Humor in teaching can promote a positive and cohesive class atmosphere but can also have unintended negative results if the teacher does not first develop a supportive relationship with the students. (Author)

When students do not enjoy communicating, and when teachers fail to communicate or to understand why their students are not communicating, opportunities for learning are lost. Research and theory about communication apprehension offer ways of understanding and dealing with this important barrier to learning. (MSE)

It is suggested that education is a process of relational development between students and teachers and is dependent on effective interpersonal communication. Seven stages of this relational development and nine relational skills for teachers are discussed. (Author/MSE)

Classrooms can serve as laboratories for experimenting with collaboration rather than win-lose conflict styles. Productive conflict tactics and patterns of interaction can be used for all parties to learn effective conflict management. (Author/MSE)

Nonverbal messages provide information to students about the instructor's preferences for interpersonal support, genuineness, and power, and have a direct impact on students' motivation to learn and attitudes toward content. (Author/MSE)

Research reveals striking differences in college classroom participation patterns across gender, race, and ethnicity. Trained faculty can change these patterns. An American University experimental equity training program illustrated that trained faculty (n=23) were 38 percent more interactive than the control group, giving more precise feedback to…

The college teacher can develop his or her own teaching and communication skills by becoming familiar with the literature on recommended teaching communication behaviors, making use of the internal and external resources, and practicing. (MSE)

A model of classroom characteristics and interaction is used to examine the roles of group size, problem types, and student behaviors, central concerns in problem-based learning, in medical education. The model incorporates six classroom dimensions, including four process variables (classroom organization, learning task, teacher's instruction,…

This article examines the role of social context in teaching and learning at the college level and reviews principles of six research and conceptual approaches which address social context: the transactional perspective; student-centered instruction; cooperative learning; communication theory; group-process theory; and curricular/structural…