Pedagogical agents (PAs) are lifelike characters in virtual environments that help facilitate learning through social interactions and the virtual real relationships with the learners. This study explored whether and how PA gesture design impacts learning and agent social acceptance when used with elementary students learning foreign language…

This study examined verbal and non-verbal teacher/student interpersonal interactions in higher education instrumental music lessons. Twenty-four lessons were videotaped and teacher/student behaviours were analysed using a researcher-designed instrument. The findings indicate predominance of student and teacher joke among the verbal behaviours with…

Most communication texts analyze relationships by focusing on the big moments such as conflicts, crises, break-ups, major transitions, or initial meetings. Perhaps because everyday communication is so common, it often has been ignored for study and analysis. Yet because these seemingly undramatic interactions form the basis for relationships,…

Consideration of the role of nonverbal communication equips students with the ability to maintain effective relationships in a business setting. (SK)

Outlines some recent theoretical discussions of silence as communication. Describes nine exercises the speech communication instructor can use to teach silence and shows which specific function of silence each exercise teaches. (JMF)

In coteaching, two or more teachers take collective responsibility for enacting a curriculum together with their students. Past research provided some indication that in the course of coteaching, not only the teaching practices of the partners become increasingly alike but also do unconsciously produced ways of moving about the classroom, hand…

Argues for a unified communication methodology at interpersonal, mass-media, organizational, and cultural levels. (HOD)

In this article I detail the conceptual trajectory of a classroom of 2nd- and 3rd-grade students as they reinvent topographical lines to represent height in a map within the constraints of an overhead perspective. In my analysis I pay special attention to the role of social interaction--and in particular the role of the teacher--in the process of…

Interpersonal relationships should be an important part of learning-disabled students' curricula and should focus on appropriate classroom behavior, the impact of poor language skills on socialization, resistance to change, establishing degrees of value and priorities, cause-effect relationships in human interaction, planning/organizational…

This article reports on the utility of sociometrics for the teacher, particularly in determining who will not reject a generally rejected classmate. A study on teachers' ability to predict such students indicated teachers were not very good at predicting either rejectees, or accepting students. Implications and suggestions are discussed. (NG)

In the verbal linguistic systems, the target for English learners in China is educated native speaker accuracy. The target for more socially embedded interchange is yet to be established. Its basis needs to be formed from "what members of the target culture consider appropriate for foreigners and attitudes of learners themselves"…

Simulation was used as a teaching method in a family communication class to foster a feeling of empathy with others. Although the course was originally designed to be taught as a seminar, the large number of students prompted the division of students into groups of five or six, characterized as families, each of which was to discuss concepts and…