Teacher-student rapport has been discussed in previous research, but the communicative behaviors that foster it have yet to be identified. The current study looked at several teacher communicative behaviors to determine which are the best predictors of rapport building. The results suggest that students feel rapport is most influenced by a…

Not only intelligence quotient (IQ) makes a good teacher, but also there are other traits required by teachers for effective teaching. This present study aims to identify the effective critical traits of teachers in higher education institutions (HEIs) and intends to outline the framework for effective teaching. Interpretative phenomenological…

Various forms of humor are an important aspect of social interactions, even at an early age. Humor comprehension is a repertoire that is said to emerge between the ages of 7 and 11 years, and this is primarily attributed to a child's level of cognitive development. The behavioral literature has suggested that various forms of complex verbal…

Over the last decade research has reported a range of positive life and learning outcomes for adult and child choristers through first-person accounts derived through surveys and interviews. Little is known regarding parent and child perspectives on choral learning, particularly regarding the impacts of participating in excellent choirs on musical…

Snark is a form of verbal aggression that uses humor to diminish a victim. The present study explored predictors of U.S. teachers' use of snark in the classroom. Kindergarten-12th grade teachers (N = 516) self-reported on their social and emotional competencies (i.e., perspective taking, forgiveness, mindfulness, expressive suppression, and…

Purpose: Today's education system focuses primarily on the academic skills of individuals. However, art and music education is thought to affect both humor and interpersonal problem-solving skills by supporting the social and emotional skills of adolescents. Therefore, this study was designed to investigate how receiving art and music education…

Despite the body of studies on different dimensions of effective teaching, the literature provides little evidence of research on effective teachers as persons. To narrow this gap, 50 pre-service and in-service English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers participated in this study to explore their beliefs about the attributes of effective…

Undergraduate students enrolled in an introductory educational technology course at a large US Midwestern public university completed a "greatest learning experience" narrative assignment, in which they were prompted to discuss and describe their best learning experience. In many of the narratives (n = 267), students discussed a…

The focus of this research is on an international distance discussion class carried out in Chinese between university students in Japan, China and Taiwan using videoconferencing. Smiling was used as an interactional index in an analysis of the archival footage of the recordings of the discussion between native speakers (NS) of Chinese and…

In this article, we interpreted, in light of Mezirow's theory of transformative learning, interviews with 13 educators regarding their work with marginalized adult learners in prisons in the northeastern United States. Transformative learning may have been aided by the educators' response to unplanned activating events, humor, and respect, and…

In the research literature on interactional competence in talk among second language speakers and their coparticipants, this volume of "Pragmatics & Interaction" is the first to focus on interaction in Japanese. The chapters examine the use and development of interactional practices in a wide range of social settings, from everyday…