Jeff Kerssen-Griep

Sustaining the desire to learn: Dimensions of perceived instructional facework related to student involvement and motivation to learn

Instructional communication research about student motivation generally fails to explain the mechanism by which communication influences learning motivations, while motivational theories in psychology and education focus almost exclusively on cognitive and structural explanations. Addressing that interdisciplinary exigency, this study explains and tests a mechanism by which the facework dimension of instructional communication (specifically teacher feedback about student work) addresses important learner identity needs and thus predicts students’ intrinsic learning motivations, interaction involvement, and task‐mastery orientation toward their schooling. Instructional face‐support was found to predict each of the outcomes tested, with solidarity and tact facework as generally the best specific predictors. The discussion extends existing research and theory about classroom communications influence on student motivations and involvement.

Attentive Facework During Instructional Feedback: Key to Perceiving Mentorship and an Optimal Learning Environment

This study investigated how the face threat mitigation students received from their teachers during feedback influenced their judgments about mentored relationships with their teachers and the supportiveness of the classroom learning environment. Public speaking students (N =345) at three universities completed an online survey about the speech feedback they had received from their instructors throughout that term. Receiving skilled facework during feedback predicted all aspects of perceived mentoring (including satisfaction) and almost all of the supportive learning environment components. Findings support instructional facework as a key communication mechanism by which teachers and students negotiate optimally adaptive and engaging learning relationships and environments.

Teacher communication activities relevant to student motivation: Classroom facework and instructional communication competence

Relying on an interdisciplinary link between identity management and student motivation research, this study describes teacher communication activities that students in two graduate preprofessional classrooms identified as face‐relevant. Ethnographic methods found 7 instructional communication activities during which students reported feeling one or more of their face needs addressed (i.e., supported or threatened). Findings and extant research are cited to demonstrate the positive motivational consequences of instructor face‐support during these face‐relevant interactions. Results extend previous communication research on motivation, immediacy, and influence in the classroom.

Instructional Feedback I: The Interaction of Facework and Immediacy on Students' Perceptions of Instructor Credibility

Instructors routinely provide feedback for students concerning the work the students produce as part of a classroom course. Although such information is required of instructors and expected by students, the communication of feedback creates a potentially face-threatening interaction in which the students self-esteem may be diminished and/or the instructor–student relationship may be strained. This study investigated a video instructors attempts to mitigate such face threats by using sensitive verbal strategies combined with nonverbal immediacy cues. A 2 x 2 experimental design allowed manipulation of these two variables in higher and lower combinations and subsequent detection of a significant interaction effect between them. In the presence of higher face-threat mitigation cues and higher nonverbal immediacy cues, students attributed greater credibility to the video instructor and evaluated the instructor more highly. These findings are interpreted in light of approach-avoidance theory, which posits that people draw near to others whom they like and avoid those they dislike. Implications for classroom instructors are discussed.

Earning Influence by Communicating Respect: Facework's Contributions to Effective Instructional Feedback.

Successfully evaluating students’ work challenges teachers to achieve both corrective task and identity-protection goals in interaction. This study investigated how face-threat mitigation that students received from their teachers during feedback influenced students’ judgments about the quality and usefulness of the feedback their instructors provided and their perceptions of those instructors’ credibility. Public-speaking students (N=356) at three universities were surveyed about their instructors’ feedback regarding their first graded speech that term. Multiple regression analyses showed that receiving attentive facework during instructional feedback predicted students’ perceptions that feedback was fair and useful. Skilled instructional facework also predicted students’ less defensive responses to criticism and their higher credibility ratings of their instructors. Findings support attentive instructional facework as a communication mechanism whose skillful use aids feedbacks reception and integration and enhances instructors’ credibility as worthy feedback providers.

Instructional Feedback II: How Do Instructor Immediacy Cues and Facework Tactics Interact to Predict Student Motivation and Fairness Perceptions?

During feedback interventions (FIs), instructors may feel torn between directing students’ learning or maintaining productive rapport with them. Existing research suggests how instructional communication can achieve both outcomes. This study examined how students’ motivation to learn and perceptions of fairness were enhanced or eroded via particular instructional behaviors. Actual face-threat mitigation (FTM) tactics and teacher nonverbal immediacy (TNI) cues were manipulated in differing combinations to manage an FI situation, with varying effects on the outcome variables. Multivariate analysis detected main effects and a significant interaction effect between FTM and TNI regarding students’ motivation to learn, but main effects only for their perceptions of interactional fairness. Theoretical and pedagogical implications are discussed in light of self-determination, facework, approach-avoidance, and feedback intervention theories.

Inception: Beginning a New Conversation about Communication Pedagogy and Scholarship

Drawing on past pedagogical and scholarly lines of inquiry, this article advances—in a dialogic form—several questions for future research and practice in areas of communication, teaching, and learning. The dialogic form of this article offers a metamessage, inviting colleagues to consider creative approaches to inquiry and collaboration in the 21st century. The ideas and questions presented in this essay serve to push the field beyond disciplinary silos, advance research and pedagogy about teaching and learning, and offer thought-provoking insight into what scholars and practitioners who explore communication, teaching, and learning can contribute to those inside and outside of our discipline.

Concepts of Social Justice as a Cultural Consensus: Starting Points for College Students of Different Political Persuasions

Promoting social justice is popular in American colleges, though the specific concepts and values associated with social justice tend to be inconsistently articulated. Noting that diverse possible definitions for social justice seem to underlie some controversies surrounding the concept, the authors conducted a study that employs a version of cultural consensus analysis to investigate actual college student definitions of conditions and actions they associate with social justice. Comparing students who identify as liberal politically with students who identify as conservative politically demonstrates more similarities than differences, with most students putting particular emphasis on equal rights, basic needs, education, and community service. At the same time, students who identify as liberal politically tended to put more emphasis on environmental issues while students who identify as conservative tended to put more emphasis on charity and just policy. Recognizing these commonalities and differences has implications for promoting values associated with social justice as part of a college education.

Navigating instructional dialectics: empirical exploration of paradox in teaching

ABSTRACT Navigating contradiction represents an integral part of the teaching process. While educational literature has discussed the paradoxes that teachers experience in the classroom, minimal empirical research has analyzed the strategies teachers employ to address these paradoxes. Using relational dialectics as a theoretical framework for understanding paradoxes in teaching, we analyzed extensive interview data from 19 postsecondary instructors regarding the learning-oriented dialectics teachers experience and navigate. Findings here extend dialectics into a new instructional context by identifying three supradialectics these teachers experienced, as well as the strategies they report using to assist student learning in light of those dialectics. Subsequent analysis illustrates the dialectic nature of teacher strategies used in the classroom, offering insight into how teachers navigate dialectic tensions daily in the classroom. Further, this study provides researchers theoretical knowledge and evidence regarding how dialectic tensions and strategies function differently across communication contexts.