As social, racial, and environmental justice topics dominate national conversations, STEM teachers must provide learning opportunities that support students to make sense of these problems and co-construct hope for their futures (Calabrese-Barton et al., 2020; Ojala, 2012). Thinking about how teachers can begin to transform their classrooms into…

Foreign language education research has consistently acknowledged that students not only possess an array of "identities" beyond their role as mere learners, but also exercise "agency" making them active initiators and selectors of their learning actions. However, this conceptual understanding appears insufficiently reflected…

This essay reimagines public speaking education through a culturally sustaining and transgressive lens that challenges dominant norms of language, professionalism, and communication competence. It critiques the ways in which public speaking courses often reinforce linguistic supremacy by privileging standardized English and marginalizing…

Purpose: This study investigated the ineffectiveness of public speaking competence (PSC) in fostering employability. By analyzing the competency-training gap, it offers insights into vocational education and training (VET) concerning market-related generic skills. Design/methodology/approach: An integrative review was conducted, qualitatively…

In this collaborative autoethnographic piece, we present voices through critical incident technique replaying the same event at an academic conference, all seeking to understand how and why the disruption of voice occurs and what to do to counter it. We contextualize these experiences in the ideal of "sustainability of qualitative…

Because strong oral communication skills have well-known academic, social, and professional benefits, they are increasingly targeted and reinforced throughout general education programs in higher education. In these efforts, public speaking assignments most often ask students to discuss information they have previously written about (e.g., theses…

This paper explores crisis communication during the pandemic in multilingual Indonesia. Crisis communication during the pandemic is a discursive act of sense-making in responding to the pandemic. As Asia's pandemic epicentre, Indonesia provides a fascinating setting to enhance the discussion between crisis communication and multilingualism because…

Foreign language anxiety (FLA) is a well-documented phenomenon that can significantly affect academic performance. This study examined the extent to which Taiwanese postgraduate students experienced speaking anxiety during thesis defense presentations, along with potential gender differences and variations across postgraduate programs. It…

This research scrutinises the Three Minute Thesis (3MT) participants' experiences, with a focus on the incorporation of visual rhetoric in the presentations. The study employed a mixed method with an explanatory sequential design. The participants were seventeen students ranging from bachelor to doctoral programs joining the Training-of-Trainer…

Various pedagogical strategies promote the development of communication skills that enable graduates to leave their mark and make positive changes in society. This article focuses on instructional lessons learned from undergraduate student perspectives of the pedagogy of the lightning talk, a three-minute oral presentation delivered without the…

Traditional academic communication practices tend to be jargon-heavy jargon and lack public relatability. Thus, it is paramount that scientists learn to develop effective communication skills. The Three Minute Thesis (3MT) competition is one avenue to refine and build science communications skills. Using one static slide as a visual supplement,…

Educational efforts to promote effective oral science communication at the undergraduate level tend to reinforce strategies related to impression management. Students are taught tactics that can be used to create the impression of competent science communication without reflectively considering epistemological beliefs. Deeper aspects of oral…

In the context of scholarly and scientific discourse, students often have to deal with graphic-visual modes of communication, which requires their ability to comprehend and utilize inscriptions, that is, scientific visual representations, to convey information effectively--what we call graphical literacy. Despite its pivotal role for training…

We developed and tested an NSF IGE-funded year-long program to improve the oral communication skills of STEM graduate students. By the end of the program, we organized our curricular materials into a 3C framework: "connect, convey," and "captivate." Within this framework, the Fellows learned rhetorical strategies, created…

This article explores oral exams in four Norwegian secondary schools. These oral exams are high-stakes assessments, however, knowledge about practice and implications for validity and fairness is scarce. Data for the study consist of video recordings of 36 authentic oral exams in the school subject Norwegian language and literature. Applying…