Teachers should have the skills to select, to use,
communicate and create information.
• Through content or features for their teaching-learning activity as a communicational
situation, teachers influence the development of students’ communication skills:
• using a rich vocabulary;
• at list a minimal use of specialized language;
• use of language (in the general context of communication);
• use of Information Technology;
• information search skills;
• argumentation skills of personal opinions ;
• non-verbal skills;
• networking skills in group
• the ability to establish positive interrelations with students (to
demonstrate that "cares" for them);
• The ability to exercise authority and provide structure and clarity of
rules without doing so in a rigid, threatening way, or following the use
of punishment;
• the ability to make learning fun by using creative teaching strategies.
 References:
• Delia Muste. The Role of Communication Skills in Teaching Process. –
The European Proceedings of Social and Behavioural Sciences, 2017.
• Lidija Zlatić. Development of Teacher Communication Competence. –
Procedia. Social and Behavioural Sciences, 2015.
• https://www.edutopia.org/article/teaching-communication-skills
Thank you for your attention!