Students have social and personal needs to fulfill and communicate these needs in different ways. This annotated bibliographic review examined communication studies to provide educators of diverse classrooms with ideas to build an environment that contributes to student well-being. Participants in the studies ranged in age, ability, and cultural…

Classroom observations are an important source of information about teaching and about the practice of particular teachers. The paper considers the value placed on talk as opposed to silence in this context and suggests that a cultural bias towards talk means that silence is commonly perceived negatively. The paper is based on a qualitative…

Discusses materials in the ERIC system concerning nonverbal communication. Examines nonverbal cues in other cultures and the differences traditional nonverbal cues take on in the classroom. (HTH)

Finds that teachers who perceived their students to be more nonverbally immediate with them in their classrooms expressed more positive affect for the students than did teachers who perceived their students as engaging in less nonverbally immediate behaviors. (SR)

A study analyzed receiver's reactions to electronically mediated communications in a management development program. Concluded that loss of nonverbal feedback from a professor was compensated for by greater communication and cohesion among the students. (SRT)

A study which replicated previous research focused on the perceived affiliative communication behaviors of teachers within the classroom, their relationship to student learning, and the interrelationship among those behaviors. Six hypotheses were formulated based on already published literature. These hypotheses suggest that student perceptions of…

Happy, neutral, and unhappy visual expressions were combined with positive, neutral, and negative intonations of positive, neutral, and negative messages to investigate congruent and incongruent verbal/nonverbal classroom communication. The 53 students in the study viewed pictures of their teacher, listened to a recording of their teacher, then…

Finds that students enrolled in conventional classrooms and distributed-learning classrooms (in which students primarily interact with the instructor and other students through computer-mediated communication) did not perceive a significant difference in instructor verbal immediacy, but they did perceive a significant difference in instructor…

A study was conducted to analyze the role that nonverbal communication plays in classroom climate. A 40-item classroom communication climate questionnaire was developed, and administered to 76 students and 8 teachers to determine its reliability and validity. After several changes and deletions, the final version of the questionnaire was…

Found that teachers perceive that their students (1) have developed many behavioral conversational skills prior to contact with school and (2) reveal very little development in their emotional expression abilities. (PD)

Presents aspects of three classroom contexts established between the teachers and the students in organizing instructional situations. (HOD)

Discusses the role played in classroom communication by each hemisphere of the brain and how each helps a child decide on the authenticity of verbal communication. Cites a study of verbal-nonverbal cues and brain functioning revealing that children rely on the nonverbal cues as indicators of the true message. (FL)

The result of interviews with 77 students on California state university campuses, this paper explores a set of guidelines designed to facilitate communication between white faculty and minority students. The paper is divided into three sections, each dealing with one of the three areas of the guidelines: classroom interaction, advising, and…

A study explored the extent to which affinity-seeking strategies are used in elementary and secondary school classrooms. Subjects, 311 elementary and secondary school teachers enrolled in classes related to communication instruction, completed a measurement instrument designed to evaluate their use of affinity-seeking strategies. Analysis of the…

With the goal of generating research questions about teacher effectiveness, the first half of this paper deals with literature investigating teachers' nonverbal behavior in the classroom. This review lends support to the following ideas: (1) nonverbal cues affect relationship quality; (2) the more positive the teacher feedback to students, the…