Teaching As Two-Way Communication

Teaching is an interesting dynamic. It is also part of a partnership involving players with different roles that begin at opposite starting points yet share the same finish line. The job of the teacher is to impart knowledge about a particular subject. The teacher does it through a range of strategies that include lectures, guest speakers, assignments, tests and by instigating various ways for the students to become actively engaged in classroom discussion. The job of the student is to attempt to capture the knowledge and demonstrate their understanding and familiarity with it well enough to satisfy the teacher. On the surface, the roles of the two seem pretty well defined: one sends out information and the other receives it. If this were a classic public relations model, then such a dynamic would be strictly one-way communication.

Unfortunately, one-way communication is not as effective as two-way communication. This is particularly the case if the connection between teacher and student is viewed as being long-term. A teacher and their students are collaborators or partners much as are employer and employee, husband and wife, and doctor and patient. For each to enjoy any kind of shared success, they must establish themselves as a team that works toward a shared goal or end. Identifying the desired result as well as the strategies to obtain it can only be achieved via two-way communication in which the two offer good-faith suggestions designed to ensure well-earned passing grades for the students. Bottom line: the two must work together. They must cast aside the old dynamic where the teacher does all the talking and students do all the listening. Instead, what happens in the classroom must be more about active engagement on the part of both parties. Of course, the teacher knows more about the given subject than the students. But this does not mean students do not have something concrete to add to the subject matter, cannot help design a road map for the class, and even broaden the teacher's base of knowledge.

One reason teaching is such a challenge is because not all teachers possess the communication skills to truly connect with their students, establish a vibrant partnership with them or are able to impart information about the subject in ways that students adequately understand or find interesting. In my many years as a student and a part-time instructor at various colleges and universities, I have known and experienced a number of extremely knowledgeable and accomplished scholars who not do well at teaching because of their shortcomings as communicators. Perhaps viewing students as partners rather than as entities to talk at for several hours per week over the span of a semester might help reverse this. Granted, not all attempts to establish two-way communication are successful. But not trying at all greatly reduces the chances of making the classroom experience for both teacher and student one that is positive, meaningful and memorable.